10/21/14 Today's Inquiries

It's cold enough to wear winter socks.


The Links:

More evidence that sugar, especially in sodas, is the new cigarettes.

Sometime in 1984 the number of women in computer science completely flatlined. NPR's Planet Money investigates. I blame War Games.

Big data might be racist and sexist. That's the obvious outcome when you're creating an entire industry focusing on identifying and marketing stereotypes.

For poor minority teens, arrests by police are replacing school discipline.

Why poor kids don't stay in college.

Economic distress can dim a student’s chances by forcing her to take on part-time jobs or reduce her credit load to help out at home.

In short, the afflictions of poverty don’t just disappear after a student gets into college.

More coverage of young college grads moving to city centers. Even cities which experienced downturns in the past 50 years have seen an uptick in youth.

Is sex only for rich people? Yes, poors just fuck. The argument is basically that our policy choices about fertility and safe sex benefit only the well off.

Cory Doctorow links us a graph of American cities ranked by conservatism.

Meanwhile, it doesn't look like low taxes are encouraging people to move from state to state. I thought this was an important point which rarely gets made:

Income migration analyses ignore that the vast majority of people can’t take their income with them to a new state because they work for someone else.  When people leave a state, they usually also leave their job.  The income they made in that job then typically goes to the person who gets that job next; it does not leave the state.

What does social mobility look like in a dystopia?

I'll give you two guesses about who the 40,000 unprocessed voters in Georgia are. I also wonder how quickly after the election those voters will suddenly be registered.

The map is not the territory. Africa looks quite different from what our maps have led to to believe. I mean, you can't even see ebola on those maps!

Companies are making big "bets" on climate change. Which is weird because I thought the whole thing was made up but Obama to get the UN to force us all to ride bikes or something.

Stocks of companies that take climate change seriously beat the wider market by almost 10 percent over the last five years, according to a report released this week by a U.K. nonprofit. 

Algebraic:


Is John Oliver a prophet? The dude gets everything right. Literally everything.

#132457505 / gettyimages.com