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fridayfinds

Vanishing: More Than 1 in 4 Birds Has Disappeared in the Last 50 Years (The Cornell Lab of Ornithology's All About Birds)

The study quantifies for the first time the total decline in bird populations in the continental U.S. and Canada, a loss of 2.9 billion breeding adult birds—with devastating losses among birds in every biome. Rosenberg, who leads joint research initiatives by the Cornell Lab and American Bird Conservancy, says these study results transcend the world of birds.

“These bird losses are a strong signal that our human-altered landscapes are losing their ability to support birdlife,” he said. “And that is an indicator of a coming collapse of the overall environment.”

And

Not all the news out of this analysis is dire. Some groups of birds are doing well, and for good reason—governments and societies have invested in saving them.

What's more human than causing a devastating mess everywhere and having to clean it up afterwards?

The Christian Right Is Helping Drive Liberals Away From Religion (FiveThirtyEight)

...[P]rominent political scientists have concluded that politics is a driving factor behind the rise of the religiously unaffiliated.

I have one of many untested and pattern-matched hypotheses that the more irreligious we become, the more we'll look to non-religious institutions like government for moral leadership.

Yes, I'm irreligious and, yes, I believe in more government action. But I'm not happy about my hypothesis. That's where I'd find agreement with a conservative. But if we don't want that to happen, then people need to find the type of community, moral guidance, and leadership that used to belong to religious institutions in other places. And religious institutions, by and large, have immensely failed in providing that in recent decades. Conservative religious communities are doomed to accelerate this “fall” by digging in their heels, both theology and politically. It is my opinion that, if they haven't already, they will fatally cut themselves and bleed out.

How to Buy Clothes That Are Built to Last (NY Times)

...[T]he concept of “slow fashion” has emerged over the past decade as a kind of counterbalance to fast fashion. The idea: slow down the rapid pace of clothing consumption and instead buy fewer more durable items.

OK two questions in response to this “guide”:

  1. What are some good, reasonably-priced, slow fashion brands?
  2. Why not promote used clothes (thrift, consignment, etc) shopping?

#fridayfinds

Should You Take Your Shoes Off at Home? (NY Times)

On the one hand, wearing shoes in the house is a tough proposition for me. Sure it's cultural, but I can't get past thinking how much nastiness people are bringing in from the outside. And when I see people on TV wearing shoes on the bed or putting their shoes up on the couch, it makes me very uncomfortable.

On the other hand, I grew up playing rough-and-tumble outside, sat and rolled around on streets and sidewalks, climbed trees, and played around storm drains. Maybe that's why I don't suffer from bad allergies. I always took my shoes off though.

Atlanta belongs to the roaches now. We merely live here. (Atlanta Magazine)

Plenty of my fellow Atlantans have, anecdotally, observed a worse-than-usual cockroach season this year. They’re dropping from the ceilings at night and landing on our faces. They’re setting up shop inside our liquor cabinets. They’re assembling armadas around our front doors. “I see them scurry through the streets at night,” Catie Leary, a downtown Decatur resident, tweeted recently. “One flew and landed on my shoulder last week. One crawled across a book I was reading, and I considered burning the book. Fear lives in my heart at all times.”

I live in an old house, in a very wooded neighborhood, in Decatur. I see cockroaches on our streets scurrying about at night. We get regular pest control. I still see a cockroach once every 3 weeks.

“I don’t think there’s a house in Georgia that hasn’t had signs of a Smokey Brown cockroach infestation in the walls at some point in time.”

Good luck, everyone.

Hillsong worship leader clarifies he hasn't renounced faith, but it's on 'incredibly shaky ground'. (Christian Post)

“Why is the Bible full of contradictions? No one talks about it. How can God be love yet send four billion people to a place, all ‘coz they don’t believe? No one talks about it,” he wrote.

For me, moving from conservative evangelicalism, to liberal theology, and then to atheism, has allowed me to process my departure more effectively. Reading liberal theology helped frame the Bible, theodicy, and culture in a much more generous way before it eventually gave out as well. Sounds like Sampson is doing a cliff dive. And reading more about his journey, he keeps deleting Instagram posts challenging Christianity. Why? 🤷🏻‍♂️

I used to love Hillsong's music a lot. And I remember watching Marty (and Joel and Darlene) lead worship on their DVDs with awe and envy. Then things started to fall apart when I realized Brian Houston essentially preached a prosperity gospel, their lyrics promoted an individuistic Christianity, and my disdain for megachurches and high-production worship services started to increase.

The Ways We Watch (Washington Post)

Now, we watch “television” on our cellphones. We stream movies on computer screens and through video-game consoles. We invite people over to Netflix and chill, and that has nothing to do with watching TV...

...After endless debate, we’ve landed on the 11 types of “television” viewers who exist in our brave new world. Which one are you?

Add a pinch of The Second Screener (Wikipedia's the best companion) and a dash of The Avid Reader, and you have me.

#fridayfinds

Will the Millenials Save Playboy? (NY Times)

In the office, members of the staff use terms like “intersectionality,” “sex positivity,” “privileging” and “lived experience” to describe their editorial vision — and tout their feminist credentials. Two editors are former employees of Ms., the magazine co-founded by Gloria Steinem.

[...]

It all seems genuine enough. Except for the elephant in the room — which is that Playboy is still a magazine full of nude women, whose chief executive is a straight white male, with a dead man still listed at the top of the masthead as the founding editor in chief.

I'm not sure Playboy will survive in this age of extremes: strong, deserved sentiment for women's rights and equality, and the ubiquity of porn.

Wait, am I saying that Playboy is not porn anymore?

Living Near Trees, Not Just Green Space, Improves Wellbeing (CityLab)

More intriguingly, they also found that exposure to low-lying vegetation was not consistently associated with any particular health outcome. Exposure to grass was, surprisingly, associated with higher odds of psychological distress. The wellness-boosting feature, then, appears to be the trees...

Although where we currently live now, you feel like you're living in a jungle. So, you know, balance, balance.

Motion Smoothing Is Ruining Cinema (Vulture)

It works well on sports, for example, because it helps you keep better track of fast-moving balls and athletes. And sports and live events are already shot at higher frame rates, so they need less smoothing. But movies and narrative shows aren’t just about following the ball, and the creation of new frames feels off, junking up the experience with digital filler. Indeed, the new frames often inadvertently introduce their own artifacts — unwanted shadows, halos, flashes, and the like — that can make the image even more distracting.

Every time I've seen it turned on at a friend's or family member's house, I have gone into the TV settings and turned it off, no lie. It's abhorrent. But reading this makes me wonder: do people not care because they're watching sports way more than they watch anything else, and it's completely flipped for me?

I am so proud of El Paso (Medium)

I tell our story wherever I go. This place of immigrants, of people from all over the planet, who came here to do better for themselves and to do better for this country. I tell people about how we are one of the safest cities in the United States. Nearly 700,000 people and we’ve averaged only 18 murders a year.

#fridayfinds

He Kissed God Goodbye (Joshua Harris' Instagram)

By all the measurements that I have for defining a Christian, I am not a Christian. Many people tell me that there is a different way to practice faith and I want to remain open to this, but I’m not there now.⁣⁣

I wonder when the cracks started to show, and what triggered the cracks. And everytime I hear a story like this, I immediately think of a blog post I wrote on Medium, as a part of my chronicle on leaving Christianity. In it I describe how our life's decisions into adulthood can often a response to our past. It's certainly that way for me. I write:

Is life an exercise in opposite experiences? Why do some people end up unlovingly dogmatic Christians? Or hedonistic liberals? Or xenophobic conservatives? or fundamentalist atheists? I think it’s critically important to ask oneself, or even someone else, what childhood was like. Or what your family is like, how you were raised, how healthy your relationship to your parents are, and how you relate to your spouse. Maybe our current worldviews are mere responses, or reactions, to our past. And maybe one antidote to a pendulum-like life is self-awareness. I don’t think people ask themselves hard questions enough. But of course we don’t. It’s easy to understand why. It’s difficult to be vulnerable to yourself. To be honest with yourself.

Slow fashion: how to keep your favourite clothes for ever – from laundering to moth-proofing (The Guardian)

Extending the lifespan of our clothes isn’t just good for our finances, but also benefits the environment: the fashion industry is a major global polluter and human rights abuses are rife in the garment industries of developing nations.

I am complicit. I buy much of my clothes from the trendy, fast-fashion website ASOS.com. And every time I'm about to order, I think to myself, “I could just buy a high-quality, long-lasting pair of pants that can weather the fashion cycles.”

And I hit order anyway.

A Global Feast in an Unlikely Spot: Lancaster, Pa. (NY Times)

For ages, Lancaster has conjured up images of the horses and buggies, dairy farms and rustic bakeries of its Amish and Mennonite people, who believe in living simply, many of them eschewing modern conveniences like cars and electricity.

And in the last few years, the city has drawn notice for a boomlet of upscale bars, breweries, restaurants and art galleries.

My parents live in Lancaster. Initially, when I would visit, I wouldn't look forward to it. These days, every time I go into downtown Lancaster, I marvel at how many hip things there are to do and eat.

How to Get a Selfie With Elizabeth Warren in 8 Steps (NY Times)

Since entering the presidential race, Ms. Warren has taken pictures with more than 38,000 people, her campaign estimates. Ms. Warren says the photos are part of her effort to build what she likes to call a “grass-roots movement.”

This is a snazzy article showing how Warren's staff has a well-defined process for her post-rally selfie lines. Amy actually had a good thought that this is a brilliant advertising strategy: think of all the people excited to get a selfie and a few words in with a candidate they're interested in, and then posting that selfie to friends and family with a supportive and enthusiastic caption.

#fridayfinds

'I Kissed Dating Goodbye' Author Is Maybe Kind Of Sorry (Slate)

Harris’ conversation with me was part of an ongoing not-quite-apology tour in which he is grappling earnestly with the legacy of I Kissed Dating Goodbye. Last month he gave an interview to NPR in which he said he is re-evaluating the book’s impact, and he has been responding to critics on Twitter and having phone conversations with some of them, too. A few months ago, he started soliciting messages on his website from readers about how the books affected them.

Not only is he kind of sorry about the negative impact of book, he's also getting a divorce with his wife.

I read parts of it, I think. Or maybe I read all of it, and don't remember a single thing from it. It definitely made its rounds throughout my church. It had little impact on me, though. In fact, thinking through all the Christian books I read as a late teen and early young adult, very few had a real impact on how I lived my life. It's like I had some subconscious bullshit protection that blocked out books I know I'd never take seriously anyway.

Books like these need to die. Or maybe just Western Conservative Evangelicalism needs to die. Yeah, let's go with that.

I Tried Emailing Like A CEO And Quite Frankly, It Made My Life Better (Buzzfeed News)

Let’s call this “boss email.” It’s defined by nearly immediate — but short and terse — replies. The classic two-word email. For underlings, it can be inscrutable. Is that an angry “thanks” or a grateful “thanks”? Does “please update me” imply impatience with you? Boss email can be the workplace equivalent of getting a “k” text reply from a Tinder date.

I still have a hard time shaking the concept of email as a replacement for hand-written letters for two reasons:

  1. If I'm going to treat email like texting/messaging, why not just text/message? Or Slack or whatever.
  2. I email too many people in my professional life where I don't want to come off as so casual.

But I've already been dropping the salutation (e.g. “Hey Padraig,”) and the closing (e.g. “Thanks,”) in replies. One step at a time, right?

The Texan Who Invented Chili Powder Also Accidentally Created the American Taco (Atlas Obscura)

...[I]t’s a mistake to believe that the iconic hard shell taco is something that clueless white people invented. “Both Americans and Mexicans would love to believe that the hard-shell taco was a travesty of an invention by clueless gabachos. But that’s simply not the case,” says Gustavo Arellano, perhaps America’s foremost scholar on the taco.

Well shit. Then how am I supposed to be arrogantly indignant when I don't see onions, cilantro, and cabeza on top of two corn tortillas, with a grilled pepper, salsa, and a lime slice on the side?

List of cognitive biases (Wikipedia)

Now you'll have the ammunition to accuse friends, family, and coworkers of all the cognitive biases they're displaying!

Your Dad: “Man, that one $10 taco I had was really good.”
You: “Nice display of choice-supportive bias, you asshat. I can get amazing tacos for $1.50.”

The true origins of the Seth Rich conspiracy theory (Yahoo! News)

TL;DR Russia

By the way, has anyone else in Atlanta noticed that someone(s) are spray-painting “Seth Rich” around the city? And then they get painted over by the city two weeks later. I should try getting a picture when I can.

#fridayfinds

The 8 Best Melting Cheeses, For Your Cheese Pull Pleasure (Bon Appetit)

Cheese makes me farty, and I'll never stop eating it.

And speaking of Bon Appetit, their YouTube channel is one of my favorite things right now and I can't recommend it enough. I know all of the main chefs/editors' names and their unique personalities. The two most popular series are “It's Alive!” and “Gourmet Makes”. So good and so funny.

Can Elizabeth Warren Win It All? (The New Yorker)

On many economic issues, Warren has been remarkably prescient. She has spent decades warning Americans about the pernicious effects of income inequality, predatory corporations, and consumer debt, and about the failures of our financial system—issues that are at the heart of the 2020 Presidential campaign.

Income inequality is one of my biggest concerns, and I think she's got the best message about it. Still my first choice—with increasing excitement.

Facebook lawyer says users ‘have no expectation of privacy’ (Daily Dot)

“There is no invasion of privacy at all, because there is no privacy,” Snyder said.

Is it then also true that most people don't care either?

Humans Are Speeding Extinction and Altering the Natural World at an ‘Unprecedented’ Pace (NY Times)

In The Matrix, Agent Smith said this to Morpheus:

I'd like to share a revelation during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species. I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You are a plague[,]...”

Although, to be fair, so is english ivy. Gotta make myself not care somehow, right?

#fridayfinds

Confessions of a Presidential Candidate (The New Yorker)

The Democrats running for President in 2020 have walked in different shoes, from ballet slippers to football cleats. They carry different banners. They are fighting different fights. But most of their books contain one version or another of an eerily similar scene, from a single night.

This was pretty fun to read because it distills each Democratic candidate's books into short TL;DRs.

South Korean Women 'Escape The Corset' And Reject Their Country's Beauty Ideals (NPR)

Traditionally, she says, Korean women are taught that beauty is their biggest asset. By getting married, they can exchange that asset for social and economic status. Even today, such views affect women's options and choices related to careers, marriage and motherhood. Rejecting beauty standards leads some women to rebel against an entire social structure, she says, and that means boycotting romance, marriage, sex and childbirth.

In Constance Wu, Asian Americans Finally Have a Diva to Call Our Own (Slate)

For Wu to air all of this for mass consumption was unwise, if not disrespectful, for a couple of reasons...

Can someone tell me how I should think about this “scandal”?

Google Tries Again With Pixel 3a (Tech.pinions)

I continued to be somewhat perplexed by Google’s hardware ambitions. Many have suggested that the company continues to play in the hardware market to drive best-of-breed devices, to experiment with the intersection of hardware and software, and to keep its OEM partners on their toes. However, in 2019, with the broader smartphone market slowing or declining in many regions, this seems like folly.

This writer continues to be perplexed. I continue to be unimpressed.

#fridayfinds

TYPOGRAPHY 2020: A SPECIAL LISTICLE FOR AMERICA

For those who think it trivializes our political process to judge candidates by their typography—what would you prefer we scrutinize? Qualifications? Ground into dust during the last election. Issues? Be my guest. Whether a candidate will ever fulfill a certain campaign promise about a certain issue is conjectural.

But typography—that’s a real decision candidates have to make today, with real money and real consequences. And if I can’t trust you to pick somereasonable fonts and colors, then why should I trust you with the nuclear codes?

Fun website. Butterick, a typography expert and designer, reviews a bunch of the Democratic candidates' websites.

Why Are Young People Having So Little Sex?

Over the course of many conversations with sex researchers, psychologists, economists, sociologists, therapists, sex educators, and young adults, I heard many other theories about what I have come to think of as the sex recession. I was told it might be a consequence of the hookup culture, of crushing economic pressures, of surging anxiety rates, of psychological frailty, of widespread antidepressant use, of streaming television, of environmental estrogens leaked by plastics, of dropping testosterone levels, of digital porn, of the vibrator’s golden age, of dating apps, of option paralysis, of helicopter parents, of careerism, of smartphones, of the news cycle, of information overload generally, of sleep deprivation, of obesity. Name a modern blight, and someone, somewhere, is ready to blame it for messing with the modern libido.

I blame internet-based technology, and all of its manifestations.

IF YOU WANT TO KILL SOMEONE, WE ARE THE RIGHT GUYS

Yura promised that customers' money was held by an escrow service and paid out only after a job was completed. But Allwine worried that when he deposited money it would simply end up in someone's bitcoin wallet. He wanted Yura's claims to be true, though, so against his better instincts he transferred the bitcoin. “They say that Besa means trust, so please do not break that,” he wrote Yura. “For reasons that are too personal and would give away my identity, I need this bitch dead.”

The movie 'Fargo', but in real life, and in Minneapolis, using cryptocurrency and the dark web, and a far less gruesome ending.

Your love of Bed Bath & Beyond coupons could be killing the retailer

“I don’t come here very often,” said Zoe French, 51, who works nearby and was after laundry detergent. “Once a year, maybe I’ll use a coupon if I need to buy something big.”

That, analysts said, is crisis for the beleaguered chain: shoppers who balk at the thought of buying something at Bed Bath & Beyond without a coupon.

We shop at BB&B maybe once or twice a year? And we've hoarded way more coupons than I guarantee we'll ever use.

#fridayfinds

Does That Bible Come in Rose Gold? (The New Yorker)

The Bible didn’t evoke any such adrenaline rush. “So the idea I had was, what if this was designed in a different way?” He met Ye-Chung at a Christian event on campus and was captivated by the fact that they shared almost the same name. “We knew we wanted to do something with art and faith,” Ye-Chung said. “It would be a brand. At first we wanted to do a magazine, but we didn’t have an audience. We decided to just start with the Bible.”

Ah, so it's a marketing issue.

Why Urban Millennials Love Uniqlo (The Atlantic)

The question Uniqlo faces now is whether it can inherit the Gap’s empire without repeating its mistakes. To do so, it will have to convince shoppers across the country of a proposition that’s radical for the industry: Fashion can be affordable without being disposable.

I Don’t Care. I Love My Phone. (NY Times)

A few months ago I went to dinner with the kind of people whose idea of fun is to correct your pronunciation of “niçoise,” and they boldly suggested that we all put our phones face down in the center of the table for the entirety of the meal and what felt like a needlessly lingering discussion afterward.

Now, I didn’t die. But I also didn’t know what time it was.

Apple Watch authentication expanding beyond unlocking your Mac in macOS 10.15 (9to5Mac)

According to sources familiar with the development of macOS, the next major version of the operating system will allow users to authenticate other operations on the Mac beyond just unlocking the machine with their watch.

I love being able to unlock my Mac just by wearing the watch and standing close to the Mac, since I have a long and complicated computer password. And the security implementation underlying the watch-to-unlock tech is awesome as well.

But being able to do even more authentication via the Apple Watch (aside from watch-to-unlock and Apple Pay) is something I'm excited about. Many say the AirPods are the best brand-new product Apple's come out with in a while. While I really love my AirPods, I put the Apple Watch higher in my value list.

#fridayfinds

The Stages of Relationships, Distributed (FlowingData)

Based on data from the How Couples Meet and Stay Together survey, the chart shows that people typically wait longer to get married and live together sooner now than they did several decades ago.

This is a super cool animated infographic.

Does the Air Fryer Deliver on Its Golden Promise? (NY Times)

Could air fryers really be the best kitchen innovation since my beloved electric pressure cooker, or is it all just too good to be true?

The Myth of Beto O’Rourke (The Atlantic)

When Elizabeth Warren lost her voice in the middle of her weekend tour of Iowa in January, some sneered that she was showing her age. When O’Rourke’s voice was cracking hoarse by the end of his third rally of the day in Texas, that was taken as proof of his passion, and how much of himself he’s thrown into the race.

DEVELOPMENTAL MILESTONES FOR ADULTS (McSweeney's)

This is pretty funny, in a chuckling “yeah that's true” way.

#fridayfinds