The Great Tab Cleanup of December 2019

I know it's probably not interesting to hear about the way my browser tabs overwhelm my computer, but it's been getting to the point where things were almost inoperable. So I closed a whole ton of tabs on two of my main topics, climate change/sustainable cities and white supremacy, by giving them bookmark folders. (So now, instead of never reading the tabs, I can never read the bookmarks.)

Today I'm going to post as many of the tabs that don't fit neatly into those two categories in this post, hoping I will get back and read them later! They're sort of grouped by topics, but they flow one into the other without subheads, so you get to guess what I think the topics are.

The Highlander Idea. For decades, the Highlander School has nurtured some of the most important radical movements by pushing a simple idea: ordinary people can act as agents of change. It's an idea that's threatening to the Right — and it should be. From Jacobin.

Why I no longer attempt to build a rigorous science of social change. An academic paper I came across somewhere.

A bunch of TED Radio Hour talks on what it takes to change the world for the better.

Dangerous nostalgia: Why romanticizing the 1950s and 1960s won't get us anywhere. From Strong Towns.

One way to tell if you have good neighbors. From Strong Towns.

America loves the idea of family farms. That’s unfortunate. By the great Sarah Taber for New York magazine.

How America's elites lost their grip. By Anand Giridharadas for Time.

Why society’s biggest freeloaders are at the top. No, wealth isn’t created at the top. It is merely devoured there. By Rutger Bregman.

Time to end the multi-generational Ponzi Scheme. By one of my favorite science fiction writers, Kim Stanley Robinson (written in 2009).

Inside the minds of the mega-rich. Discussion on the NPR show 1A with psychologist Michael Kraus, writer Anand Giridharadas, and rich guy Nick Hanauer.

The radical moral implications of luck in human life. Acknowledging the role of luck is the secular equivalent of religious awakening. By Dave Roberts at Vox.

It's time for some queueing theory. From Jason Kottke.

The water-park scandal and two Americas in the raw: Are we a nation of line-cutters, or are we the line? From Esquire, 2012.

Americans can't escape long-disproven body stereotypes. People continue to fall back on harmful assumptions about the link between body shape and personality. From the Atlantic.

American Psychological Association links 'masculinity ideology' to homophobia, misogyny. For the first time in its 127-year history, the APA has issued guidelines to help psychologists specifically address the issues of men and boys.

When YouTube red-pills the love of your life. What it's like to watch, terrified and helpless, as your partner becomes radicalized by hate on the fringe right.

The Rawlsian diagnosis of Donald Trump. Does Trump’s success vindicate or undermine liberal theory?

"And I turned out fine!" by education writer Alfie Kohn. [No, you didn't.]

How mosquitoes changed everything. They slaughtered our ancestors and derailed our history. And they’re not finished with us yet. From the New Yorker.

Much of rural America is doomed to decline. Public policy solutions need to grapple with, not ignore, this economic reality. From High Country News.

What I’ve learned from collecting stories of people whose loved ones were transformed by Fox News. From New York magazine.

The magical thinking of guys who love logic. Why so many men online love to use “logic” to win an argument, and then disappear before they can find out they're wrong.

Science says toxic masculinity — more than alcohol — leads to sexual assault. By Maggie Koerth at FiveThirtyEight.

The bitter origins of the fight over big government. What the battle between Herbert Hoover and FDR can teach us. From the Atlantic.

The decade America terrorized itself. The next 9/11 never came. Instead, we got Sandy Hook, and Las Vegas, and Parkland… By Patrick Blanchfield.

Conservatives have a different definition of "fair." And liberals ignore it at their peril. From the Atlantic.