📚: The MVP Machine by Ben Lindbergh & Travis Sawchik
“Blaming Workers Again” by John Russo and Sherry Linkon — Working Class Perspectives
Super interesting read that articulated a few points that have been on my mind recently.
The notion that smaller rust belt communities like the Youngstown-Warren area haven’t tried to diversify their economies reflects basic ignorance. Mayors, economic developers, and business leaders in these communities have done almost nothing but try to attract new industries, but — not surprisingly — they have a much harder time doing that than their larger neigbors, which began the battle for economic recovery with major universities, hospitals, and corporate headquarters already in place.
Nothing frustrates me more than seeing many factions on the left advocate leaving this group of people behind, almost vindictively, out of an assumption that most of them were Trump voters and are thus “getting what they deserve.” These are long-term problems that go back much further than that, and these are people who should be an important part of the liberal agenda. The fact that many among this demographic (although, notably, not Mahoning County) were able to be swindled by Trump just highlights the fact that they felt ignored by the mainstream Democratic Party.
Blaming the working class has long been a default move for elite and middle-class people. Some have faith in the cultural myth of meritocracy. They see their success as a matter of effort and talent and assume that working-class people just don’t have enough of either. For others, judging workers is a way to displace their own anxieties about the uncertain economy. Both project their biases onto the working class and reassure themselves that they deserve their economic privileges.
No wonder working-class people are rejecting mainstream politics, embracing populism, and, increasingly, taking to the streets.
Blaming Workers Again" by John Russo and Sherry Linkon (Working Class Perspectives
Super interesting read that articulated a few points that have been on my mind recently.
The notion that smaller rust belt communities like the Youngstown-Warren area haven’t tried to diversify their economies reflects basic ignorance. Mayors, economic developers, and business leaders in these communities have done almost nothing but try to attract new industries, but — not surprisingly — they have a much harder time doing that than their larger neigbors, which began the battle for economic recovery with major universities, hospitals, and corporate headquarters already in place.
Nothing frustrates me more than seeing many factions on the left advocate leaving this group of people behind, almost vindictively, out of an assumption that most of them were Trump voters and are thus “getting what they deserve.” These are long-term problems that go back much further than that, and these are people who should be an important part of the liberal agenda. The fact that many among this demographic (although, notably, not Mahoning County) were able to be swindled by Trump just highlights the fact that they felt ignored by the mainstream Democratic Party.
Blaming the working class has long been a default move for elite and middle-class people. Some have faith in the cultural myth of meritocracy. They see their success as a matter of effort and talent and assume that working-class people just don’t have enough of either. For others, judging workers is a way to displace their own anxieties about the uncertain economy. Both project their biases onto the working class and reassure themselves that they deserve their economic privileges.
No wonder working-class people are rejecting mainstream politics, embracing populism, and, increasingly, taking to the streets.
💿: Mettavolution by Rodrigo y Gabriela
🎧: “Just Like Overnight” by Todd Snider
Appalachia Can’t Breathe - Progressive.org
Sick.
. . . radiologists in Kentucky are no longer allowed to diagnose black lung for the purposes of a benefit claim, meaning that physicians . . . must defer to certified pulmonologists. As of last year, there were only six physicians in the state that can diagnose black lung and at least four of those have a history of helping the coal industry with claim appeals.
Appalachia Can't Breathe" -- Progressive.or
Sick.
. . . radiologists in Kentucky are no longer allowed to diagnose black lung for the purposes of a benefit claim, meaning that physicians . . . must defer to certified pulmonologists. As of last year, there were only six physicians in the state that can diagnose black lung and at least four of those have a history of helping the coal industry with claim appeals.
🏀 : I haven’t watched the tournament (or really any basketball) in years, but I am absolutely loving it so far this year. Didn’t know what I was missing!
Yeeeeeeep.
Weird baseball quotes, pt. 1
Baseball players (pitchers especially) are weird. Strangest quote of Spring Training (so far) easily goes to Cleveland Indians' pitcher Mike Clevinger. In a story at The Athletic, about an argument among the Indians' pitching staff about who is the best athlete, he somehow gets to this point:
It’s like a vegan saying you can’t drink milk – do animals drink other animals’ milk? No, because they don’t have the thumbs to milk their nipples. Of course not. But if they did, do you know what a dog would be doing every [forking] day?
…
⚾️ Getting kinda dusty in here… Did you hear this one about new Rays pitcher Charlie Morton …
📚: Impossible Owls by Brian Phillips
If you’ve ever been seventeen, and especially if you’ve ever been seventeen in a small town, you’ve had your own year of dark nights. But when your are seventeen, and especially when you are seventeen in a small town, you believe there is opening before you a mysterious and uncharted realm that exists for you alone. You and your friends are conspirators in a shadow country.
From “In the Dark: Science Fiction in Small Towns"
You and your friends are conspirators in a shadow country
If you’ve ever been seventeen, and especially if you’ve ever been seventeen in a small town, you’ve had your own year of dark nights. But when your are seventeen, and especially when you are seventeen in a small town, you believe there is opening before you a mysterious and uncharted realm that exists for you alone. You and your friends are conspirators in a shadow country.
From “In the Dark: Science Fiction in Small Towns" in the wonderful Impossible Owls collection by Brian Phillips.
This guy.
🔗 Highline: "Everything You Know About Obesity is Wrong"
Really enlightening article at Highline.
And, in a cruel twist, one effect of weight bias is that it actually makes you eat more. The stress hormone cortisol—the one evolution designed to kick in when you’re being chased by a tiger or, it turns out, rejected for your looks—increases appetite, reduces the will to exercise and even improves the taste of food. Sam, echoing so many of the other people I spoke with, says that he drove straight to Jack in the Box last year after someone yelled, “Eat less!” at him across a parking lot.
It’s hard to even really grasp just how much we have the deck stacked against the obese. It’s a systemic problem that it doesn’t seem like we, as a nation, have much interest in solving.
The problem is that in America, like everywhere else, our institutions of public health have become so obsessed with body weight that they have overlooked what is really killing us: our food supply. Diet is the leading cause of death in the United States, responsible for more than five times the fatalities of gun violence and car accidents combined. But it’s not how much we’re eating—Americans actually consume fewer calories now than we did in 2003. It’s what we’re eating.
For more than a decade now, researchers have found that the quality of our food affects disease risk independently of its effect on weight. Fructose, for example, appears to damage insulin sensitivity and liver function more than other sweeteners with the same number of calories. People who eat nuts four times a week have 12 percent lower diabetes incidence and a 13 percent lower mortality rate regardless of their weight. All of our biological systems for regulating energy, hunger and satiety get thrown off by eating foods that are high in sugar, low in fiber and injected with additives. And which now, shockingly, make up 60 percent of the calories we eat.