Writer and critic Tom Breihan is crafting an incredible body of work. For the A.V. Club, he’s produced comprehensive year-by-year examinations of action movies (A History of Violence) and superhero movies (Age of Heroes), and just started his next series exploring the top grossing films since 1960. For Stereogum, he’s breaking down every Billboard Hot 100 #1 single since 1958. The guy knows movies and music, he does his damn research, and he’s just fun to read.
That’s a bunch of lead-in just for any geeks out there who would dig an encyclopedic k-hole of media and genre. I see you, friends.
For everyone else, that’s all an excuse to share his entry on “Midnight Train to Georgia,” the all-timer from Gladys Knight & the Pips. The song is great. The Dismemberment Plan song that references it is great. And this Richard Pryor bit I’d never seen before is fucking phenomenal.
“The Richard Pryor Show is proud to present ‘and the Pips.’”
The End of Empathy (NPR)
“There is a natural way that empathy gets triggered in the brain—your pain centers light up when you see another person suffering. But out in the world it starts to look more like tribalism, a way to keep reinforcing your own point of view and blocking out any others.”"What is the point of having health insurance that you can’t use?" (Splinter)
On the rise of high-deductible insurance plans. They’re cheap but effectively useless for people who don’t already have cash enough to cover the deductible costs. Someone might pay as much as $4,000 or $6,000 before the insurance company starts chipping in.WaPo Turns the Spotlight on Carbon Capture Tech (Washington Post)
One of the many major investments we’ll need to make if we’re going to do anything about climate change. It can’t be the primary investment, the technology isn’t there, but it’s one of many, many things we need to do."I am not always very attached to being alive" (The Outline)
“If mental health care can only do so much to reduce our feelings of suicidality and equip us with the tools we need to tread water, then it’s crucial to nourish a life full of things we want to stay afloat for.”UTI Treatment Is in Crisis (elemental)
“The way doctors treat urinary tract infections may be wrong, and antibiotic resistance is growing”Physicists Confirm That We're Not Living In a Computer Simulation (PBS)
Wonky theoretical physicists finally do something good for us. Of course we might still be trapped in an episode of Peep Show.Graceful And Warped, The Minimal Sculptures Of Carla Cascales Alimbau (Ignant)
Satisfying art.Only The Female Candidates Were Asked About Sexism At CNN’s Presidential Town Hall (Huffpo)
“Seeing sexual harassment and so-called ‘women’s issues’ as only relevant to women is a ‘rhetorical and cognitive trap,’ said Nikki Usher, a media professor at George Washington University. Usher, who said she watched all five hours of the CNN event last night, also said she noticed that the moderators interrupted the female candidates more than the men. ‘We know empirically that women are more frequently interrupted and their ideas are often taken less seriously than male counterparts. We should expect nothing different from male moderators hosting these town halls.’”Silicon Valley Came to Kansas Schools. That Started a Rebellion. (NYT)
Summit Learning, funded by Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, created a “web-based platform and curriculum” for public school students. No more teachers teaching, it’s students on laptops all the time with teachers nearby as “mentors.” The results are bad and, in the cases of some students, actively harmful.Ads for Zodiac Computers and Other Occult Weirdness from the 1970s (Flashbak)
XOXO