Links, Tuesday 28th April

I'm leaving for Afrika Burn later this morning, so this will be the last post for another week or so...

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Heh. Furious 7 is basically a live-action remake of Cars

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Huh. I know its a day late, but here's the actual history of the use of "420" as a code for cannabis

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You know, I'm sure foreigners living in South Africa *are* disproportionately represented amongst drug dealers. When selling an internationally traded product, it helps to have international connections, whether those products are electronic goods or mind altering substances. Many foreigners also aren't granted permission to work, and so have to rely on black market sources of income.

Anyway, what's wrong with being a drug dealer? Most drug dealers are genuinely trying to help their customers get access to a quality product, often under very difficult conditions and at some risk to themselves. People want their product, and they are supplying it. I'd be much more scathing about alcohol firms in this country, who have been exploiting South Africans for generations and more-or-less exemplify the term "white monopoly capital". Alcohol also contributes far more to violence and public health problems than any illegal drugs do.

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Inheritance taxes seem to me like a very silly idea. 1) Even when they work well, they are extremely arbitrary - the effective rate a given estate will pay will basically depend how often its inheritors die. 2) There are many ways around them and, because it's a huge amount of money levied for one specific event, a lot of effort can be concentrated into avoidance and evasion. I'm also not sure why intragenerational concentrations of wealth should be considered blameless relative to intergenerational ones. Rather just levy an annual tax on wealth, at a rate that will steadily erode large fortunes, unless they are invested extremely (and consistently) wisely.

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Now this I did not know. Early in his career, Hendrik Verwoed was a highly respected academic and actually something of a liberal. He argued that "There are no biological differences among the big race groups". It was only later that he was drawn into the orbit of Afrikaner nationalism and became the terrible human being that we all know from the history books.

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This is so fucked up I cannot even. Indian couple come to the UK for a holiday for *10 days* end up getting detained for *2 months*. Husband dies in detention (no doubt of a highly preventable illness), wife still not allowed to leave.

We can talk about immigration reform in abstract terms all we like, but we shouldn't lose sight of the basic fact that the people who have designed and administer this system lack even the faintest modicum of human decency. Until they are removed from office and the institutions they have constructed are laid to waste, there will not be justice.

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"But sex work has another gloss. It’s said that these people don’t actually want their rights; the management who will profit from the industry is just whipping them up.

But in the US the very organisations that represent either the porn industry or strip club industry are advancing positions that are the opposite of what the [sex worker rights movement] is advancing. So it just doesn't hold up. The businesses are not advocating for decriminalisation, and the majority of sex workers are. They are advocating for a business model that allows them to continue to have dominance over the industry, which is legalisation, which is what keeps them in business." Red Pepper

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"In 2014, at least 40,000 Syrians crossed the Mediterranean to seek asylum in European countries via Italy. But approximately 35,000 Eritreans also made the voyage... Young Eritreans are fleeing mandatory and indefinite military conscription and imprisonment and torture for political organizing; there are also reports of growing famine. Yet in sharp contrast to the coverage of Syrian refugees, the Western English-language media has barely registered the escalating Eritrean refugee crisis." Africa is a Country

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This relates to some of what I said the other day, how as I white South African, I feel more included in the national project than migrants from elsewhere in Africa. This is despite my status as an oppressor and, frankly, the differences in culture and lifestyle that separate me from most other South Africans. Could it be that it is *precisely* my status as an oppressor that connects me to the national project?

"South Africans may not always like each other across so-called racial lines, but they have a kinship that is based on their connection to the apartheid project. Outsiders – those who didn't go through the torture of the regime – are juxtaposed against insiders. In other words foreigners are foreign precisely because they can not understand the pain of apartheid, because most South Africans now claim to have been victims of the system. Whether white or black, the trauma of living through apartheid is seen as such a defining experience that it becomes exclusionary; it has made a nation of us."

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This is totally on point, drawing the connection between the explicit, street-level violence of xenophobic attacks and the violence meted out more insidiously in the form of visa regulations and border controls. It's the same ideology, just different methods, and the South African government is complicit.

"I was here during the last “hunting season”. The difference, this time, is the emergence of the rudiments of an “ideology”. We now have the semblance of a discourse aimed at justifying the atrocities"

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Women understand #wrongtowork

"The way women respond to price changes is much closer to the ideal of economic rationality. In particular, women tend to drop out of the labor force when it no longer makes “economic” sense for them to be working. Men, for reasons that are not difficult to imagine, tend to keep on working regardless of how the numbers come out—as a matter of principle, one is inclined to suggest."

From "Economics Without Illusions: Debunking the Myths of Modern Capitalism", by Joseph Heath

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"It is also important to note that the Swedish welfare state has achieved greater equality of income than was ever achieved under Soviet communism. That’s worth repeating for emphasis: Swedish capitalism is more egalitarian than Soviet communism." ibid

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Reducing the length of copyright protection is obviously a good policy, people. Maybe 14 years after publication is too short, but 70 years *after the author's death* is far, far too long.

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"When we have statistics on homeless youth, that forty percent of homeless youth are queer, and we know that homeless youth are particularly vulnerable to trading sex for what they need to survive, and don’t have a lot of control. That’s not a problem of scary men, that’s a problem of: Where else are these kids supposed to sleep? What else are they supposed to do? It’s so much more appealing to say that it’s men’s demand for young people to have sex with, rather than to look closer to home: Why don’t you want that queer youth shelter in your neighborhood? Or: why is our mayor prioritizing this level of mass surveillance in New York, rather than creating shelter beds for young people who are very vulnerable?" The Awl

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"Remember all those cold war movies where nuclear missile crews are frantically dialing in the secret codes sent by the White House to launch nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles? Well, for two decades, all the Minuteman nuclear missiles in the US used the same eight-digit numeric passcode to enable their warheads: 00000000." Ars Technica

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I mean, this seems ridiculous (and possibly harmful to the actual kids concerned), but it's an obvious consequence of a genuine shortage. If you don't want parents to drill their kids to get into quality schools, build more quality schools (and maybe make sure there are paths to success other than attending the right schools.

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Good little review of the problems with housing policy in the UK. Short version: planning regulations are far too restrictive, and are most restrictive in areas with highest demand for housing (i.e. London and the Southeast). This is largely because vested interests have far too much power to limit the construction of new housing, including by influencing the regulatory climate.

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Ordinary Europeans are generally much nicer people than you'd think based on the sorts of leaders they elect, and the policies instituted by those leaders.

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Obviously I got the wrong genes...

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There's quite a lot of the author's own interpretation going into this reading. What do people think?

"If “The Second Sex” can’t be squared with the life, we are reduced to the final, depressing theory that the pact [between Beauvoir and Sartre] was just the traditional sexist arrangement—in which the man sleeps around and the woman nobly “accepts” the situation—on philosophical stilts. Sartre was the classic womanizer, and Beauvoir was the classic enabler."

Links, Tuesday 21st April

OK, this woman had two jobs: as a sex worker and as a central banker (in the austerity-promoting Netherlands, no less). In the first job, she hurt no-one, unless they specifically asked to be hurt. In contrast, central bankers in Europe have, over the last few years, wiped out trillions of euros in lost economic potential, and consigned millions to poverty. And yet it is the *first* job that is described as “indecent behaviour”. What standard of "decency" are we applying here, anyway?

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Everyone eligible to vote in the UK! Could you please take a few minutes of your time to do this, and circulate it widely in your networks? It's a clever little tool the ECP have made that makes it very easy to email your candidates for the upcoming parliamentary election about sex workers' rights. It literally will only take a few minutes, and it could make a huge difference if enough people do it!

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Incredible levels of stupidity and inhumanity on display by Scottish police. Shutting down safe working venues! Discouraging venues from stocking condoms! They apparently don't give a shit that sex workers are harmed by this.

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Good, thoughtful piece on polyamory and mental illness

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"The restaurants that you see now are the remnant of the Chinese population that used to fill the US-Mexico borderlands. Why? Because of the Chinese Exclusion Act. The 1882 law banned people from China from entering the US. So tens of thousands went to Cuba, South America and to Mexico. Many settled along the Mexican border, becoming grocers, merchants and restaurant owners. Others managed to cross into the US. “The Chinese invented undocumented immigration from Mexico,” Romero says. “Smuggling with false papers, in boats and in trains, the infrastructure for that was all invented by the Chinese.”" PRI

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This is a great idea 

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UK politics is a lot like a shitty high school drama at the moment...

Tories: "SNP and Labour are, like, totally in love!"
Labour: "Ewww SNP, gross!"
SNP: "Why you no love me, Labour? *sheds single tear*"

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Talk by David Kramer about South African styles of music derived from Khoisan traditions, with performances by Hannes Coetzee

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"Why is it that projects like DAN’s—projects aimed at democratizing society—are so often perceived as idle dreams that melt away as soon as they encounter hard material reality? In our case, at least, it had nothing to do with inefficiency: police chiefs across the country had called us the best organized force they’d ever had to deal with. It seems to me that the reality effect (if one may call it that) comes rather from the fact that radical projects tend to founder—or at least become endlessly difficult—the moment they enter into the world of large, heavy objects: buildings, cars, tractors, boats, industrial machinery. This in turn is not because these objects are somehow intrinsically difficult to administer democratically—history is full of communities that successfully engage in the democratic administration of common resources—it’s because, like the DAN car, they are surrounded by endless government regulation, and are effectively impossible to hide from the government’s armed representatives."

- Graeber

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"This toddler-level technique involves spreading the cards out on a table, swishing them around with your hands, and then gathering them up. Smooshing is used in poker tournaments and in baccarat games in Monte Carlo, but no one actually knows how long you need to smoosh a deck to randomize it." Quanta

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I think the more interesting question is why black South Africans aren't attacking *South African* whites. I mean, we've actually done some horrendous shit, and continue to hugely benefit from that. Foreigners who are currently alive, of whatever race (bar a few managers of multinational corporations), just haven't played as much part in the oppression of black South Africans. Not to say that I'm advocating violence against anyone, just that I'd understand anti-white violence a bit more easily. And yet not once have I ever felt threatened in South Africa because of my ethnicity. I can't even recall an instance where someone has been rude to me in a way that I would attribute to my white South African-ness.

[In case you're wondering, I am being faux naive here. I get that racial hierarchies in South Africa have been enforced for so long that they now appear "natural", whereas the appearance of relatively prosperous black foreigners is new. But still.]

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"Vexed" is the correct word here. When it comes to tackling Boko Haram, there's tendency to think that the ends justify the means. But I dunno, it leaves a very sour taste in the mouth.

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Very cool video of the surface of the sun

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How Americans were convinced to start using shopping trolleys...

"Goldman eventually had to hire attractive models to walk around the store pushing the carts to make shopping carts seem like an acceptable or even fashionable item to use."

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“We are living with 71 years of jetlag and it’s unsustainable.” Guardian

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"When stalking web-building spiders, Portias try to make different patterns of vibrations in the web that aggressively mimic the struggle of a trapped insect or the courtship signals of a male spider, repeating any pattern that induces the intended prey to move towards the Portia. Portia fimbriata has been observed to perform vibratory behavior for three days until the victim decided to investigate. They time invasions of webs to coincide with light breezes that blur the vibrations their approach causes in the target's web; and they back off if the intended victim responds belligerently. Portias that retreat may approach along an overhanging twig or rock, descend down a silk thread and kill the prey. Other jumping spiders take detours, but Portia is unusual in its readiness to use long detours that break visual contact." Wikipedia

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Fighting fatphobia

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"But perhaps boldest of all was a 1954 plan by Geoffrey Jellico, Ove Arup and Edward Mills to remake the whole of Soho as a concrete landscape of sunken roads, plazas and office towers. It would have involved knocking down much of Soho, and building a raised concrete platform, with 24-storey pinwheel towers, gardens and glass-bottomed canals over the streets beneath." Guardian

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Fun fact: Snoop Dogg and Cameron Diaz went to high school together, and he probably sold her weed at some point.

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Of course, it wasn't only UK policy, but it was a deliberate decision on the part of EU governments to cease search-and-rescue operations in the Mediterranean, on the full understanding that people would die.

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"Military operations" against Mediterranean people smugglers? What are these people actually thinking? Suppose that such a mission could even be successful on its own terms, and they manage to kill/arrest smugglers, and destroy their ships... then refugees are simply going to end up in the hands of less experienced smugglers, using less seaworthy ships. The *only* solution to this problem is to give refugees a safe and legal route to the places they want to be.

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Incredible levels of police brutality in South Africa. This remains an issue that isn't being taken anywhere near seriously enough.

"However, the records still reveal that 2 681 people died in police custody over the 10-year period. The cases indicate that, even though many suspects died in custody from apparently natural causes, many died due to assault. Of those who died in custody, records state nine were beaten to death with truncheons, nightsticks or riot batons."

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Wowzers, someone (it's not clear yet who) has designed a bot that is able to parse the semantic content of tweets and execute very lucrative trades on the basis of this information *within seconds*. Putting aside issues about the implications for financial markets, this is quite impressive just as  an AI exploit.

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TW: Sexual abuse, sexual harassment, rape, child abuse

Answers to the question: "Women of Reddit, when did you first notice that men were looking at you in a sexual way? How old were you and how did it make you feel?"

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"All of Europe has a responsibility to stop people from drowning. It’s partly due to their actions in Africa that people have had to leave their homes. Italy is doing so much to help save refugees and it needs support. Countries such as Britain, France, Belgium and Germany think they are far away and not responsible, but they all took part in colonising Africa. Nato took part in the war in Libya. They’re all part of the problem." Guardian

Links, Friday 17th April

"I'd like to apologise for the way I've been acting. Work has been very stressful." Dorkly

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No way.

“Natural selection in addition to good environmental conditions may help explain why the Dutch are so tall,” Guardian

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This is actually a very useful and systematic overview of the current weaknesses in the global economy. I think this is the crucial sentence:

"But the problem ... is that the industrialised world has a much greater capacity to produce things than an interest in buying things. The world is stuck with too little demand." Economist

It's only raised indirectly here, but this could also be framed as a problem with inequality: you basically need to get more money into the hands of poor people who would love to consume the output of all that excess capacity. You could do that by letting them migrate to rich countries, by investing in productive infrastructure in poor countries, by just handing cash from rich countries to people in poor countries, etc.

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Guys, check it out. They've gotten Robb Stark (!) to play Prince Charming in the Cinderella movie. Is he really the male lead you want in a royal love story? (Also, in what medieval kingdom do poor servant girls get to ride around on horseback?)

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Veganism + eating oysters is obviously the correct answer, and I only decline to eat them myself due to unwarranted squeamishness.

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"many pickpockets also operate near signs warning us to beware of pickpockets. The irony is that when people read the signs, they check their pockets or bag, thus alerting the lurking pickpocket to where their valuables are." Financial Times

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This statement very precisely captures something I've been mulling over since the beginning of the Rhodes debate at UCT. I think people who witnessed the dying days of apartheid (I include myself in this, although I was young) have internalised deep fears about inter-racial "conflict". Our instinctive fear is that any expression of anger - however justified - will lead us again down the path to violence. So, in the older generations, people of colour tone down their anger, and we whites shy away from hearing it. When I was at UCT, there was undoubtedly racial tension, but I feel that it mostly lived under the surface. We seldom called it by it's name, or really probed too deeply. I think the younger generation - including people who are now students at UCT - are much more willing to have robust debate.

"We have lived with choreographed unity for long enough to know that we now prefer acrimonious and robust disharmony. We see reconciliation as part of a narrative that was constructed on the basis of anxieties that are no longer relevant: Democracy has taught us that raised voices don’t have to lead to war."

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Racist anti-immigration sentiment: Britain has seen it all before.

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 I don't agree with every point, but this is interesting:

"social status, which was once hierarchical and zero-sum, has become more fragmented, pluralistic and subjective. The relationship between relative income and relative status, which used to be straightforward, has gotten much more complex." NY Times

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Times have changed

“[In 1951] Members of the ANC (then a purely African organisation) emerged from a rally to find police harassing Indian hawkers. The ANC supporters spontaneously formed a cordon around the hawkers, protecting them from the police”. Daily Maverick

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Fascinating little piece of history, though obviously not without its troubling aspects. Guardian

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Damn, this is good. Highly recommended

"The conversation about ‘transformation’ – which seldom deals with the fact that what we actually need to confront is deracialisation and decolonisation – has been often itself been monopolised by white staff. In some instances, even within the conversation about ‘transformation’, there is an astonishing lack of basic awareness about what racism is." Daily Maverick

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I see a variant of this argument coming up repeatedly from people on the "hard left": basically that Russian actions in Ukraine are "understandable", because Ukraine is in Russia's backyard, it's going to protect what it perceives as its vital geostrategic interests and so on. Is it just me, or is this argument bullshit? I mean, the US was arguably pursuing what it saw as its vital geostrategic interests (i.e. reliable supply of cheap oil on the world market) when it invaded Iraq, and we thought the appropriate response was criticism and opposition, no? Like, when Western governments use force to reverse the political decisions of people in foreign countries, that's worth criticising, but when Russia does it... that's just something that's gonna happen? Jacobin (interview with Noam Chomsky)

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I don't have any insightful commentary to add about all this, just :( :( :(

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"Here’s why the auto industry, the insurance industry and the officials they lobby want helmet laws. First, forcing people to wear helmets shifts responsibilities onto cyclists and absolves governments from having to build better cycling infrastructure and drivers from having to obey traffic laws.... Second, helmet laws discourage people from using bicycles for everyday transportation by making it inconvenient, and by making it seem more dangerous than it really is." Washington Post

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 “How do you become an anarchist? Well, it’s not easy. You can’t rearrange the whole fabric of western civilisation just like that. For a start, it’s against the law. So you’ll need to practice. To begin with, try breaking a few little laws: ride your bike home at night with no lights on; walk on the grass. Then, as you get more confident, move on to bigger things: commit a public nuisance; disturb the Queen’s peace. Keep practising – and before long, you’ll be robbing banks and overthrowing governments.” Guardian

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Nice quote from David Graeber's latest book:

"Humans being the social creatures that they are, birth and death are never mere biological events. It normally takes a great deal of work to turn a newborn baby into a person—someone with a name and social relationships (mother, father …) and a home, towards whom others have responsibilities, who can someday be expected to have responsibilities to them as well. Usually, much of this work is done through ritual... In most existing societies at this point in history, those rituals may or may not be carried out, but it is precisely paperwork, rather than any other form of ritual, that is socially efficacious in this way, that actually effects the change."

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Very strange review in parts, but this is a good bit:

"Unfortunately, voting sunders beliefs from consequences. The war will happen or not depending not on how I vote but on how others vote. I don’t get to choose the war but I do get to choose my beliefs and if I choose the former, I can bask in the warm glow of patriotism and righteousness... Since the only difference in consequence is the warm glow, I have little incentive not to go with the glow and vote irrationally but patriotically and righteously in favor of war... In short, politics reduces the price of irrationality so people buy more, and that is dangerous."

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"Ronson’s no 4chan troll, but So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed reads very much like a defense of unfairly victimized white men and privileged white women." Buzzfeed

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Europeans started to have pale skin between around 8000 and 5000 years ago

Links, Monday 6th April

"Anti-trafficking policies do a great disservice to migrating people, especially the most vulnerable. By diverting our attention away from the practices of nation-states and employers, they channel our energies to support a law-and-order agenda of ‘getting tough’ with ‘traffickers.’ In this way, anti-trafficking measures are ideological: they render the plethora of immigration and border controls as unproblematic and place them outside of the bounds of politics. The reasons why it is increasingly difficult and dangerous for people to move safely or live securely in new places are brushed aside while nation states rush to criminalise ‘traffickers’ and (largely) deport ‘victims of trafficking.’" Open Democracy

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"Psychedelic drugs like MDMA and magic mushrooms are as safe as riding a bike or playing soccer, and bans against them are “inconsistent with human rights”" Newsweek

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“We had to write ‘ordinary posts’, about making cakes or music tracks we liked, but then every now and then throw in a political post about how the Kiev government is fascist, or that sort of thing,” Guardian

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If you're interested in technical and regulatory issues around condoms, then this is the long-form piece for you (also some good stuff about the relationship between how good they feel and getting people to use the things reliably)

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"There has never been a verifiable reported instance of a trans person harassing a cisgender person, nor have there been any confirmed reports of male predators 'pretending' to be transgender to gain access to women's spaces and commit crimes against them." MIC

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"Every day, the bedside cardiac monitors threw off some 187 audible alerts. No, not 187 audible alerts for all the beds in the five ICUs; 187 alerts were generated by the monitors in each patient’s room, an average of one alarm buzzing or beeping by the bedside every eight minutes. Every day, there were about 15,000 alarms across all the ICU beds. For the entire month, there were 381,560 alarms across the five ICUs. Remember, this is from just one of about a half-dozen systems connected to the patients, each tossing off its own alerts and alarms. And those are just the audible ones." Medium

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I'm not going to comment on the costs or benefits on this particular proposal, but I think it is significant that the major institutional approach to the availability of online pornography in the UK is still censorship rather than better sex education. Kids acquire harmful ideas about sex through a variety of channels - pornography is only one of these, and I sincerely doubt it is the worst. This is the basic issue that needs to be addressed. The first time kids see porn ought to be in a classroom, under the guidance and supervision of a trained instructor. Any effort to shut it out will inevitably fail, not least because kids eventually turn 18. Guardian

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This is great. Reading this, it strikes me that we could all stand to be better educated about the basics of neurochemistry, and how psychoactive drugs actually alter consciousness.

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On that note... a drug has been developed that has similar anxiety-reducing properties to alcohol, but without the negative side-effects (aggression, loss of coordination, etc). Alcohol affects a wide variety of GABA receptors, whereas pagoclone is much more specific to the receptor type that produces the desired effect. There is also an antidote, so it's effects can be eliminated within minutes. Wouldn't we all like to see this drug brought to market? Wikipedia

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"Take away anything to react to and people stop reacting." iO9

[Some disturbing discussion of child abuse]

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Obvious, but worth repeating

"In places [and times] where women have very few economic opportunities, they can't afford to be too choosy about marriage partners. Where women are more empowered, they become choosier. At times, this greater choosiness leaves them with less money than they would otherwise have. But that's the point. It's precisely because women are more empowered that they can afford to trade off economic security for other benefits." Vox

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Very important information about blood diamonds in Angola and the failure of the Kimberley process

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"a story in which a privileged elite uses its political power (albeit through the planning system) to create economic rents for the few fits Mr Piketty's argument to a tee. Well-off homeowners may for the moment be more responsible for rising wealth inequality than top-hatted capitalists or famous hedge-fund managers. But their NIMBYism is a very Piketty-like phenomenon." Economist

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A reminder that Rhodes made his wealth primarily by wielding state coercion to extract cheap labour from colonised people

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"Just when nation-states have made it next to impossible to legally live and work in their territories as rights-bearing persons, anti-trafficking measures have been adopted into national laws. Tales of ‘trafficking’ (or ‘smuggling’), which have led to calls for heightened state intervention at the border and more punitive measures for traffickers and/or smugglers, do the crucial work of legitimising further controls on global human mobility, all in the name of ‘helping’ victims of trafficking. By ideologically filtering their efforts through the politics of rescue, anti-trafficking campaigns provide a crucial veneer of humanitarianism to the exploitative and repressive practices of states and employers." Open Democracy

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Quite a few of these look really good, and I've never been...

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"If the United States were trying to build a broad anti-Chinese coalition in the Pacific Rim, it would be offering generous terms to our Asian partners to entice them into a deal. In practice, we seem to be doing the opposite — taking advantage of Pacific Rim fears of China to coerce other countries into adopting policies that are friendly to big American companies." Vox

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I'm gonna link to this directly because it's so good:

"It’s not clear that a country’s affection for the US will increase after being required to rewrite its patent and copyright law every few years on a model dictated by, respectively, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America and the Recording Industry Association of America. The US itself does not offer much liberalisation. It is highly unlikely to substantially dismantle its agricultural subsidy and protection regime to allow Australian and New Zealand farmers abundant access to its dairy market or stop its rice subsidies disadvantaging Vietnamese rice exports in world markets. America’s trading partners are thus on a permanent treadmill of enforced policy change in order to keep their trade access to the US." FT

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“The only interesting question is how much GDP has been lost as a result of austerity” Independent

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Gosh, the government agents who shut down the Silk Road are hugely corrupt? What a surprise!

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"In later years, outsiders would listen incredulously to the wooden pronouncements of the Soviet leadership and ask whether they could possibly be sincere. Kotkin’s answer is yes. Unlike the uneducated cynic of Trotsky’s imagination, the real Stalin justified each and every decision using ideological language, both in public and in private. It is a mistake not to take this language seriously, for it proves an excellent guide to his thinking. More often than not, he did exactly what he said he would do." Atlantic

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Guys, so many veggie places in Cape Town that I haven't even tried! News24

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"Which brings us to the second benefit of ending America’s cold war with Iran: It could empower the Iranian people vis-à-vis their repressive state. American hawks, addled by the mythology they have created around Ronald Reagan, seem to think that the more hostile America’s relationship with Iran’s regime becomes, the better the United States can promote Iranian democracy. But the truth is closer to the reverse. The best thing Reagan ever did for the people of Eastern Europe and the U.S.S.R. was to embrace Mikhail Gorbachev." Atlantic

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A list of resources analysing the Garissa attack

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This sounds about right to me. Yes, comedians need to be given the space to express themselves and explore ideas... but they also need the good grace to accept when they've been called out, and to work on doing better. Indiewire

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Yes

"Being anti-racist doesn’t mean that you are never racist, it means that you recognize and battle racism in yourself as hard as you battle it in others." Medium

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I'm pretty much in agreement with the Economist on this one: land needs to be taxed more effectively, and planning authority must be vested in political entities larger than neighbourhoods.

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"Whether today’s slow-growth activism owes more to the racist tradition of restrictive covenants, to concerns about property values, to a knee-jerk resistance to change, to misguided environmental activism, or to worries about aesthetics and traffic, is hard to say. All these things are comfortably couched in the rhetoric of “preserving neighborhood character." Salon