
The Tropics of Meta braintrust is hoping for a Labour upset in the UK elections, but we kind of know it’s not going to happen. Hopefully our friend Jezza can pull out a closer-than-expected showing that keeps the tousle-haired Oxbridge foundling-eating cave-person Boris Johnson in perpetual agony. (Pretty much the same thing happened in Theresa May’s 2017 electoral misadventure.)
Across the Western world, though, it seems that the lumpenkardashianariat is revolting against the ravages of neoliberal capitalism — and choosing probably the worst way to do so (right-wing populism). In America, we recently learned that “44% of U.S. workers are employed in low-wage jobs that pay median annual wages of $18,000.” Meanwhile, the professional-managerial class continues to peel away from everyone else, worried about whether Addison will get into Bronx Science or they’ll (god forfend) have to pay for the Spence School. People look at a rigged and getting-worse situation, and the only solutions available seem to be simple and bad ones. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have plans, but it may be too late for plans.
- Amy Kapczynski on the pernicious libertarian/right-wing campaign to use the First Amendment as a cudgel against the regulatory state: Free Speech, Incorporated (Boston Review)
- How I Get By: A Week in the Life of a McDonald’s Cashier (VICE)
- Almost half of all Americans work in low-wage jobs (CBS News)
- The 9/11 Hoax That Wasn’t (Endless Thread)
- Gabriel Winant on Life Under the Algorithm (New Republic)
- Friend-of-the-blog Vyta Baselice on The Way Concrete Goes (PLATFORM)
- Friend-of-the-blog Noah Berlatsky on “A Matter of Good Breeding”: The Shape-Shifting Elite in Brian Yuzna’s “Society” (We Are the Mutants)
- Friend-of-the-blog Ghislaine Maxwell, back on her bullshit: Ghislaine Maxwell is the woman at the center of the Jeffrey Epstein scandal. She’s not been seen in months (CNN)
- In Search of Home: Cherríe Moraga’s Native Country of the Heart (BOOM)
- She was a test case for resettling detainees of Japanese descent — and unaware of the risk (LA Times)
- How the Cool Kids of the Left Turned on Elizabeth Warren (Politico)
- How Media Turn Support for Public Schools Into Opposition to Children of Color (FAIR)
- Emotional baggage: inside the toxic work environment at Away (The Verge)
- With Medical Bills Skyrocketing, More Hospitals Are Suing for Payment (NYT)
- The One State Taking a Big Run at Health Reform (Politico)
- Why Child Care Is So Ridiculously Expensive (Atlantic)
- Just how selective have UC schools become? Top students feel the pressure (SF Chronicle)
- Frankie Boyle’s election countdown: ‘You’ll be praying they prorogue the next parliament’ (Guardian)
- Ian Urbina on The Outlaw Ocean (Living on Earth)
- Inside The Legal Life of Ludacris (GSU)
- The oddly beautiful and sometimes disturbing artistic talent of the nation’s drug cops (WaPo)
- All doors shut to trans women (Columbia Spectator)
- The U.S. Private Sector Job Quality Index
- Syllabus-as-Metaphor (Hybrid Pedagogy)
- Visualizing Moore’s Law in Action (1971-2019) (Visual Capitalist)
- The Investigator: Journalist Carole Cadwalladr (CJR)
- Frank Zappa and Ruben And The Jets, 1972–1974 (BOOM)
- ‘My boss lets us book hangover days’ (BBC)