Some Links

Starting today I am going to compile the interesting things I have found on the internet into a list of weekly links. Lots of other people do this because, I figure, it is fun and anyways why not. Maybe I’ll do biweekly links, or maybe I’ll say fortnightly links because Engaging the Culture. Either way, here we go. Use the email subscription box (in the page footer) to get these in your inbox.

• Malcolm Gladwell writes about Marijuana (h/t Rooted top articles of January):

A few years ago, the National Academy of Medicine convened a panel of sixteen leading medical experts to analyze the scientific literature on cannabis. The report they prepared, which came out in January of 2017, runs to four hundred and sixty-eight pages. It contains no bombshells or surprises, which perhaps explains why it went largely unnoticed. It simply stated, over and over again, that a drug North Americans have become enthusiastic about remains a mystery.

• More of this please, from TGC, DG, &co. How to Be a Friend at All Times (Even When You Don’t Have Time):

Instead of retreating from friendships when life is busy, or lamenting my lack of picture-perfect friendships, I’m seeking to engage my friends and love them at all times—even when I don’t have time.

• Ross Douthat from NYT recommends these on the Catholic clergy abuse scandal. I am halfway through the first article. It is, appropriately, very long. There is so much I didn’t realize about all this.

• Speaking of articles to read back to back: Trump, the first president in a century with no dog, explains why: ‘I don’t have any time. and, conversely, that Trump spends 9 hours per day in ‘executive time’ which is unstructured free time with no work being done. Square that circle, Mick Mulvaney.

• One more time with back-to-back-ers: I’m a geophysicist. My signature fieldwork uniform is bright pink. and, New Illinois hunting law allows hunters to wear blaze pink.

• This (long) essay sparked joy: The Art of Looking: Eleven Ways of Viewing the Multiple Realities of Our Everyday Wonderland.

• The Art of Jacob van Loon 

• Plastic water bottles have an expiration date not because the water expires but because the plastic “will eventually start leeching chemicals into the water.” (h/t Daniel)

• Graphic, very uncomfortable but very necessary, article from ProPublica: In Immigrant Children’s Shelters, Sexual Assault Cases Are Open and Shut:

Across the country, kids are reporting sexual assaults in immigrant children’s shelters. Alex decided to come forward. He told the shelter two older teens dragged him into a bedroom. There was surveillance video. But Alex’s case wasn’t investigated. His isn’t the only one.

• FiveThirtyEight: 6 Things To Listen For When The 2020 Democrats Talk About Policy. Numbers 4 and 6 especially.

• Quite the concept album.