Links tagged with “usa”
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What Kind of Country Do We Want? | Marilynne Robinson | The New York Review of Books
“We are the richest country in history, therefore richer than the generations that built it, but we cannot bring ourselves even to make repairs.”
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Deborah Friedell · A Piece of Pizza and a Beer: Who was Jane Roe? · LRB 23 June 2022
I did not know, or had forgotten, how Roe v. Wade came to be.
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I Should Be Able to Mute America
“…we need a way to mute America. Why? Because America has no chill. America is exhausting. … America has effectively built a Green Zone in our cultural consciousness … I should not know who Pete Buttigieg is.“
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Jean-Luc Godard in the USA | Sight & Sound
I don’t know much about Godard but enjoyed this article from 1968 about him, America and revolution. “A film is a theoretical rifle and a rifle a practical film.”
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How a Jeopardy! Contestant’s Hand Gesture Became Part of a Conspiracy - The New York Times
I love/hate this. Quite amazing where we’ve got to.
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the sun is going down and you’re getting cold - Garbage Day
“Things that make sense on the internet, when spoken out loud, slip away from you as if you were trying to recall a dream.” So good, on social media and the US Capitol riot.
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The Great Dispersion | No Mercy / No Malice
On how working from home, and not going out as much, will prevent us from mixing with people who aren’t like us, and so decrease empathy.
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I Lived Through A Stupid Coup. America Is Having One Now | by Indi Samarajiva | indica | Nov, 2020 | Medium
The next instalment after “I Lived Through Collapse…”. I’d welcome more articles comparing the US to the worst aspects of non-“Western” countries at normal times too.
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I Lived Through Collapse. America Is Already There. | by Indi Samarajiva | Sep, 2020 | GEN
“If you’re waiting for a moment where you’re like ‘this is it’, I’m telling you, it never comes. Nobody comes on TV and says ‘things are officially bad’.” (via Kottke)
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A Land of Monopolists: From Portable Toilets to Mixed Martial Arts - BIG by Matt Stoller
Interesting to consider the private-equity-fuelled monopolies in so many (relatively) small industries. Business for business’ sake. More in the following issue.
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How to Survive an Apocalypse and Keep Dreaming | The Nation
Native Americans “are a postapocalyptic people”. (via Kottke)
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What I Learned Trying To Secure Congressional Campaigns (Idle Words)
Entertaining and interesting. “You will fare especially badly if you have written an app to fix politics.” (via @gwire)
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Notes on some artefacts | The Monthly
“It is impossible to say whether this is a bot account, though, because conservatives appear to be modelling their online presences on bots.” Good stuff. Like pointing out how much stuff around now is Gibson-esque.
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How the Disposable Straw Explains Modern Capitalism - The Atlantic
So many interesting things in this. (via @frankieroberto)
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Abandoned States: Places In Idyllic 1960s Postcards Have Transformed Into Scenes Of Abandonment : DCist
I’m a sucker for lined-up “now and then” photos and these of holiday spots in the Catskills are nice. (via The Online Photographer)
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Considerations On Cost Disease | Slate Star Codex
On why (American) housing costs, teaching, healthcare, universities, etc cost much, much more than they did a few decades ago, but are, if anything, worse. (via @genmon)
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Why Growth Will Fall | by William D. Nordhaus | The New York Review of Books
On how the rate of increase of standard of living and economic growth in the US was greatest from 1870-1970 and will never be the same again.
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4chan: The Skeleton Key to the Rise of Trump – Medium
This was a good read on a segment of Trump’s supporters being like, or actually, 4chan in origin.
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Getting Out Of Afghanistan | Fast Company | Business + Innovation
January 2015 article on the logistics involved.
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You Are Still Crying Wolf | Slate Star Codex
Good on keeping some of the Trump stuff in perspective. Yes, he’s terrible but the media tends to focus on certain things out of all proportion to their actual importance or relevance.
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The State of the Presidential Debate - The New Yorker
Interesting history of the debates and how they came to be what they are. (via @antimega)
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Inside The Federal Bureau Of Way Too Many Guns | GQ
How the non-computerised method of finding out who bought a particular gun, from its make and serial number, works in the US. Crazy.
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They Could Have Picked… (London Review of Books)
Eliot Weinberger on all the Republican presidential candidates other than Trump. At this point it’s become easy to forget that they were *all* nutjobs. Still, makes me thankful to live in the UK.
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Who Are All These Trump Supporters? - The New Yorker
A good read by George Saunders. “What unites these stories is what I came to think of as usurpation anxiety syndrome—the feeling that one is, or is about to be, scooped, overrun, or taken advantage of by some Other with questionable intentions.”
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A final response to the “Tell me why Trump is a fascist”.
Amazing list. (via @spongefile)
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I’m With The Banned — Welcome to the Scream Room — Medium
Laurie Penny. A good read, but depressing. I don’t know what you, we, do when people who believe nothing get all the attention.
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I’m Voting For The Democrat In November Because I’m Not A Human Tire Fire — Medium
I just enjoyed reading this. (via @GreatDismal)
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America Has Never Been So Ripe for Tyranny — NYMag
There are loads of worried articles about Trump but this is a nice long overview of worries. (via @spongefile)
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How Trigger Warnings Are Hurting Mental Health on Campus - The Atlantic
Fascinating. Things like this, and the behaviours and attitudes amplified by social media, make me wonder what the world will be like when today’s 20-year-olds are in charge. (via @preoccupations)
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The Jefferson Grid (@the.jefferson.grid) • Instagram photos and videos
Lovely. Aerial shots of squares of the US as marked out by the Public Land Survey System, originally created in 1785. (via Bldgblog)
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Jackson Lears reviews ‘The Age of Acquiescence’ by Steve Fraser · LRB 16 July 2015
How left-leaning beliefs have disappeared in the US, mostly over the first half of the 20th century. (Subscribers only)
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PLOS ONE: The Rise of Partisanship and Super-Cooperators in the U.S. House of Representatives
For the couple of diagrams showing how the number of congresspeople voting cross-party has changed over time. I love attempts to visualise party political changes over time.
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Deep Springs College - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
26 students, no fees, isolated location, students and staff all work on the ranch/farm. (via The New York Review of Books)
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Mr. Miller Doesn’t Go to Washington - Matt Miller - POLITICO Magazine
“A candidate’s memoir.” Being a candidate sounds like even less fun than I ever thought it would be.
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Why Diners Are More Important Than Ever | Serious Eats
Partly for the list of NY diners at the end, although the article’s good in itself. Lots of the points defining diners also sounded like British cafes (“caffs”, not cafés). (via Kottke)
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Your Job is Political: Tech Money in Politics
Whether you agree or not with the activities of the VCs mentioned here, it’s good to be reminded that working for VC-funded startups doesn’t only make the VC richer (if all goes well), but funds whatever they want to spend their money on. Do you know what that is?
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The American Room — The Message — Medium
Paul Ford on the rooms in (American) straight-to-camera, self-filmed YouTube videos and much more, very good. (via Kottke)
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The Case for Reparations - The Atlantic
This was good. More about the case for having a discussion about the case for reparations. It was more affecting to me than, say, ‘Twelve Years a Slave’, which was too easily put in the “that’s just history” or “one person’s experience” buckets.
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The 1950s Flying Saucer Conventions at an Underground Rock House | Messy Nessy Chic
Lots of great photos from LIFE magazine, and a good story. Very ‘Gods Without Men’. (via @GreatDismal)
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Rumsfeld’s War and Its Consequences Now by Mark Danner | The New York Review of Books
This series of articles on Rumsfeld is a good read. But this, the first article, is the only one that’s available to non-subscribers.
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Picture This: U.S. Cities Under 12 feet of Sea Level Rise | Climate Central
Altered photos showing what parts of some US cities will look like. Always reminds me of that bit in one of Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars books where they go back south-east England, chimney tops poking out of the sea. (via @greatdismal)
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Happiness Is a Worn Gun | Harper’s Magazine
Thinking about what it’s like to carry a gun around, and pondering the arguments for/against gun ownership and open or concealed carry.
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WHAT THE FLUCK!
I know many people roll their eyes at Adam Curtis, but no one writes these wide-ranging stories like he does, illustrated with video. (Even if I can’t watch the video because it’s Flash.)
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United States of America v Ross William Ulbricht (PDF)
This is the criminal complaint against “Dread Pirate Roberts” of Silk Road, and is well worth a scan. Quite readable, and it’s interesting to see how they worked out who he was from a few online slip-ups.
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Watch this (4 minutes) and recall that every one… - Fresser.
So many people are idiots. Really, idiots. I wish this clip showed more of the interviewees being told Obamacare and The Affordable Care Act are the same.
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Loopy Ideas Are Fine, If You’re an Entrepreneur | Pedestrian Observations
Good on the vagueness and unreliability of the Hyperloop plans, and also on America’s willingness to unquestioningly think successful people can succeed at anything they fancy.
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Lead Poisoning: The Ignored Scandal by Helen Epstein | The New York Review of Books
“America’s failure to address the lead paint problem early on may well have cost the American population, on average, five IQ points.” If you ever need another example of why government regulation of industries is necessary.
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Terrorist or Martyr? by Christopher Benfey | The New York Review of Books
Solely for this incidental quote from Nathaniel Hawthorne, after commenting on the “gloom” of Harper’s Ferry: “Yet there would be a less striking contrast between Southern and New-England villages, if the former were as much in the habit of using white paint as we are. It is prodigiously efficacious in putting a bright face on a bad matter.” (Subscribers only)
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Getting Nearer and Nearer by David Cole | The New York Review of Books
Just for the bit about how the courts’ “job is to enforce the law, even if, and especially when, public opinion is against it. … Democracy is not particularly good at protecting the rights of minorities. … [Courts] will sometimes make decisions that result in short-term backlash.”
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The Taste for Being Moral by Thomas Nagel | The New York Review of Books
For the six types of moral response and the description of how conservatives emphasise all of them in their appeal, but liberals only, relying also on reason. Which is why conservatives tend to appeal most to most people.