Two from Kottke: Women and the Russians

Yes, yes, I watched or listened to a fair amount of the Michael Cohen hearing today, but I'm not going to write about it. Instead I want to mention two bits from Jason Kottke today.

One is a short entry that went up late in the day about a book, which Kottke headlined Our world is built for men. The book has lots of examples of how this is true, and the effect of male-sized crash test dummies is one of the two that Kottke relays:

Men are more likely than women to be involved in a car crash, which means they dominate the numbers of those seriously injured in them. But when a woman is involved in a car crash, she is 47% more likely to be seriously injured, and 71% more likely to be moderately injured, even when researchers control for factors such as height, weight, seatbelt usage, and crash intensity. She is also 17% more likely to die. And it’s all to do with how the car is designed — and for whom.

The other Kottke post is a three-part video series from the New York Times called How the KGB weaponized fake news (and how it's still hurting us today). I haven't watched it yet but the descriptions Kottke provides are enough to make it clear it will be demoralizing but not surprising.