"The overriding lesson of this report, the scientists said, was that unless governments acted now to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and adopt measures to protect their people, nobody would be immune to climate change." Suzanne Goldenberg covered the U.N. climate science report for The Guardian. If you read these pieces, you have my permission to spend the rest of the day in bed with the covers over your head and your fingers in your ears while you sing LA LA LA LA LA to yourself. Because we are way not saving the world by talking about this on social media.
"LAN says, due to the state's failure to properly advertise the programs—specifically to lower income communities—that there were only 849 Latino applicants and 878 African American applicants to the Resettlement Program, compared to nearly 18,000 Caucasian applicants." Queen Muse at NBC 10 Philadelphia on glaring inequities in the distribution of Sandy relief funds in New Jersey. (Via Nikole Hannah-Jones.)
"But there can be moments that throw him. Recently, a shopper at the food pantry took an item off a shelf and told Moore, 'I put this on the shelf, too.' The shopper was a Walmart worker." From Part 3 of Krissy Clark's series (Part 1, Part 2) at Marketplace called "The Secret Life of a Food Stamp." (Via Lizzie O'Leary.)
"Since the beginning of the downturn, about 50% of those who were short-term unemployed at any given time were found to be working a year later. But only about 15% were at steady full time jobs," writes Suzy Khimm at MSNBC.
"For four weeks this winter, spread out over a six-week period to avoid the holidays, I hustled for work in the gig economy. Technically I was undercover, but I used my real name and background, and whenever asked, I readily shared that I was a journalist." At Fast Company, Sarah Kessler tries to make minimum wage by participating in the "future of work." Prosperity does not ensue. (Via Susie Cagle.)
"Newly insured patients have flooded Family Health Centers with requests for referrals; its largest clinic, in Louisville’s impoverished West End, had a backlog of several hundred requests in mid-March and was hiring temporary workers to help patients arrange appointments." At the NYT, Abby Goodnough reports on how the Affordable Care Act is already changing the health care landscape in Louisville, Kentucky. (Via Jennifer Steinhauer.)
"So the problem is that even Nazis are treated better than rich people—less constrained by public anger in their ability to speak out." Amy Davidson at The New Yorker on this week's Supreme Court decision removing aggregate limits on any individual's campaign donations to multiple candidates. For a more detailed analysis of the decision, Amy Howe has you covered at SCOTUSblog.
"The political world watched the 80-year-old Adelson zip in and out of the sessions on his motorized scooter, observing closely for signs of his favor." Molly Ball at The Atlantic reports from "The Sheldon Adelson Suck-Up Fest" for potential Republican presidential candidates.
"Across the country, immigrant-rights advocates report mounting disillusionment with both parties among Latinos, enough to threaten recent gains in voting participation that have reshaped politics to Democrats’ advantage nationally, and in states like Colorado with significant Latino populations." Jackie Calmes for the NYT.
"AP PHOTOS: Afghan women lawmakers fight for rights." The last piece filed by AP photographer Anja Niedringhaus before being murdered by a gunman while covering Afghan elections this week. (Via Anne Bernard.) You can see more of her work in this 40-photo collection that ran at The Atlantic last November. (Via Michelle Shephard.)
"I landed in Afghanistan in the wake of these brutal, merciless massacres, knowing the goal posts had changed—no one was off limits to the Taliban." Photographer Lynsey Addario at Time, who ends her essay on a surprising note of hope. (Via Tara Todras-Whitehill.)
"The absence of our likeness accurately rendered in photographs is one more piece of the construct of white supremacy. Film stocks that can’t show us accurately help to control the narrative around appearance, and shapes our reality and the value of our lives in American society." At BuzzFeed, Syreeta McFadden reflects on the racism baked into decades of photographic technology.
"The promotion of competition and conflict along gender lines shifts attention away from harmful public policies to the wrongs committed by individual members of the 'opposite sex.'" Sociologist Susan Sered argues at Salon that "gender-based violence is reinforced by economic policies and welfare laws that pit women and men against one another." (Via @prisonculture.)
"It makes me impatient — and yeah, I acknowledge my culpability in this — how often we choose to focus on the deliciously scary but conveniently far-away, rather than the diseases we could do something about." At Wired, Maryn McKenna does not think you should freak out about hemorrhagic fevers, though if you wanna freak out about multidrug-resistant TB, she's cool with that.
"The poor man's life was nasty, brutish and short, but his afterlife is long and illuminating." Jill Lawless for the AP on what researchers are learning from a London burial ground for victims of the Black Death. (Via Jody T.)
"More than 60 per cent of the world, and fully 99 per cent of the US and Europe, lives under a yellowy sky polluted with light. For many of us, the only place to see the milky backbone of our own galaxy is on the ceiling of a planetarium." Rebecca Boyle at Aeon on light pollution. (Via Nilanjana Roy.)
"Over a million records telling the tale of nearly a century of North American bird migrations have been rescued from obscurity and transcribed by an international network of more than 2,000 volunteers, making the records available for the first time online for use by researchers and the public." Hannah Hamilton and Jessica Zelt for the USGS on the building of an archival database that provides clues to climate change. People who do this sort of thing in their free time are my nominees for Most Awesome People.
"An analysis showed that among both boys and girls, if a student was is in the middle of the school social hierarchy — the 50th percentile — and moved up the social ladder to the 95th percentile, the likelihood that he or she would be victimized by his or her peers increased by more than 25%." Michelle Healy at USA Today gives you good reasons to be grateful for your relative social insignificance when you were a teenager. (Via Yamiche Alcindor.)
"Unlike other members of the first family, she moves about without Secret Service detail. If she is recognized, the president has said she just demurs, saying she gets that a lot." Krissah Thompson and Juliet Eilperin for The Washington Post on the First Grandma, Marian Robinson. (Via Amy Davidson.)
"You might not believe that your institutional doppelgänger works against you, but it does not seem like a stretch to argue that the sum of your activity as a consumer—your social-media posts, credit history, the freakishly accurate profile advertisers have of you—is its own creature, and can move about independently of you." Carmen Maria Machado on the automated afterlife of a Michigan woman. At The New Yorker.
"Slothified (adj.)
1. Overwhelmed by sloths
2. Overwhelmed by sloth - so tired after catching sloths all day that you don't want to get out of bed
3. Overwhelmed by the cuteness of sloths (baby sloths in particular)
4. Overwhelmed by sloth lovers"
You may become slothified after reading this story by Vibeke Vendama at the BBC. (Via @pourmecoffee.)
"This is the house that Jack built.
Let us dismantle Jack’s house with Jack’s tools"
More misandrist lullabies by Mallory Ortberg at The Toast.
