The Reading List, 12/13/2015

I share a lot of links on Twitter and Facebook that I don’t blog about because I don’t have much to add. The reading list is a periodic feature where I share those links with my blog audience too. Of course, you’re still welcome to follow me on Twitter.

  • Tone poem for the ‘leave it there’ press“–“Every time you defaulted to ‘will it work?’ when the bigger question was ‘is it so?’ Every dutiful effort you made to ‘get the other side’ without asking if the number of sides was really two. Every time you asked each other ‘what’s the politics of this?’ so you could escape the tedium and complexity of public problem-solving.”
  • Being A Girl: A Brief Personal History of Violence“–“Mostly what I remember is the smile that spreads across Monsieur Pierre’s face whenever we call him a sexist. It is not the smile of someone who is ashamed; it is the smile of someone who finds us adorable in our outrage.”
  • For Kamala Khan“–“There are myriad reasons why I love Kamala, many of which I’ve detailed in my reviews. But one of the most important is this: Kamala’s story is her own story; she is the main character in her own life. This may not seem particularly revolutionary or different, but it is for a character from multiple marginalized demographics.”
  • 5 Ways Mental Illness Labels Have Helped Me“–“It’s not like I had no labels before I started to use the label ‘depressed’ to describe myself. I did. The labels people used to describe me included words like ‘over-emotional,’ ‘over-dramatic,’ ‘crazy,’ ‘self-centered,’ ‘aloof,’ ‘bitchy,’ and a whole lot of others that are significantly less flattering than ‘depressed.’
  • “Toxic Workers” (pdf)–“Here, we find that though Self-regarding workers are no different in terms of productivity (i.e., the speed of their work), they are more likely to produce lower quality work: coeficient estimates are negative at the 10% level. Since these workers are also more likely to be terminated for toxic behavior, there is no apparent tradeoff when choosing not to hire Self-regarding workers.”
  • WI Community Takes Matters Into Their Own Hands After School District Cancels Reading Over Legal Threat“–“Although things looked grim, Liberty Counsel won’t have the last word about I Am Jazz. The Mount Horeb community has stood up and scheduled two separate reading events themselves, one at the Mount Horeb High School that will led by the school’s Straight and Gay Alliance and the other at the Mount Horeb Library to be hosted by parent Amy Lyle.”
  • Updated for 2015: Dana’s Super-Gargantuan Guide to Religion Books Suitable for Gift-Giving“–“Here’s a wonderland of atheist books not previously listed in our Super-Gargantuan Guides!”
  • ‘How can I support you?’“–“At the same time, it’s also utterly unsurprising that people so rarely do this. For one thing, we have all these cultural scripts about how this stuff is supposed to go, and one of them is that if you’re really a good friend/partner/family member to the person who’s struggling, you will “just know” what they need and be able to offer it without needing to be told.”
  • Access“–“I do understand feeling defensive when you’re caught out in a mistake. Okay, feel defensive. Complain to your spouse and/or close friends in private, have some ice cream or a hot bath and some tea. And then go to whoever it is you’re working with at the facility for the next event and let them know that you’ll need to accommodate members with mobility issues, and what are the options and how will you make that work?”
  • Most needy don’t attend free online courses“–“Just because a class is free and on the Internet doesn’t mean it’s actually easier to access if you’re not wealthy and well-educated, Emanuel says. To take a MOOC, people need a computer and access to the Internet. Not everyone has that. What’s more, he adds, MOOCs won’t help people without the education to do work at the college level.”
  • Paul Ryan denounces Trump’s plan to ban Muslims… then says he’ll support Trump if he’s the nominee
  • Fire at Grand Forks Somali restaurant follows apparent Nazi symbol vandalism“–“The graffiti included what appears to be an SS in the style of a symbol for Nazi Germany’s Gestapo above the painted words ‘go home.’ Authorities have not determined whether the incidents are related.'”
  • Catholic Hospital in Redding Denies Two Women Tubal Ligation“–“Redding’s Mercy Medical Center has refused — for the second time in four months — to allow doctors to perform sterilization on two pregnant women. The women requested the procedure be done immediately after they give birth next year. The hospital cited religious reasons.”
  • The story behind Jar’Edo Wens, the longest-running hoax in Wikipedia history“–“After more than two months, half of his hoaxes still had not been found — and those included errors on high-profile pages, like ‘Mediterranean climate’ and ‘inflammation.’ (By his estimate, more than 100,000 people have now seen the claim that volcanic rock produced by the human body causes inflammation pain.)”
  • Unsourced, unreliable, and in your face forever: Wikidata, the future of online nonsense“–“For five months in 2014, Wikidata said that Franklin D. Roosevelt was also known as “Adolf Hitler”. What, then, are the chances that more subtle falsehoods and manipulations will be detected before they spread to other sites?”
  • Donald Trump’s no leader — he’s just the voice that the ugliest Americans have been dying for“–“Trump is better understood not as the creator of a movement, but the expression of a popular will, a cipher through which huge numbers of Americans communicate what looks an awful lot like fascist sympathies. He is a symptom of a larger problem, not the cause of it.”
  • Guest Blog by Pamela Sargent“–“Occasionally I would get a sympathetic response from somebody who thought a women’s sf anthology was a splendid idea but basically unsalable, either because the audience for such a book wasn’t there or the editor wouldn’t be able to convince his or her publisher to buy the book.”
  • Trump’s Plan To Ban Muslims Is In Line With The Rest Of The GOP“–“But Trump’s anti-Muslim rhetoric didn’t come out of nowhere.Throughout the 2016 presidential campaign, Republican candidates have sought to energize conservative voters and shore up their anti-terror credentials by denouncing Muslims.”
  • Drip…drip…drip“–“A coworker says in all seriousness ‘I’d vote for Donald Trump before I’d vote for Bernie Sanders and watch him tax hard working American businesses out of existence.'”
  • It’s Not Foot in Mouth Disease“–“Again, the problem is not that he misspoke. The problem is that the idea that women are not as good is so deeply embedded in the mind of so many people in positions of power, that it is not even recognized.”
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The Reading List, 12/13/2015
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