“If there was one main negative takeaway from the raging fires of food tourist culture and the lists fanning the flames, it was that the people crowding the restaurant were one time customers. They were there to check off a thing on a list, and put it on Instagram. They weren’t invested in the restaurant’s success, but instead in having a public facing opinion of a well known place. In other words, they had nothing to lose except money and the restaurant had nothing to gain except money, and that made the entire situation feel both precarious and a little gross.”
“Here is George Washington (with bow and arrow) pictured alongside the Goddess of America.”
“The big city paradox: They’re getting richer but losing electoral clout”.
A long read on Larry Nassar and how he got away with his crimes for so many years.
Remembering the Jonestown massacre, 40 years later.
We have brined turkeys in the past and I’ve liked them that way, but we have not done that in recent years.
Everything you ever wanted to know about Finnish forest fires but were afraid to ask.
For crying out loud, get your children their flu shots.
Yeah, the movies based on the Percy Jackson books were terrible, and that was a shame.
“Democratic candidates for the House will receive almost as many votes this year as the 63 million that President Trump received in 2016″.
“It’s better to show toxic masculinity or annoying YouTubers, because that sounds like what hell really is.”
What happens when an asteroid crashes into the polar ice?
“The traditional news media are thoroughly infected by the Trump virus. It is not only spreading the disease of the president’s lies, but also suffering from a demise in public trust—at least among one half of the electorate.”
RIP, Marcelite Jordan Harris, Houston native and the first African-American woman to serve as a major general in the U.S. military.
The Washington Post article on big cities vs rural states has some problems. The undemocratic nature of the Senate & subsequent problems have been around since Day 1, & the frustration of Madison’s plan for two proportionate Houses of Congress — no small states then or now would ratify such loss of power. Its impact on the Electoral vote could be lessened (but not eliminated entirely) by increasing the size of the House of Representatives; or a handful of the largest states (enough to reach 270 votes) could simultaneously pass laws forcing their Electors to vote for the national popular vote winner. Big cities on the “two” coasts may be getting richer, but not necessarily a larger share of the population — that honor belongs more nowadays to a bunch of inland cities like Houston, Dallas, Atlanta, Phoenix, Denver, Salt Lake City & a whole lot more. New York State, for example, reached its highest share of the US population around 1930 or ‘40, & has been hemorrhaging people ever since the 1970s. California’s great boom leveled out after the 1980s, & now grows from foreign immigration rather than domestic. Finally, Texas did not elect Cruz precisely because of rural population or even mid-level metro areas remaining red. 77% of the state’s population now resides in the six largest metro conglomerations — Houston, Dallas-Fort Worth, San Antonio, Austin, El Paso & the Lower Rio Grande Valley. If they are united, what happens in the Sticks is totally irrelevant. They aren’t, of course; and the six or seven central urban counties may have now all turned blue, but of the bigger suburban counties, Fort Bend & Williamson have turned, but Collin, Denton and Montgomery have not done so yet; and that is where the real progressive frontier lies.