pbump

Nic Cage put more thought into how he played Ghost Rider than was probably warranted. And/or, is now cursed.

Who needs stained glass when you have 55,000 multicolored LEDs?

David Brooks’ new column suggesting we’re misreading the class divide is quite an attempt to re-aim the gun.

His main point is that the top 20% and bottom 30% of earners are the groups that share the most collective similarities, and the broadest emergent gap in recent decades.

While I appreciate the small virtues of Brooks’ The Parent Trap-style solution to our separate classes (mixing folks up will bring us together!), I’m less taken with his nuanced dismissal of “both sides” of the political debate. Republicans are wrong that Democrats lack moral fiber, he notes, while Dems are “distracted” by a focus on the top 1%. Not wrong, mind you. Distracted.

Imagine you have a length of elastic, with three pieces of paper tied to it. Two near either end, one about a third of the way along. As you pull the elastic, the pieces of paper get farther and farther apart. This is overly simple, but it’s a way to think about what’s happening with our society: the 1% (and smaller), which Brooks lumps in with another 29%, are stretching the spectrum, which is pulling apart everyone else. What Brooks cites as the 20% reads to me like what used to be the upper middle class.

Then there’s the whole issue that Matt Yglesias notes: the data Brooks uses to build his straw man almost exclusively deals with white people. Who - spoiler! - will soon not be in the majority, so focusing on them obviously introduces errors. Include people of color, and the clear dichotomy of the 20% / 30% undoubtedly grows much weaker, if it doesn’t fall apart entirely.

Income inequality isn’t the only problem, but classism and class insularity are not nearly as big a problem. Let me speak from experience: when a poor kid and a rich kid go to serve the community together, they may understand each other better, but they don’t hang out together for the rest of their lives. There’s value in it - but no one is switching parents.

Ozone pollution from North America reduces European wheat yields by 1.2 million tons a year.

The severe, unprecedented drought in Texas doesn’t stop at the Mexican border.

A five year-old interprets corporate logos.

My wife, re-watching the Obama singing video, just said “Shh!” and hit me when I started to sing along.

This baby weighed two pounds, two ounces more than I did when I was born.

It is much faster to grow smaller than to grow bigger.

This is a really interesting take on how Republican voters feel about the Keystone pipeline.