Kristin
As if we needed more evidence that poverty is really, really bad: it impairs your mind. Great. Now you can’t pay your bills or put food on the table and you are dumber, to boot. Hey, I have a good idea: let’s give everyone in the richest country on earth a basic income, which will save money on all the band-aids we currently use to plaster over the simple problem that we don’t distribute wealth very efficiently, will raise many people’s IQs by 14 points, and then free people up to do meaningful, innovative work that they want to do, instead of enforced drudgery. Wouldn’t that be cool?!
Big banks train their employees to cheat. The author of a recent study concludes: “the apples are good, but the barrel is bad.” Next time we get the chance to make a better barrel, let’s not waste it.
Slightly depressing: men want their wives to be “attractive” and “sweet.” But encouraging: they want their daughters to be strong and smart. And wanting that for their daughters opens them up to all kinds of great things:
Judges who’ve fathered girls may be more sympathetic to gender issues. Having daughters makes legislators more likely to be more supportive of reproductive rights. Parents of daughters were more likely to support policies that address gender equity.
And a dose of outrageous optimism, from my hero, Mr. Money Mustache!
Serena
Coverage of the gruesome biker shootout in Waco is getting some well-earned critique—in short, gang violence sounds a lot different when the perpetrators are white.
UW students Sarra Tekola and Michael Moynihan took home the first place prize among university entrants in the University of Washington College of the Environment’s Climate Change Video Awards last Friday evening, with a rap about climate justice and unevenly shared climate impacts (check it out below). The event featured 10 short films in a variety of styles and techniques from over two dozen inspiringly driven, diverse, creative, and talented high school and university students all over Washington state.
Remember those illustrated climate change science haiku we all so loved and shared? Well, if you’re in Seattle this weekend, you can see them in a whole new quirky way. Dr. Greg Johnson will be reading them at the Northwest Folklife Festival, to the accompaniment of an illustrated watercolor “crankie” (don’t worry, we had to Google it, too) and some guitar and violin music. Check it out Saturday, May 23rd, from 2–3 p.m., at Center Theatre—and note, it’s a small theatre, so arrive early if you don’t want to be competing for seats with the (apparently significant population of) crankie enthusiasts!
Keiko
I love maps—especially interactive ones. This map shows how Americans have moved between states since 1900. What story does your state tell?
New research attempts to answer the lifelong question: Does it pay to be nice?
In case you missed it, big oil receives $10 million per minute in subsidies! We are forking over cash to huge fossil fuel companies every minute. One more reason to say no to coal and oil, and yes to clean energy.
Check out these 4th graders rapping about cleaning the Duwamish River! They are all young Macklemores-in-training.
Eric
Dear Seattle Times assignment desk, please cast your gaze at the journalistic powerhouse that is the Vancouver Columbian these days.
Reporter Aaron Corvin just published a three-part series on the city’s Port Commission and its nasty habit of doing business in secret, hiding critical information from the public, and generally violating both the spirit and letter of honest government. This is the sort of deeply reported and well-crafted investigative journalism that is a lasting credit to the Fourth Estate. You can read it here, here, and here.
It’s also the sort of thing that makes for an interesting article or two in the state’s largest city, which may have one or two Port controversies of its own.
Cliff Mass says that the Pacific Northwest’s summer of 2015 is going to be a rough one. It will, he says, closely approximate the climate we can expect in 2070.
What’s wrong with the new federal rules for oil rail cars? Earthjustice counts the ways.
You know what’s scary about exploding bomb trains? That they run alarmingly close to major nuclear weapons installations, as Rachel Maddow reports.
The Guardian reported that the Northwest’s favorite would-be coal exporter, Peabody, exploited the Ebola crisis for its corporate gain. Good people.
