A Collection of Links

Lots of thought provoking stuff in there.   The most interesting part of the experiment, Piff said, came after, when players were asked to talk about what they had done to affect the game’s outcome. The obvious answer was that the fix was in and the rich player got lucky. But the rich players were almost twice as likely as the poor ones to talk about game strategy—how they’d earned their win. And so it goes in the world. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/04/does-wealth-rob-brain-compassion/618496/

 Linking to an excellent post at kieranhealy.org that I appreciate for the ability to clearly tell a story through graphs and data.  As I spend more of my time thinking about business intelligence and how to create compelling visuals to convey relevant data when I see it done right it jumps off the page.  Not to lose sight of what a terrible tragedy these graphs reveal, but if you want to understand the true impact of this pandemic it's a reasonable place to start.  Great work. https://kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/2021/02/24/excess-deaths-february-update/  

 In the wake of the storming of the capital on January 6th 2021 this post makes a lot of sense.  While the unique narcissism of President Trump somewhat explains his refusal to acknowledge the results of the election, it is not lost on my that there is a strong undercurrent of black and brown votes don't/shouldn't matter.  When you consider the current day Republican party is relentlessly trying to make it harder to vote for certain everyday citizens it's clear who they are targeting.  Lot's to unpack for me, but anyway here is a link to a Ford Foundation post that resonated with me. credit to Kottke for the discovery.   Democracy is a Threat to White Supremacy

Found via kottke.org a post discussing the current state of energy sources.  Carbon emissions, price per kilowatt and safety.  It is so obvious that having the government put their fingers on the scales to support renewable energy will be a gigantic win for the planet.  Honestly a win for everyone except the large corporations that earn their dollars pulling fossil fuels out of the ground.  They are and should be marked as dinosaurs, just like the stuff they are pulling out of the ground. Why did renewables become so cheap so fast? And what can we do to use this global opportunity for green growth?

 Pretty sure my tombstone will read, " Here lies a man who was happy to let those around him do the hard work " From the Daring Fireball again ( https://daringfireball.net/linked/2020/11/30/the-paranoid-style ) comes a link to a Harper's article from 1964 that reads like it could have been written last month.  I've had a sense throughout this ordeal (Trump presidency, 2020, pandemic - take your pick) when it seems like we are in totally new ground of craziness that it must have felt this way before.  Not many facts to base that feeling on, just bits and pieces.  Tweets about how the country reacted to the Spanish Flu in regards to race relations, that sort of thing.  History is trending upwards, I do believe that to be true, I just have to keep the faith.  Anyway, thanks to Gruber for posting this link, it makes me think we might be fine after all. https://harpers.org The Paranoid Style in American Politics

 Linking to this post by Gruber so I will have it to refer back to.  Not so much for the David Brooks piece which is trying to define the current Republican state, but for the link to Maureen Dowd's brothers Thanksgiving OpEd written from the position of a Trump supporter.  It's hard to fathom how there can be such a radical differing of views about this presidency.  I have no doubts that absent something worse coming along in the next decade, this administration will be forever recorded in history as the most corrupt, dishonest administration in our time.  Lying right out of the gate about pointless stuff like inauguration size, no shame about coining the phrase 'alternative facts', firing one inspector general after another to hide the corruption within the administration, it was a relentless 4 years of corruption and greed.  To be indifferent to the attack on the foundations of democracy by refusing to acknowledge the vote and actively trying to get state legislature