Deciding to maybe show solidarity with the rich

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FOLLOW UP: MLS Comes To Its Senses

https://deadspin.com/mls-caves-to-fan-pressure-lifts-its-ban-on-the-iron-fr-1838441929

It’s Always Just Been “Lying”

Stop Calling It “Gaslighting”

This Is Certainly… A Take

Our Economic System Also Sucks for Rich People

The elite should not—they have no right to—expect sympathy from those who remain excluded from the privileges and benefits of high caste. But ignoring how oppressive meritocracy is for the rich is a mistake. The rich now dominate society not idly but effortfully. The familiar arguments that once defeated aristocratic inequality do not apply to an economic system based on rewarding effort and skill. The relentless work of the hundred-hour-a-week banker inoculates her against charges of unearned advantage. Better, then, to convince the rich that all their work isn’t actually paying off.

They may need less convincing than you might think. As the meritocracy trap closes in around elites, the rich themselves are turning against the prevailing system. Plaintive calls for work/life balance ring ever louder. Roughly two-thirds of elite workers say that they would decline a promotion if the new job demanded yet more of their energy. When he was the dean of Stanford Law School, Larry Kramer warned graduates that lawyers at top firms are caught in a seemingly endless cycle: Higher salaries require more billable hours to support them, and longer hours require yet higher salaries to justify them. Whose interests, he lamented, does this system serve? Does anyone really want it?

Meritocracy Harms Everyone - The Atlantic

We need private jets,,,for our work!

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Shrimp-tastrophy

Starting in the early 1960s, California and Nevada’s departments of Fish and Game (now the California Department of Fish and Wildlife and the Nevada Department of Wildlife) released mysis shrimp into Lake Tahoe in hopes that they would be a new and abundant food source for the lake’s fish.

“The idea was, if you introduce something that fish could eat, fish would get bigger and fishermen would be happier,” said Tahoe Environmental Research Center Director Geoff Schladow. “So what could possibly go wrong with that?”

A lot, it turns out.

“This is something everybody may have missed,” Schladow said. “I think for a long time.” …

Before the shrimp were introduced into Tahoe, zooplankton in the lake ate algae and sediment, clearing the water by doing so. Some fish also ate the zooplankton. Then the states introduced the shrimp, and everything changed. The shrimp hate light, and because Lake Tahoe is so clear, they have to retreat to the depths of the lake during the day to avoid it. Then, each night, they undertake a round-trip migration as long as 2,000 feet to the top of the water to feed. Once the sun rises again, they swim back down.

While officials put the shrimp in the lake in the hopes of fish eating them, that hasn’t been the case because of this nightly vertical migration. …

Not only did the shrimp not fulfill their intended role, but they also brought a devastating and unintended consequence.

After the shrimp migrate each night, they’re starving from the long journey. Because of this, they’ve managed to decimate their main food source in Lake Tahoe: native zooplankton.

These zooplankton were an important food source for the kokanee, and the size of those fish in Lake Tahoe has dropped dramatically since the shrimp were introduced. But these tiny creatures that the shrimp were devouring, called Daphnia, were also keeping the lake clean, researchers found out.

“As far as zooplankton in Lake Tahoe go, Daphnia is responsible for removing about 85% of the particles and algae from the water column,” said Katie Senft, one of the researchers on Allen’s team.

TahoeLand: Trillions Of Tiny Invasive Shrimp Are Degrading Lake Tahoe’s Clarity. Now Researchers Are Trying To Stop Them. - Capital Public Radio

The YOUTHS are tracking each other?

Which brings us to the more curious kind of location-sharing: the ambient, always-on kind. At baseline, your friends’ location is just another piece of information about them, another point of connection, or an excuse to talk to them. You can see whether they happen to be nearby, and have a happy chance meeting. This is a particularly common scenario in college, where people are likely to be within a small, bounded area.

It’s 10 p.m. Do You Know Where Your Friends Are? - CityLab

Spice Rankings

Ranking Spices by How Healthy They Are - MEL Magazine

Weird Way to do Public Housing, But Okay

For San Mateo police Officer Jeff Brinton, the 85-mile commute from Oakley was so punishing that he decided to pursue the only reasonably affordable solution he could think of: He now sleeps in a van.

Rather than slog back and forth from eastern Contra Costa County between shifts — a trip that can take 2½ hours during rush hour — he crashes in his Roadtrek van, which he parks in the employee lot at the San Mateo police headquarters.

Brinton said he is hardly the only member of the force who slumbers in a vehicle rather than drive several hours after a 12-hour workday.

“A lot of (officers) are sleeping in their cars if they get too tired — it’s dangerous to drive home,” said Brinton.

But Brinton may soon get some relief from his commuting nightmare. On Monday, the San Mateo City Council unanimously approved a plan to convert a portion of an old fire station into a sleeping barracks for far-flung officers who can’t afford the average $1.4 million Peninsula home.

The $520,000 project will provide bunks and showers for up to 12 officers at a time at Fire Station 26 at 1812 S. Norfolk St. In addition to the barracks, the building will be a police substation and vehicle storage site.

While Brinton’s commute may be particularly egregious, it’s not that unusual. Of San Mateo’s 125 officers, 68% live outside of San Mateo County, many as far as Tracy or Mountain House in San Joaquin County or Gilroy in south Santa Clara County.

The cops who sleep in their cars — and what San Mateo is doing about it - SFChronicle.com

Hi, would you like to live in a parking garage?

The Parking Garages of the Future - Governing

Conservatives don’t like colleges because they expose you to the others you’re supposed to be afraid of

https://twitter.com/prageru/status/1164649782490435585

Grosperity Pospel

Like payday lenders, prosperity gospel ministers see the broke and struggling as a consumer market. Their target demographic is those who suffer from lack, and their product is the promise of abundance, or at least relief. Financially, the prosperity gospel is nothing but a swindle, prying money from people who by definition have very little and desperately wish they had more.

Ideologically, the prosperity gospel dovetails perfectly with right-wing ideology, which views poverty as a consequence of individual failure rather than rigged economic and political structures. … When times are hard, it’s because you didn’t think positively enough, pray hard enough, or tithe enough. It’s a spiritual spin on meritocracy, the ideological handmaiden to neoliberal capitalism. The prosperity gospel is one of America’s greatest grifts.

(A Grift from God - Jacobin)

Trump IS a prosperity gospel preacher:

Trump’s spiritual adviser is a prosperity minister. Her name is Paula White. In April of this year, she promised believers that if they sent her money they would receive one of several blessings: God would bring harm to their enemies, assign them a special angel, enhance their prosperity, or increase their inheritance. …

In the relationship between Paula White and Donald Trump, the nature of the prosperity gospel is laid bare. White got famous telling working-class people that their economic insecurity was a personal failing, and in a way, so did Trump. The Apprentice is a show about people dreaming of riches, desperate to prove themselves worthy of success. Most are not, and are punished for their weakness with unemployment. What’s obscured in both instances is that people are poor because people like White and Trump are rich — that they are each beneficiaries of a system that takes from the needy and gives to themselves.

Full Interview: Preacher Kenneth Copeland Defends Lavish Lifestyle - YouTube

As hard workers, we…

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CICPS Followup

Support GoodStuff On Patreon

https://www.patreon.com/goodstuff

Happy Telephone Ordering Day

Is Salted Licorice Any Good?

Chocolate Milk Is SO 1995

The Impulsive Buy on Twitter: “SPOTTED: Borden Limited Edition State Fair Inspirations Flavored Milk” - Twitter

Elizabeth Warren: Doin’ It for The ‘Gram

At Ms. Warren’s campaign stops, her speech to the crowd is only the first half of a two-act production. What comes next, and can last just as long, is the Warren selfie line, a campaign-trail innovation for the age of Instagram.

Ms. Warren’s campaign estimates that she has spent about 107 hours taking pictures in selfie lines since entering the race — the equivalent of working 9-to-5 for 13 days. At one event in Iowa, she continued posing for pictures in the midst of a tornado warning.

How to Get a Selfie With Elizabeth Warren in 8 Steps - NY Times

DEBATE RECAP

It Turns Out Everyone Involved Was Lying

Ariel Edwards-Levy’s thread recapping a survey from 1971

Repeal and Replace 2: 2 Repeal 2 Replace

Will Republicans Win Back the House? Their Playbook Is Familiar - Bloomberg

Folks: Keep it Grounded in Fact

Fact or Folly? — Keep It Grounded in Fact

Hard Work: What Even Is It?

I Have No Idea What “Hard Work” Means - Current Affairs

The #99rules for #NewMans

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Some Personal News: Andrew Got An Ottoman.

That is all.

Scent Shopping

Bedbug Stephens Was On One This Week

Innovation in Censorship

Idea: browser extension / twitter extension that muted or blocks all op-ed links and sections and authors

These Are The 99 Rules For Manhood. This Is All You Need.

Clint Pressley on Twitter: “In honor of ⁦@9Marks⁩ and ⁦@MarkDever⁩’s Birthday. Here are 99 steps to Christian manhood. https://t.co/geZKXpTE5Z” / Twitter

ContraPoints’ new video on men

Plastic

The oil and gas industry is ramping up petrochemicals — building blocks of plastics —right as the global outcry intensifies over plastic waste. … Domestic demand for ethane has grown rapidly. The U.S. Energy Information Administration projects it will reach 1.7 million barrels per day by year’s end, an 83% increase over 2012. … Exports of ethane have grown from nothing in 2013 to more than 250,000 barrels a day. EIA projects these exports to increase by another 50% this year. … Petrochemicals, which accounted for half of the growth in global oil demand last year, are projected to rise to 70% share of growth by 2040, according to BP.

Oil companies double down on plastics as public outcry grows - AXIOS

Californians generated about 77.2 million tons of waste in 2017, according to the most recent calculations from CalRecycle, California’s Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery. Of that, about 44.4 million tons ended up in landfills in 2017. CalRecycle estimates that the other 32.8 million tons, about 42 percent, was sent to recycling or composting, or was just never tossed in the first place. The numbers are a problem because they mean the state is far from reaching a statewide goal to reduce, recycle, or compost 75 percent of waste by the year 2020. And the outlook isn’t good. That’s in part because cheap natural gas is spurring investments in manufacturing of virgin plastics, which a CalRecycle report said could “undermine source reduction efforts, undercut prices for recovered plastics, and exacerbate plastic litter and marine pollution issues.”

Seabirds eating plastic. Recyclers struggling. This is what California’s waste crisis looks like - CalMatters

The Idiotic Reason That Egg Companies Are Turning to Plastic Packaging

Rich People Be Crazy

Barking dogs at Chevy Chase dog park divide rich and powerful - The Washington Post

Important News: We Are Baby

It’s The Official Podcast Day because Conan hath declared it

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Folks, the only Amazon Fire I want is the one plugged into my TV. Amirite? Up here.

Amazon rainforest fires: Here’s what we know - CNN

Thin dalmation line

https://www.aspiregear.com/blogs/news/what-do-the-thin-line-colors-mean

Thicc Orange Line

Baby please don’t leave me, I swear I’ll be better

Calendar Capitalism

In 1984, President Ronald Reagan declared ice cream a “nutritious and wholesome food” to help the dairy industry, since he was already trying to find a way to get rid of a surplus of 500 million pounds of cheese. In the years since, sales of ice cream have spiked on this day. Dippin’ Dots, Cold Stone Creamery, and Baskin-Robbins ran promotions and in-store giveaways on National Ice Cream Day 2019, as did PetSmart and Williams Sonoma. Halo Top gave out vouchers in a promotional collaboration with Bumble. Yes, some Americans are likely now using a dating app because Ronald Reagan had too much cheese .

Why Every Day Is Suddenly ‘National Something Day’ - The Atlantic

The Chicken Sandwich Wars, They Have Begun

A Popeyes Chicken Sandwich and a Tactic to Set Off a Twitter Roar - The New York Times

We love it!

Idea: start making fake trump catchphrases and say them in his voice in order to spread them

pigs and chickens

zima zima zima

a big bowel of pasta

Ketamine for the Troops

The president wants to make a controversial new nasal spray available to depressed veterans. The agency says it will consider incorporating the drug after it has more data.

Conan invents podcasting

Inside the Podcast Boom: How Conan O’Brien and More Cash in – Variety

Doing some podcast growth hacking

Actually, We Can’t: The Humiliating Weakness of Neoliberal Policy Worship

Posit: policies are great, but without power they’re meaningless.

Realizing it’s our fault for the problems we are dealing with, and not Amazon’s

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Taco Talk (or, Let’s Taco Bout Tacos)

New E-people Have Arrived

Who Hacks The Hackers?

Security Researcher’s ‘NULL’ Vanity Plates Cause Glitch That Lands Him $12,000 in Parking Tickets

MLS Blowing It On Anti-Fascism

https://www.portlandmercury.com/blogtown/2019/08/12/26956470/the-timbers-army-is-right-mls-must-rescind-its-ban-on-the-iron-front-symbol

https://twitter.com/visionofclarity/status/1161025052550336512?s=21

What the hell, MLS?

_Seinfeld Voice_What is the DEAL with the METAL BISTRO CHAIRS?????

https://jezebel.com/i-hate-these-chairs-1837309166

Swear Police Mad At Trump

https://splinternews.com/the-swear-police-are-mad-as-heck-and-coming-for-trump-1837167468

Clearly this is the only bad thing he’s done, though. Everything else is fine.

Space Watch

Amazon’s Fulfillment Center Ambassadors Are Basically The Borg

https://www.theverge.com/interface/2019/8/16/20808029/amazon-twitter-ambassadors-fulfillment-center-disinformation

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/15/style/amazon-fc-ambassadors.html

https://twitter.com/PierreMenard/status/1162025558978510848

Reply Guys-as-a-Service

The Slow Destruction of Gizmodo Media Group by Private Equiteers

https://www.thedailybeast.com/gizmodo-media-staff-enraged-at-new-ceos-insane-direction

https://www.thedailybeast.com/deadspin-editor-quits-rails-against-bosses-ive-been-repeatedly-lied-to-and-gaslit

Give Me Your Moneyed, Your Rich, Your Financially-Independent Masses

https://splinternews.com/trumps-immigration-chief-pretty-sure-the-statue-of-libe-1837200109

These bozos know there’s no moral justification for what they’re doing so they have to make stuff up.

Coming soon: all immigrants must be FIRE adherents or otherwise enrolled in a Dave Ramsey or Suze Orman course to be allowed in.

We will be checking your bank transaction history at customs. If you spend too much on coffee, DENIED.

Turns out the “E” stands for electronics, not efficiency.

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Effry Jepstein

LIFEHACK: Laundry balls

Custom trail mix

Gdub Mix at nuts.com

Homocidal Family Members

Ask Polly: My In-Laws Are Careless About My Food Allergy!

I have a very severe allergy to mushrooms. I carry an EpiPen, and I have been hospitalized multiple times because of exposure to this food. One time, I began convulsing in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. My husband politely explained this to his parents when we started dating, and I was invited to family meals.

Since then, most meals we have shared at my in-laws’ house have had very limited options for me. Somehow, they manage to find a way to add mushrooms to almost everything. One time, they made a point to make a special plate of mushrooms and pass it around. My mother-in-law said, very rudely, “I would’ve liked to add mushrooms directly to the salad, but SOMEBODY has problems with it!” They even added mushroom powder to the mashed potatoes at one holiday dinner. My mother-in-law claimed it was a new recipe she’d found.

Coffee Shaming

Buying Coffee Won’t Make You Poor - The Atlantic

E-Folks

If this is all new to you, here’s an e-boy primer, starting with how they look: their hair is styled like Leonardo DiCaprio’s as Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo, via Michael Pitt in The Dreamers. They smoke cigarettes, sometimes, for the aesthetic, but they’re as sober as an AA counsellor. They’ve been raised on Mac Demarco, The 1975 and lo-fi terrorcore-era Tyler, the Creator, but also Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez. Their vibe is the climax of all those faintly related spheres, filtered through Brockhampton’s brightly-coloured, post-One Direction world.

Clothes-wise: loads of chains. Bicycle chains, jean chains, wallet chains, coke can ring chains. They put padlocks around their necks. You could describe them as classic Camden Lock goth, were it not for the fact they seem like remarkably well-kept, happy – if a little performatively sad – young men, many of them seemingly being readied for a future in which their college tuition will be paid in full. (What Is an E-Boy? - Vice)

That’s another trait of the e-boy: being generally gross. It’s something they’ve cribbed from Billie Eilish, queen of the e-boys (and their female counterparts, e-girls, who i-D wrote about here). But alongside that grossness, they also rival 2007 Myspace kids in the pouting stakes. It’s a fine line, really: a load of posturing to show everyone how beautiful they are, with just enough purposefully manky stuff to remind their audience they really don’t care about looks. (What Is an E-Boy? - Vice)

https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/8/1/20748707/egirl-definition-what-is-an-eboy

Amperage Talk

Fast Charging my Internet Telephone

Why You Should Switch to USB-C Fast Charging Now: Reviews by Wirecutter - A New York Times Company

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07GWQ2GJC

https://www.amazon.com/Anker-Lightning-Certified-Powerline-Supports/dp/B07H27J698/ref=pd_bxgy_107_3/144-7068630-2119032

DYSTOPIA WATCH: Headphones as a Service

Nuraphone

The Quillette Situation

Quillette Duped by Left-Wing Hoaxer Posing as Communist Construction Worker

https://twitter.com/david_j_roth/status/1159626427450437632

https://twitter.com/justin_yang/status/1159629365161934848a

Logo Talk

Campaign Logos and their meanings

Minimalism: overrated?

Yes.

An Efficiency Thought Technology

Starting to think “disruption” is an excuse for not treating people great, tbqh

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There are more than 4,500 colleges and universities in the United States, and each year they host thousands of speakers of all political stripes. According to FIRE, a watchdog group that focuses on civil liberties in academia, only 11 speakers were disinvited from addressing college audiences in 2018. This is a minuscule fraction of the universe of speakers who express their views annually on American campuses.

When students express concern and discomfort about speech that is hateful, racist, or noxious in other ways, they are doing nothing unreasonable or historically unprecedented. A number of other democracies take a less absolute view on this topic—yet remain democracies. Moreover, the prevailing American conception of free speech and press rights is a relatively recent development when located in the sweep of time and the history of our nation. The challenge of resolving the tensions inherent in a tolerant society is still very much with us and is likely to remain so.

“Recently, I have noticed some team members working as if Mic were just another 9-6 job, not giving it their all everyday [sic],” Altchek wrote to his staff that month. “I’ve challenged every leader to fix any instances immediately. I’ve asked every leader at Mic to set really ambitious goals going into [Objectives and Key Results] and not accept anything less than total effort from their teams everyday.””

Employees had other frustrations with the financial side of startup life. When Mic passed out the custom-made Nikes in 2015, the company had already raised more than $30 million but had yet to set up a 401(k) system, multiple employees said.

“I was just like, ‘This is so dumb. I don’t need a pair of Nikes. I need a 401(k),’” said one of them. “They just seemed like they were wasting money left and right.”

When the company eventually set up a 401(k) at the end of 2015, according to the person familiar with the company, it did not match contributions. The adviser who worked for the company said it was “fairly standard” in startups that a “401(k) match is not a high priority for employees.”

…self-interested “disruptors” have been around since forever. What’s new over the past couple of decades is the passion, the self-confidence, the ideological commitment. (Not to mention the shamelessness.) … The tech monopolies leaned into this idea, appealing to and flattering our selfishness and solipsism. … As if your moral responsibility could stop at the metaphorical front door, where food, cars, packages magically arrive for your use.

We are discovering what a world devoid of moral responsibility looks like. It ain’t magical. … Because, let’s face it, Silicon Valley technology in nearly all cases isn’t so transformative that it would simply replace the existing systems on its merits. Uber isn’t better than a good mass-transit system; Facebook isn’t better than actual friendship; YouTube videos aren’t better than quality entertainment; a neighborhood littered with Airbnbs isn’t better than a community-oriented one; a computerized learning plan isn’t better than a great teacher. They may be more efficient or easier to use or less expensive, but better? Not even close. …

[The]… truth is that having so much of life occur at the front door, as opposed to on the town square or the market street, is simply sad. Pathetic even. Who but a small minority would want to organize life around a siege mentality?

Change soaps

Thinking maybe we should stop being jealous of other people having it easy.

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Anyone following the labor movement today could be forgiven for thinking it’s one-dimensional. The museums are unionizing. The academics are unionizing. The media is unionizing. The political workers and nonprofit workers and tech workers are unionizing. Has organized labor become white collar? Not at all. We all wear the same collar. It’s called CAPITALISM.

Okay, fine, we’ll talk about the debates.

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https://twitter.com/lubchansky/status/1144680859397738496