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Robert H. Frank: Why Single-Payer Health Care Saves Money (NYT)
Robert H. Frank: Why Single-Payer Health Care Saves Money (NYT)
Total costs are lower under single-payer systems for several reasons. One is that administrative costs average only about 2 percent of total expenses under a single-payer program like Medicare, less than one-sixth the corresponding percentage for many private insurers. Single-payer systems also spend virtually nothing on competitive advertising, which can account for more than 15 percent of total expenses for private insurers. The most important source of cost savings under single-payer is that large government entities are able to negotiate much more favorable terms with service providers. In 2012, for example, the average cost of coronary bypass surgery was more than $73,000 in the United States but less than $23,000 in France.
·nytimes.com·
Robert H. Frank: Why Single-Payer Health Care Saves Money (NYT)
Josh Tucker: Running Away In America (Hmm Daily)
Josh Tucker: Running Away In America (Hmm Daily)
The encampment isn’t marked on any maps, but even on Google’s Street View, if you zoom in you will find a human being on a corner nearby standing next to a plastic crate and holding a cardboard sign. If you are here, or in almost any city, it takes effort to avoid seeing this: people doing what they can to survive in a place that is actively hostile to them. Sometimes the divide between who gets to camp as a vacation and who has to do it because they have nowhere else to go is as literal as a wall of spikes.
·hmmdaily.com·
Josh Tucker: Running Away In America (Hmm Daily)
Sam Haselby: Muslims lived in America before Protestantism even existed (Aeon)
Sam Haselby: Muslims lived in America before Protestantism even existed (Aeon)
Muslims thus arrived in America more than a century before the Virginia Company founded the Jamestown colony in 1607. Muslims came to America more than a century before the Puritans founded the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630. Muslims were living in America not only before Protestants, but before Protestantism existed. After Catholicism, Islam was the second monotheistic religion in the Americas. The popular misunderstanding, even among educated people, that Islam and Muslims are recent additions to America tells us important things about how American history has been written. In particular, it reveals how historians have justified and celebrated the emergence of the modern nation-state. One way to valorise the United States of America has been to minimise the heterogeneity and scale – the cosmopolitanism, diversity and mutual co-existence of peoples – in America during the first 300 years of European presence. [...] If there is any religious group who represents the best version of religious freedom in America, it is Muslims such as Zemourri and al-Rahman. They came to America under conditions of genuine oppression, and struggled for the recognition of their religion and the freedom to practise it. In contrast to Anglo-Protestants, Muslims in America have demurred the impulse to tyrannise others, including Native Americans. The most persistent consequence of the Puritan effect has been a continuing commitment to producing a past focused on how the actions, usually courageous and principled, of Anglo-Protestants (almost always in New England and the Chesapeake) led to the United States of America, its government and its institutions. The truth is that the history of America is not primarily an Anglo-Protestant story, any more than the history of the West more broadly. It might not be a straightforward or self-evident matter what, exactly, constitutes ‘the West’. But the more global era in history inaugurated by the European colonisation of the Western hemisphere must be a significant part of it. If the West means, in part, the Western hemisphere or North America, Muslims have been part of its societies from the very beginning. Conflicts over what the American nation is and who belongs to it are perennial. Answers remain open to a range of possibilities and are vitally important. Historically, Muslims are Americans, as originally American as Anglo-Protestants. In many ways, America’s early Muslims are exemplars of the best practices and ideals of American religion. Any statement or suggestion to the contrary, no matter how well-meaning, derives from either intended or inherited chauvinism.
·aeon.co·
Sam Haselby: Muslims lived in America before Protestantism even existed (Aeon)
Natural Sounds (U.S. National Park Service)
Natural Sounds (U.S. National Park Service)
Each national park has a unique soundscape. The natural and cultural sounds in parks awaken a sense of wonder that connects us to the qualities that define these special places. They are part of a web of resources that the National Park Service protects under the Organic Act. From the haunting calls of bugling elk in mountains to the patriotic calls of bugling horns across a historic battlefield, NPS invites you to experience our parks through this world of sound.
·nps.gov·
Natural Sounds (U.S. National Park Service)
Nate Powell: About Face (Popula)
Nate Powell: About Face (Popula)
Death and surrender to power in the clothing of men. [...] All of this—skulls, trucks, flags, guns—form the edges of a commodified, weaponized identity. [...] Those same political and market forces have successfully rebranded the American flag as both consumer product and cultural signifier. Merchandizing and uniformed services have considerably shifted associated symbolism away from a (debatable) neutrality toward a fully masculinized, militarized icon eager to make way for an authoritarian future. The breakdown governing its authorized use asserts that allegiance is above its own laws (and flag code). The incremental push remove color [from the flag] extends far beyond its obvious symbolic value. It’s no stretch to see how emphasis on rigidity and lack of depth helps reframe any spectrum as weakness: vibrancy, nuance, interpretation are signs of vulnerability.
·popula.com·
Nate Powell: About Face (Popula)
Matt Novak: Oregon Was Founded As a Racist Utopia (Gizmodo)
Matt Novak: Oregon Was Founded As a Racist Utopia (Gizmodo)
When Oregon was granted statehood in 1859, it was the only state in the Union admitted with a constitution that forbade black people from living, working, or owning property there. It was illegal for black people even to move to the state until 1926. Oregon’s founding is part of the forgotten history of racism in the American west.
·gizmodo.com·
Matt Novak: Oregon Was Founded As a Racist Utopia (Gizmodo)
Demi Adejuyigbe: The Mortal Threshold of Whiteness
Demi Adejuyigbe: The Mortal Threshold of Whiteness
When I heard about Alton Sterling, I mentally skipped all five stages of grief. It is too regular and I am too used to seeing the cycle of death and despair and inactivity as my black brothers and sisters die in the street. Before I could rouse myself into reading about the case, Philando Castile died too. The video appeared on Twitter. I made the mistake of watching it. I spent hours crying. He did exactly what I’ve been taught to do with the police since I was a child. He complied. He followed orders and reached for his ID, and he was still shot. In the middle of the day, in full view of his girlfriend and child.
·medium.com·
Demi Adejuyigbe: The Mortal Threshold of Whiteness
Here’s What Ta-Nehisi Coates Told Congress About Reparations (NYT)
Here’s What Ta-Nehisi Coates Told Congress About Reparations (NYT)
Many of us would love to be taxed for the things we are solely and individually responsible for. But we are American citizens, and thus bound to a collective enterprise that extends beyond our individual and personal reach. It would seem ridiculous to dispute invocations of the founders, or the Greatest Generation, on the basis of a lack of membership in either group. We recognize our lineage as a generational trust, as inheritance and the real dilemma posed by reparations is just that: a dilemma of inheritance. It’s impossible to imagine America without the inheritance of slavery.
·nytimes.com·
Here’s What Ta-Nehisi Coates Told Congress About Reparations (NYT)
Sarah Miller: Heaven or High Water (Popula)
Sarah Miller: Heaven or High Water (Popula)
Who of us behaves as if we were in immediate trouble? We work, and at the end of the day, if we think at all, all we have time to think about is that we are cowards, or, before the thought comes, to escape it. Raise your hand if you have never hoped you will die before you have to thoroughly disrupt your own life for the lives of those who will live after you are dead. I do not mean to yell at anyone. Every day, I ask myself, what are you willing to do? And sometimes I feel righteous and strong, but mostly what I feel is fear, and a drive towards self preservation. I can laugh at the prettily arranged soap, or the privately-viewed sunsets, or the Jet Skis, because those are not my drugs, but Niu Kitchen, and all that goes with it, will be dragged from my fake wedding-ring-adorned cold dead hands.
·popula.com·
Sarah Miller: Heaven or High Water (Popula)
Ask A Fuck-up: I’m ashamed of being so broke (The Outline)
Ask A Fuck-up: I’m ashamed of being so broke (The Outline)
Try to remember that your financial and emotional anxiety is a necessary aspect of an economic system that excels at both producing and consuming it: more anxiety means more work for less money... which means more anxiety. It’s a beast that eats its own shit. The fact that you “knew what you were signing up for” by going into a sometimes-noble profession does not make any of this your fault, or in any way diminish your right to feel awful about it. There is no job that grants nobility to economic precarity — struggling does not build character, it serves no one save those who profit from our immiseration.
·theoutline.com·
Ask A Fuck-up: I’m ashamed of being so broke (The Outline)
This Is All Donald Trump Has Left (Deadspin)
This Is All Donald Trump Has Left (Deadspin)
His politics, to the extent that they’ve ever been legible, have always been off-the-rack big city tabloid bullshit—crudely racist exterminate the brutes/back the blue authoritarianism in the background and ruthless petty rich person squabbling in the front. His actions since becoming president have been those of a dim, cruel child playacting at being a powerful man—giving orders without quite knowing what they mean or how they might be carried out, taunting enemies, beating up the people he can afford to beat up without having to be called to account for it, lying as needed or just for yuks. He hasn’t changed a thing since graduating from punchline to president. It’s been clear for decades that Trump was both an asshole and a dummy; this is now a problem not just for the odd unlucky cocktail waitress and his staff of cheesy apparatchiks but for literally every person on earth.
·theconcourse.deadspin.com·
This Is All Donald Trump Has Left (Deadspin)
Matt Alt: The United States of Japan (New Yorker)
Matt Alt: The United States of Japan (New Yorker)
Japan made itself rich in its industrial era by selling things like cars, TVs, and VCRs, but it made itself loved in those Lost Decades by selling fantasies. Hello Kitty, comics, anime, and Nintendo games were the first wave—“the big can-opener,” as the game designer Keiichi Yano put it. Now those childhood dreams haven given way to a more sophisticated vision of a Japanese life style, exemplified in the detached cool of Haruki Murakami novels, the defiantly girly pink feminism of kawaii culture, the stripped-down simplicity of Uniqlo, the “unbranded” products of Muji, and the Japanese “life-changing magic” of Marie Kondo. That these Japanese products are so popular, not only in America but in developed nations around the world, may indicate that we’re all groping for meaning in the same post-industrial haze.
·newyorker.com·
Matt Alt: The United States of Japan (New Yorker)
Thread by @RVAwonk on the danger of conspiracy theories
Thread by @RVAwonk on the danger of conspiracy theories
Functioning societies depend on shared, socially-mediated sources of knowledge. It's the glue that holds societies together. Conspiracy theories ask us to give up more & more of our trust in each other, and in our knowledge-generating mechanisms. Conspiracy theories come at a cost. They ask us to give up on our trust in knowledge, in knowledge-producing institutions, and in each other. And so ultimately, they ask us to give up on the fabric of society altogether.
·threadreaderapp.com·
Thread by @RVAwonk on the danger of conspiracy theories
John Metta: I, Racist
John Metta: I, Racist
What follows is the text of a “sermon” that I gave as a “congregational reflection” to an all White audience at the Bethel Congregational United Church of Christ on Sunday, June 28th. The sermon was begun with a reading of The Good Samaritan story, and this wonderful quote from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah. Credit for this speech goes to Chaédria LaBouvier, who’s “Why We Left“ inspired me to speak out about racism; to Robin DiAngelo, who’s “White Fragility“ gave me an understanding of the topic; and to Reni Eddo-Lodge who said “Why I’m no longer talking to white people about race“ long before I had the courage to start doing it again.
·thsppl.com·
John Metta: I, Racist
Sarah Jeong: Meet the campaign connecting affluent techies with progressive candidates around the country (The Verge)
Sarah Jeong: Meet the campaign connecting affluent techies with progressive candidates around the country (The Verge)
Meet the Great Slate — a fundraising campaign that raised nearly a million dollars in 2017, mostly through Twitter, for eight seemingly random Congressional candidates from across the country. The Great Slate has no splashy slogans, no slick logos: just a bare-bones website, a donate button, and a lot of jokes on Twitter.
·theverge.com·
Sarah Jeong: Meet the campaign connecting affluent techies with progressive candidates around the country (The Verge)
Emmet Penney: Lectureporn: The Vulgar Art of Liberal Narcissism (Paste Magazine)
Emmet Penney: Lectureporn: The Vulgar Art of Liberal Narcissism (Paste Magazine)
This belies an important distinction between liberals and conservatives, lectureporn and the ubiquitous tirade in conservative media. It’s the Nietszchean distinction between contempt and hate. You can hate an equal or someone with power over you. So conservatives hate liberals (hence their paranoiac victim narrative), whereas liberals have contempt for conservatives, which means they’re arrogant. Arrogant people are lazy in general and inept when it comes to empathy. If you can’t empathize with people, you can’t understand them. And if you can’t understand their worldview, you can’t hope to either win them over or defeat them. You’ve played yourself. No one cares if you’re right and ineffective. That’s called being an impotent loser. For all the talk about “bleeding heart liberals” who vote with their tears, they’ve proven to be staggeringly emotionally incompetent.
·pastemagazine.com·
Emmet Penney: Lectureporn: The Vulgar Art of Liberal Narcissism (Paste Magazine)
Alex Pareene: Airlines Can Treat You Like Garbage Because They Are an Oligopoly (Fusion)
Alex Pareene: Airlines Can Treat You Like Garbage Because They Are an Oligopoly (Fusion)
This is the end result of decades of corporate consolidation—aided by economists and regulators and politicians from both parties—that has greatly enriched a few at the expense of workers, consumers, and citizens in general. People chose to create a world that allows what happened on that plane to happen. Direct your outrage at the policymakers, economists, and industry cartels that created this future.
·fusion.net·
Alex Pareene: Airlines Can Treat You Like Garbage Because They Are an Oligopoly (Fusion)
Jeremy D. Larson: The Year in Blame (Hazlitt)
Jeremy D. Larson: The Year in Blame (Hazlitt)
We all have the ability to blame others. It comes natural, feels powerful and cathartic, and is essential to a society that seeks to dismantle oppressive systems and those who oversee them. If we can do this, then we can all take part in the radical act of blaming ourselves for this year and the years to come. Give it currency. Rate, like, and subscribe to culpability to help reverse the flow of democracy.
·hazlitt.net·
Jeremy D. Larson: The Year in Blame (Hazlitt)
Moira Weigel: Political correctness: how the right invented a phantom enemy (The Guardian)
Moira Weigel: Political correctness: how the right invented a phantom enemy (The Guardian)
By making fun of professors who spoke in language that most people considered incomprehensible (“The Lesbian Phallus”), wealthy Ivy League graduates could pose as anti-elite. By mocking courses on writers such as Alice Walker and Toni Morrison, they made a racial appeal to white people who felt as if they were losing their country. As the 1990s wore on, because multiculturalism was associated with globalisation – the force that was taking away so many jobs traditionally held by white working-class people – attacking it allowed conservatives to displace responsibility for the hardship that many of their constituents were facing. It was not the slashing of social services, lowered taxes, union busting or outsourcing that was the cause of their problems. It was those foreign “others”.
·theguardian.com·
Moira Weigel: Political correctness: how the right invented a phantom enemy (The Guardian)
Kristi Coulter: Enjoli
Kristi Coulter: Enjoli
Is it really that hard, being a First World woman? Is it really so tough to have the career and the spouse and the pets and the herb garden and the core strengthening and the oh-I-just-woke-up-like-this makeup and the face injections and the Uber driver who might possibly be a rapist? Is it so hard to work ten hours for your rightful 77% of a salary, walk home past a drunk who invites you to suck his cock, and turn on the TV to hear the men who run this country talk about protecting you from abortion regret by forcing you to grow children inside your body?
·medium.com·
Kristi Coulter: Enjoli