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There are many reasons life is unaffordable for many Americans. Stagnant wages and the high costs of housing and healthcare have been well covered by the media. What there’s been less writing about is how private equity has impacted the houses we live in, the news we read and even how we care for our pets. Mass changes in ownership overtaking entire economic sectors raise important questions for Americans: Should we be pressuring our politicians to create policy that ensures whole industries don't get eaten up by the investor class? If so, at what point should we intervene? [more inside]
posted by Violet Blue at 10:23 PM PST - 55 comments

In the grand scheme of things, Michael Moore regrets losing his sense of smell decades ago as the result of chemical exposure in veterinary school. It may have spared him some discomfort, though, on the day in September 2010 when he arrived on a beach in Massachusetts to examine the colossal decaying carcass of a washed-up humpback whale... He did see one sign of life, however: clusters of freeloading whale barnacles, embedded in the whale’s skin like calcium carbonate body piercings. Their shells clicked softly as they extended their feathery back legs, sweeping the air for plankton that were no longer floating by. For generations, these hitchhikers have been recording details about their hosts and their ocean home. (SLHakai)
posted by ShooBoo at 7:48 PM PST - 8 comments

In Ten Million a Year, David Wallace-Wells (previously 1, 2, 3), writing in the London Review of Books, helps us comprehend the incomprehensible brutality of air pollution.
posted by rossmeissl at 5:36 PM PST - 10 comments

and so is every influencer you’ve loved in the past decade.
posted by clawsoon at 1:47 PM PST - 77 comments

Dancer, singer … spy: France’s Panthéon honours Josephine Baker as the first Black woman inducted into the Paris mausoleum for revered figures.

You know, friends, that I do not lie to you when I tell you I have walked into the palaces of kings and queens and into the houses of presidents. And much more. But I could not walk into a hotel in America and get a cup of coffee, and that made me mad.

A life of resistance [more inside]
posted by adamvasco at 11:18 AM PST - 14 comments

Roughly 52 percent of gay men in the U.S. have a bachelor’s degree, compared to 36 percent of all adults. Mittleman said that gay men of every racial and ethnic group outperformed their straight male counterparts. “I think it’s especially striking within the Asian American population, given the fact that they generally have the highest levels of degree attainment in America,” Mittleman said. “Even within that already high-achieving population, gay men earn more college degrees than straight men.”
posted by folklore724 at 10:36 AM PST - 22 comments

The American Prison System's War on Reading
posted by box at 10:28 AM PST - 23 comments

Where would you get to if you went in a straight line from any coastal point on earth? Now you can find out. Cartographer Andy Woodruff has created a simple web page that lets you click on a coastline and see where the straight line path from there ends up (Spoiler: It's quite often Australia). [more inside]
posted by YoungStencil at 10:12 AM PST - 13 comments

Using "second person" (using "you" for the point-of-view character) in English-language speculative fiction is often discouraged. "Why Writing Second Person POV Appeals To Marginalized Writers" by Valerie Valdes notes: "We often have to code-switch to engage with others, so it can feel more natural for us to accept and inhabit different selves without fear of losing the core of who we are." "thoughts on second person." by Arkady Martine suggests: "there are actually three kinds [of second person]... audience-oriented, coercive, and transparent." [more inside]
posted by brainwane at 7:31 AM PST - 22 comments