In self-promo links: Annorlunda Books is open for submissions right now. Spread the word!
In other links:
My pick for the one link to read if you read only one link this week is unfortunately only available to TPM Prime subscribers. But, I'll link to Josh Marshall's take that the crisis is upon us, anyway, and pull out this one quote:
"The future of the country now rests on the results of the 2018 midterms. That sounds dramatic and hyperbolic. But look at the forces moving into alignment. It’s not. It’s an apt description of what is before us."
I'll also put up this thread, which I found interesting and also a little disturbing:
1. After 9 weeks of teaching the History of American Conservatism in the Age of Trump I've finally come to realize why it's been so stressful.— Seth Cotlar (@SethCotlar) March 22, 2018
It does feel like we're at an inflection point for our country. I hope we do well, but I am very worried about it.
One of the reasons I'm worried is that it seems like the forces that oppose democracy are getting more open about what they're doing.
For instance, Scott Walker (the governor of Wisconsin) lost a court case and was told he needs to hold the special elections he has been avoiding, ostensibly because of cost, but actually because Republicans have been losing them. And so now, the Wisconsin Republicans are trying to change the law. Here's a summary of the events.
And of course, there are the scattered incidents of actual voter fraud, which have mostly turned out to be nothing at all like what Kris Kobach says voter fraud looks like in this country.
Joshua Keating argues that the return of John Bolton and the nomination of Gina Haspel are consequences of our failure to really confront the failures of the George W. Bush years. I think that a lot of our current problems probably trace back to our country's failure to really confront and try to heal from the bad things we've done... going all the way back to slavery and our treatment of Native Americans. But that's more to discuss than I have time for today.
I won't try to link to all the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica reports. You've probably seen them, anyway. But Matt Yglesias' take arguing that Facebook is just bad is maybe something you didn't see. You can also check out John Aravosis' look at the data Facebook had on him.
I don't use Facebook heavily, and when I do, it is almost exclusively for posting or viewing photos of children (or pets) and vacations. I like it as a nice way to keep up with friends all over the world. I dislike it for a lot of reasons, and have tried to tune my feed to exclude what I dislike the most, which is links to political news.
A reporter was asking questions about the Theranos blood tests, and then someone pulled the fire alarm... literally.
Here's an article about one type of gun control that's started to make progress: risk protection orders.
In non-political links:
The JUMPSUIT project is really interesting.
(Also, a reminder: if you like those sorts of link, I share one every weekday on my Annorlunda Books facebook page and Twitter account.)
This is a sort of technical blog post about a gene sequencing error, but it is an interesting story. Also, I never knew that rapamycin was named after Rapa Nui (Easter Island).
I quite like Kacey Musgraves' new song and may get her new album:
This brought back so many memories of my college days in Chicago:
It’s that time— An extreme sport pic.twitter.com/QXSqKrF0eP— Sorcery Hands (@originalsaso) March 22, 2018
Funny:
my husband didn’t even take his last name? https://t.co/BMo6OsgcVv— christine teigen (@chrissyteigen) March 22, 2018
Bunnies!
Bunnies compete for space in a tiny bed (or hat?): https://t.co/tAS5hmZWkg pic.twitter.com/yCzySRHihj— Daily Bunny (@TheDailyBunny) March 23, 2018
That's all for this week. Have a good weekend everyone!
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