The Links:
Let's start with feminism!
Jezebel, the feminist oriented Gawker Media site, recently published an open letter this Monday to it's corporate overlords about the need for better policing of Rape GIFs. It's not exactly been handled well by Gawker up to this point and there's lots to read about so do give it a look. Given the scope of the Gawker empire (i09, Lifehacker, to name a few) this is likely to make waves for a while.
Alyssa Rosneberg comments on the piece in the Washington Post. She argues that all publishes need to do more to protect staff. The important implication here is that online harassment and sexual "humor" is both a real problem and something which requires action beyond that of single individuals. Publishers and most other companies with a media/web focus may have rules but enforcement is lacking and unorganized.
Phoebe Maltz Bovy, writing at the Dish, notes both of the above but chooses to focus on the personal issues associated with being a woman in journalism. One key problem she identifies is that women are expected to write about deeply personal subjects in a deeply personal way. Often that means writing essays which share intimate details of the journalists' lives which leave them open to more personal and vulgar attacks.
Let's close out our feminism section with something good. For the first time, a woman has won the Fields Medal! Maryam Mirzakhani, a Stanford mathematician, is only 37 to boot! Here's a good overview of her life and work from Quanta mag.
In 2006, for example, she tackled the problem of what happens to a hyperbolic surface when its geometry is deformed using a mechanism akin to a strike-slip earthquake. Before Mirzakhani’s work, “this problem was completely unapproachable,” McMullen said. But with a one-line proof, he said, “she constructed a bridge between this completely opaque theory and another theory that’s completely transparent.”Elizabeth Nolan Brown at the Dish thinks it's okay not to feel anything when a famous person dies. I think we're at a point where our culture is only giving credence to publicly displayed forms of grief and joy as documented by social media. The problem is, I find that kind of grief inauthentic. It's more about other people knowing your feelings than about how you actually feel.
What if we could find a way to eat animals without any of them suffering? An essay on the ethics of eating animals. I'm not sure how I feel about an ethical system which posits that it's okay for exploitation to occur so long as the exploited party doesn't experience it negatively. Maybe that's why it's brought up.
What an anthropologist learned about Hamlet by going to Africa in the 1960s.
Television has had a very scary summer. Why? Because people are increasingly turning to online streaming and delayed viewing options. Despite efforts of companies like Comcast to make cutting the cord harder, people continue to drop their cable subscriptions.
Higher science requirements lead to more dropouts because science is hard. Or do we just need to teach it better? Or are there other causes, like, say, weak math and reading skills which prevent average students from succeeding at high level science?
The FBI is investigating a group of educators who are followers of a mysterious Islamic movement. But the problem seems less related to faith than to oversight of charter schools. Oh, Fulton Science Academy, how much of a scam were you?
Google launches Google Classroom. Maybe cool, maybe not. It's on the users to generate most of the content while Google is providing the platform. The good news is, it's going to be as universally accessible as Gmail or Google Docs.
Several interesting Vox links:
Americans are consuming less soda but are replacing it with equally sugary teas and sports drinks.
Democrats are attacking McConnell for not liking coal enough. Seriously. I can't wait to vote for Grimes this november. A vote that finally matters!
Neoconservatives love Hillary. Not a surprise.
And a guide to when police are legally allowed to shoot you which brings us this lovely picture of proportionate response:
Banks are leaving the Repo market (not the kind of repo you're thinking of) and that's seemingly by design. Yes, it's super technical but worth reading about because here's the rub:
Cynically, your humble blogger wonders whether the Fed’s presence in the market is allowing banks to pull back from a product that was not a big money-maker for them. Indeed, the Fed offering better terms is a sign that crowding out the bank was a feature, not a bugEven people in the "Upper Middle Class" are struggling to save money. What a reminder of how screwed up our economic engine is right now.
Just 45 percent of upper-middle-class households (income from $75,000 to $99,999) saved anything in 2012, according to the Fed study. That means the other 55 percent didn’t save for a house, retirement, or education. About 16 percent spent more than they earned and went further into debt. The report highlights the consequences of these hand-to-mouth habits: Only half of these households had enough savings to finance three months of living expenses if they lost their job or couldn’t work. A $400 emergency would force about 20 percent of them into months of debt.More about the S&P study on inequality and economic growth. Jared Bernstein rounds up some of the things that we do and don't know about our economy.
Mark Thoma argues that immigration is good for domestic workers because it grows incomes across the board.
Menzie Chinn tests the claims made in Paul Ryan's 2012 budget that government spending will crowd out private sector investment. No. It doesn't.
Brad DeLong is going to be liveblogging the American Revolution along with the 1st and 2nd world wars that are already ongoing. Here's today's entry.
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