Best of TomDispatch: Rebecca Solnit, The Archipelago of Arrogance | TomDispatch

Best of TomDispatch: Rebecca Solnit, The Archipelago of Arrogance | TomDispatch: Yes, guys like this pick on other men's books too, and people of both genders pop up at events to hold forth on irrelevant things and conspiracy theories, but the out-and-out confrontational confidence of the totally ignorant is, in my experience, gendered. Men explain things to me, and other women, whether or not they know what they're talking about. Some men.



 Every woman knows what I'm talking about. It's the presumption that makes it hard, at times, for any woman in any field; that keeps women from speaking up and from being heard when they dare; that crushes young women into silence by indicating, the way harassment on the street does, that this is not their world. It trains us in self-doubt and self-limitation just as it exercises men's unsupported overconfidence.

BBC - Future - The best way to win an argument

BBC - Future - The best way to win an argument: The results were clear. People who provided reasons remained as convinced of their positions as they had been before the experiment. Those who were asked to provide explanations softened their views, and reported a correspondingly larger drop in how they rated their understanding of the issues. People who had previously been strongly for or against carbon emissions trading, for example, tended to became more moderate – ranking themselves as less certain in their support or opposition to the policy.



So this is something worth bearing in mind next time you're trying to convince a friend that we should build more nuclear power stations, that the collapse of capitalism is inevitable, or that dinosaurs co-existed with humans 10,000 years ago. Just remember, however, there's a chance you might need to be able to explain precisely why you think you are correct. Otherwise you might end up being the one who changes their mind.

The Secret Life of an Obsessive Airbnb Host | Narratively | Human stories, boldly told.

The Secret Life of an Obsessive Airbnb Host | Narratively | Human stories, boldly told.: It’s no secret that Airbnb’s housing stock is partially composed of listings that are technically forbidden by a landlord, co-op board, or city ordinance. Airbnb does not reveal data on its hosts, making it difficult to paint a clear picture of the ratio of legitimate hosts to those who operate in violation of leases and local laws. But from my interactions with other hosts, and one blogger’s survey of thousands of Airbnb listings in New York City, you get the impression that Airbnb does a sizable amount of business with people who should not be hosting and are not covered by Airbnb and thus wholly liable for runaway guests.



 A response from Airbnb customer service confirmed that sinking feeling: “We require that all hosts are legally in the right to use the Airbnb service. If you don't have that right, then that would be a violation of our terms so we must suggest you get full permission to sublet your listing. Anything that occurs outside of the listing would be handled outside of Airbnb.”

Reihan Salam’s piece on education spending is condescending, wrong | Fredrik deBoer

Reihan Salam’s piece on education spending is condescending, wrong | Fredrik deBoer: Now it happens that there is no such thing as private school pedagogy that’s distinct from public school pedagogy. Private school teachers often attend the same college programs as public school teachers, teach from the same collection of textbooks, give the same sort of tests. They are often exempt from the manic standardized testing that public school teachers have to participate in, freeing up class time, so there’s that, I guess. But it’s not like there’s some secret lesson plans that get passed around only between private schools. And here’s another dirty secret: there frequently isn’t a big difference in the day-to-day administrations of private schools, either. Oh, you can fire a teacher easier in your average private school. But there’s absolutely no reputable evidence to suggest that this is why private schools seem to have better educational outcomes than public schools. There is, on the other hand, an argument that has been supported by decades of responsible studies from thousands of responsible researchers: student demographics are more powerful determinants of educational outcomes than teachers or schools. And private schools systematically exclude the hardest-to-educate students, through high tuitions, entrance exams, and opaque selection processes. For these schools, the fact that the hardest-to-educate kids can’t attend is a feature, not a bug.

Ever Wished That Calvin and Hobbes Creator Bill Watterson Would Return to the Comics Page? Well, He Just Did. | Pearls Before Swine

Ever Wished That Calvin and Hobbes Creator Bill Watterson Would Return to the Comics Page? Well, He Just Did. | Pearls Before Swine: Ever Wished That Calvin and Hobbes Creator Bill Watterson Would Return to the Comics Page? Well, He Just Did.

Exotic Nanomaterials Claimed Their First Major Workplace Injury | Motherboard

Exotic Nanomaterials Claimed Their First Major Workplace Injury | Motherboard: What makes it a big deal, and potentially so dangerous, is that ordinary stuff like nickel or titanium have extraordinary properties at the nano scale. They have very different physical and chemical properties than the same material at even the micro size. And there are many different types of nanomaterials, including fullerenes (aka buckyballs), quantum dots, carbon nanotubes, and all manner of nanoparticles.

“It’s impossible to test every nano product for its safety,” said Journeay.

Many aren’t required to be tested because nanoscale nickel, titanium dioxide, and many other nanomaterials have the same molecular structure at the nano and megascale. Even though the sought-after properties of nano nickel or titanium may be wildly different than when they’re pea-sized, they are considered the same by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the federal nano regulator.

MUST READ: Dying Girl's Hidden Message on Mirror Stuns Her Family

MUST READ: Dying Girl's Hidden Message on Mirror Stuns Her Family: Happiness depends upon ourselves. Maybe it’s not about the happy ending, maybe it’s about the story.
The purpose of life is a life of purpose. The difference between ordinary and extraordinary is that little extra.
Happiness is a direction not a destination. Thank you for existing. Be happy, be free, believe, forever young. You know my name, not my story.

The Endless Civil War Goes On - James Fallows - The Atlantic

The Endless Civil War Goes On - James Fallows - The Atlantic:

Through the past two centuries the United States has overall fared very well thanks in part to success in both these areas. Its culture, laws, policies, geographic openness, and ideas about itself have generally encouraged adaptability. And its policies have bent change in its favor—through expansion of mass education and a research established, through public investment in leading technologies, through remaining attractive as a site for immigration, et cetera. All this is on top of the incredible natural advantages the U.S. enjoys because of scale, resources, distance from enemies, etc.



• The successful American bargain has depended on relative mobility, openness, and egalitarianism, with the obvious enormous exception of slavery and its aftermath, and many other lesser barriers. As legal changes make America even more equal and mobile, it should become more successful in the basic job of adaptation. As economic and other shifts make it more unequal and class-bound, it becomes less itself, and less successful.

Don’t Harsh Our Mellow, Dude - NYTimes.com

Don’t Harsh Our Mellow, Dude - NYTimes.com: What could go wrong with a bite or two?

Everything, as it turned out.

Not at first. For an hour, I felt nothing. I figured I’d order dinner from room service and return to my more mundane drugs of choice, chardonnay and mediocre-movies-on-demand.



But then I felt a scary shudder go through my body and brain. I barely made it from the desk to the bed, where I lay curled up in a hallucinatory state for the next eight hours. I was thirsty but couldn’t move to get water. Or even turn off the lights. I was panting and paranoid, sure that when the room-service waiter knocked and I didn’t answer, he’d call the police and have me arrested for being unable to handle my candy.



 I strained to remember where I was or even what I was wearing, touching my green corduroy jeans and staring at the exposed-brick wall. As my paranoia deepened, I became convinced that I had died and no one was telling me.

It took all night before it began to wear off, distressingly slowly. The next day, a medical consultant at an edibles plant where I was conducting an interview mentioned that candy bars like that are supposed to be cut into 16 pieces for novices; but that recommendation hadn’t been on the label.

Racist Woman Repeatedly Calls Man an N-Word in Front of Kids, Is Confused Why He Is Recording Her : nottheonion

Racist Woman Repeatedly Calls Man an N-Word in Front of Kids, Is Confused Why He Is Recording Her : nottheonion: This dude handled this situation about as well as he could. Unfortunately these recordings and the ensuing rush to convene the court of public opinion distract from the actual insidious nature of racism. The conversation over racism so often gets into "If they get to say 'X' how come I don't get to say 'Y?'" If your kids came up to you to ask that, the reasonable answer would be that neither of them get to call each other names. But reasonable isn't fun.

It's very popular right now to take a moment of racism, put it online, make fun of it, have some trolls do their thing, and then move on to the next one. It's not news. It's not progress. Hell, it's barely even justice. A very fucked up woman with an obviously very fucked up life said some extremely fucked up things. Her life is going to continue to be pitiful and fucked up with or without this being plastered all over the Internet. Hopefully she doesn't get to keep custody of her kids not to punish her but to give them a chance at some stability. Hopefully she can get some help somehow so her life can quit being so shitty. It doesn't take a team of psychiatrists to see that she's imbalanced.

The thing is her rant doesn't defund schools. It doesn't deny this guy a job, a loan, or a place to live. It doesn't buy up all the houses in a neighborhood to tear them down for a parking lot forcing people to relocate. It doesn't make sure his business isn't welcome. It doesn't expand services in a city away from his neighborhood. It doesn't make sure that he stays in his neighborhood with people who look like him. And so on.

It's important that we don't take our eye off the real problem. This woman's racism sucks, but capital-R-Racism is where we really need to be pointing our cameras.

Boggle! - I’ve been getting a lot of these lately, and I...

Boggle! - I’ve been getting a lot of these lately, and I...

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a2NXEze_700b.jpg (JPEG Image, 625�נ900 pixels) - Scaled (92%)

Verbatim: What Is a Photocopier? on Vimeo

Verbatim: What Is a Photocopier? on Vimeo: In this dramatization of transcripts from a legal deposition, a lawyer becomes embroiled in an absurd argument about the definition of a photocopier.

The 100 Most-Edited Wikipedia Articles | FiveThirtyEight

The 100 Most-Edited Wikipedia Articles | FiveThirtyEight: Not surprisingly, Bush isn’t the only political figure to attract factual controversy. The Wikipedia entry on Barack Obama has been revised 23,514 times — just slightly ahead of Adolf Hitler (23,499 revisions). Ronald Reagan, Abraham Lincoln and Bill Clinton all make it into the top 100 (Sarah Palin falls just short, in 104th place).

Articles on religion, including Jehovah’s Witnesses and Muhammed, or about specific countries, such as the United States and Israel, attract plenty of revisions. More surprising, however, is that World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) features in more revised articles than any other single body — seven — and is responsible for the second-most-revised article: list of WWE personnel.

Female-named hurricanes kill more than male hurricanes because people don’t respect them, study finds

Female-named hurricanes kill more than male hurricanes because people don’t respect them, study finds: Researchers at the University of Illinois and Arizona State University examined six decades of hurricane death rates according to gender, spanning 1950 and 2012. Of the 47 most damaging hurricanes, the female-named hurricanes produced an average of 45 deaths compared to 23 deaths in male-named storms, or almost double the number of fatalities. (The study excluded Katrina and Audrey, outlier storms that would skew the model).

The difference in death rates between genders was even more pronounced when comparing strongly masculine names versus strongly feminine ones.

“[Our] model suggests that changing a severe hurricane’s name from Charley … to Eloise … could nearly triple its death toll,” the study says.

NRA blasts Open Carry Texas after San Antonio incidents - San Antonio Express-News

NRA blasts Open Carry Texas after San Antonio incidents - San Antonio Express-News: The NRA on Friday called the Texas group's open carry displays in restaurants “weird,” “scary,” “counter-productive” and “downright foolishness” in a blog post on the NRA's Legislative Action website. Chili's and Sonic issued statements Friday requesting that patrons not openly carry firearms in their restaurants in response to the incidents.

“Using guns merely to draw attention to yourself in public not only defies common sense, it shows a lack of consideration and manners,” the NRA's lobbying arm wrote. “That's not the Texas way. And that's certainly not the NRA way.”

People With Chronic Illness Fare Worse Under Cost-Sharing - NYTimes.com

People With Chronic Illness Fare Worse Under Cost-Sharing - NYTimes.com: In France, co-pays are set by levels of sickness. Those who have chronic conditions have all of their co-pays waived. Even Singapore, beloved among conservative health care wonks because of its reliance on cost-sharing, makes exceptions for many with chronic illnesses. The rules do so explicitly to encourage them to seek care.

In the United States, we have adopted a system where those who use the most care pay the most out of pocket. That may seem “fair” in some way, but cost-sharing isn’t about fairness. It’s about reducing health care spending without negatively affecting health outcomes. It should be a scalpel. We’re using it like a club.

Notes On Surgery

Notes On Surgery: There’s not a line — before here he was female, after he is male. I think he’s still deciding on how to think about the person he was before transitioning. Every once in a while I see a picture of him before he cut his hair and changed his name and how he dressed, before he was the man I married. It’s an odd feeling. It’s him but not him. I don’t dwell on it.

I don’t dwell on my own sexuality either. I’m straight. I wasn’t attracted to him when he started transitioning, when there was still a feminine curve to his cheeks and hips. If you had asked me then if we would ever date I would have said no. It took two years of being friends before I realized I liked him (liked liked him). One day he asked me out and I thought well, why not? And then we fell in love, fast. We were almost immediately talking about our future, marriage, kids. His being transgender faded to the background. It sounds unbelievable but I still sometimes forget. He has to remind me that people he met in the past might not know who he is now. I don’t know, or care, what loving him means for my placement on the Kinsey scale, or whatever spectrum is the going standard. If I lost him I would undoubtedly date cis-men. I love him, and I love being his wife. Figuring out what that labels me as seems like a waste of time.

Are the Super-Wealthy Buying Democracy? | The Mischiefs of Faction

Are the Super-Wealthy Buying Democracy? | The Mischiefs of Faction: While most donations aren't quite at this level, they nonetheless follow a similar path, with a lot of them not really buying anything at all. To some extent, the money gives them access to politicians, which isn't nothing. But politicians are wary of boldly adopting a wealthy donor's views, and as the above graph suggests, they hear from a lot of wealthy donors across the political spectrum, who probably have conflicting ideas. The super wealthy are certainly paying a lot of money into the political system these days, but it's far from clear what they're getting out of it.

Five maps of America's massive drought - Vox

Five maps of America's massive drought - Vox: Here's NASA's Earth Observatory: "As of May 6, 2014, half of the United States was experiencing some level of drought. Nearly 15 percent of the nation was gripped by extreme to exceptional drought. For the Plains and the Southwest, it's a pattern that has been persistent for much of the past several years."

"Much of the US has been in drought since 2012"

This isn't a one-year event: at least half of the United States has faced drought on and off since 2012 — at the peak in July 2013, some 81 percent of the country was experiencing at least some level of drought.



Put together, the 2012-14 drought has been one of North America's biggest since the costly 1988-89 drought.