Linkspam #6

Top Links

It’s a Crisis of Civilization in Mexico by José de Córdoba at the Wall Street Journal:

In Huitzuco, a town in the lawless state of Guerrero, Mario Vergara, a slightly built, voluble man nicknamed the Atomic Ant, pores over medical books, training himself to recognize bones of the human skeleton. In six years of searching for his brother, a taxi driver kidnapped in 2012, Mr. Vergara and his crew have dug up some 60 clandestine graves and found the remains of some 200 people, he said.

Mr. Vergara believes he too will be disappeared by criminals who don’t want their sins unearthed. He has made a cast of his teeth so searchers will find it easier to identify him when he’s gone.

How Did Larry Nasser Deceive So Many for So Long? by Kerry Howley at The Cut

Although, much later, the only story line American media would be able to process was one of a “survivor” who had “found her voice” and was ready to “take on” her abuser in open court, it did not appear to be a woman at all who had persuaded those closest to this story, including most of the “survivors,” to come forward. It was, rather, a set of external hard drives — tossed to the curb in the trash in the days after Denhollander went public, on a day when the garbage crew was behind schedule, and recovered by a police officer. Had the crew been on time, had the officer been late, had the warrant come through a day after Nassar decided to dump his digital history on the street, he might still have the support of most of the people he abused.

Framed Up by Hendrik Hertzberg at The New Yorker:

Here’s a little thought experiment, inspired by Dahl’s reflections. Imagine, if you can, that African-Americans were represented “fairly” in the Senate. They would then have twelve senators instead of, at present, zero, since black folk make up twelve per cent of the population. Now imagine that the descendants of slaves were afforded the compensatory treatment to which the Constitution entitles the residents of small states. Suppose, in other words, that African-Americans had as many senators to represent them as the Constitution allots to the twelve per cent of Americans who live in the least populous states. There would be forty-four black senators. How’s that for affirmative action?

“I Don’t Want To Shoot You, Brother” by Joe Sexton at ProPublica:

“It’s the Blue Lives Matter More theory of policing,” he said. “When in doubt, shoot. If you can shoot, you should shoot. If you have the choice of waiting that one second to see if you could protect the citizen’s life and put your own life at risk, you must take the citizen’s life.”

The Fallout by Lacy M Johnson at Guernica:

We are all connected. The rivers and streams and tiny creeks wind through the city and go on winding. They twist and bend and run backward on themselves, changing course and direction a thousand times over the ages. The water swells and leaves its banks with the seasons, swells into the streets we build, and our backyards and gardens, into the places we never think of because we do not want to see them: our landfills, our factories, our toxic dumps, all of the remote places we send our worst creations. There is no fence to keep it all out. The disaster that approaches is ourselves.

Other Favorites

Science

Is Sunscreen the New Margarine? by Rowan Jacobsen at Outside Online - from the lede: “Current guidelines for sun exposure are unhealthy and unscientific, controversial new research suggests—and quite possibly even racist. How did we get it so wrong?”

Harvard and the Making of the Unabomber by Alston Chase at the Atlantic - how the weaponization of psychology helped create a terrorist

Open Letter to Psychology Today by Margena Carter at PitchEngine - Psychology Today has been around for over 50 years, and they’ve only ever had three people of color on their cover.

Bruno Latour, the Post-Truth Philosopher, Mounts a Defense of Science by Ava Kofman at the New York Times Magazine

Parachute use to prevent death and major trauma when jumping from aircraft: randomized controlled trial by Yeh et al in BMJ (formerly British Medical Journal)

Technology

The Digital Maginot Line by Renee DiResta at RibbonFarm

The Disinformation Report by New Knowledge

The Data Scientist Tracking America’s White Supremacists by Matthew Gault at MotherBoard

Free as in … ? by Luis Villa at their personal blog - how the capability approach to freedom might apply to free software

Supporting Int 1696-2017 for Source Code Transparency in New York City by Sumana Harihareswara

Why Pinterest is Better Than Facebook at Stopping Fake News by Rebecca Watson at Skepchick

Mutmut by Ned Batchelder at his personal blog - Ned reviews a mutation testing library written in Python

Protecting Basecamp from breached passwords by Jeremy Daer at Signal v Noise

History

How ‘Strange Fruit’ Killed Billie Holiday by Brandon Weber at The Progressive

How the Willie Horton Ad Played on Racism and Fear by Erin Blakemore at History.com

The Homer We Want by Bill Beck at Eidolon - a history of misquotation

Carrie Ann Lucas Dies At Age 47. You Probably Haven’t Heard Of Her And That’s A Problem by Sarah Kim at Forbes

Politics

The Unsatisfying Truth About Hateful Online Rhetoric And Violence by Joseph Bernstein at BuzzFeed News

‘I Get Called a Russian Bot 50 Times a Day’ by Shawn Musgrave at Politico

Progressive prosecutors are not ‘cops.’ They are needed to enact criminal justice reform by Denise Oliver Velez at DailyKos

Affordable Housing Is Disappearing. These Mobile Home Residents Are Fighting to Protect Theirs by Emma Whitford at Time

Rep. Rashida Tlaib cursing got 5 times more coverage on cable news than Rep. Steve King embracing white supremacy by Lis Power, Rob Savillo and Steve Morris at Media Matters for America

The Most Sobering Thing about the Racial Dot Map by Libby Anne at Love, Joy, Feminism

is “toxic femininity” a thing? by Katie Anthony at their personal blog

The Justice System Runs On Testimonial, ‘He-Said She-Said’ Evidence by Michele Sharpe at the Establishment

The Class Ceiling: The ‘Hidden Mechanisms’ That Help Those Born Rich to Excel in Elite Jobs by Joe Pinsker at The Atlantic

Arts & Pop Culture

You Probably Owe “Jennifer’s Body” An Apology by Louis Peitzman at Buzzfeed News

What White, Western Audiences Don’t Understand About Marie Kondo’s ‘Tidying Up’ by Margaret Dilloway at HuffPost

Depression and Duty in Captain America: The Winter Soldier by Ryan Roch at Lewton Bus

Is ‘Captain Marvel’ military propaganda? by Gavia Baker-Whitelaw at the Daily Dot  (if you can’t tell, I’m going through a Marvel phase)

Fan Fiction vs Fanfiction by Flourish Klink at Medium

Misc

Quiet Hands by Julia Bascom at Just Stimming

Big Charity as Big Capital by Phil at All That Is Solid

Having Sex When Your Partner Is The Same Gender, But A Different Size by Lauren Strapagiel at BuzzFeed News

I Found the Best Burger Place in America. And Then I Killed It. by Kevin Alexander at Thrillist

She Thought She Was In Bed With Her Boyfriend, Until She Saw His Face by David Mack at BuzzFeed News

On Consensus and Humming in the IETF by P. Resnick

After Two White Colorado Women Unearthed The History Of Their Slave-Owning Ancestors, They Turned To Reparations by Ann Marie Awad at Colorado Public Radio

The Philosopher Redefining Equality by Nathan Heller at the New Yorker - a profile of Elizabeth Anderson (”one of the two greatest living philosophers” according to my philosophy professor friend)

The numbers behind workplace discrimination by Maryam Jameel, Leslie Shapiro and Joe Yerardi at the Washington Post

Rent and reputation by Siderea at their personal blog