Weekend link dump for February 25

Ancient bird poop is surprisingly good at giving answers to ecological questions.

How the Grammys stack up against other major awards in terms of female representation.

“All in all, the odds are disconcertingly high that Russia, or somebody, has blackmail leverage over the president of the United States.”

RIP, Ed Banks, known as the honorary Mayor of Houston’s historic Third Ward.

It appears that USA Swimming was just as bad as USA Gymnastics.

Tom Cotton is woefully misinformed” is a thing you could say in many different contexts.

I didn’t watch the NBA All Star Game, so I’m happy to accept Fergie’s apology for her rendition of the national anthem.

“At the heart of the Russian fraud is an essential, embarrassing insight into American life: large numbers of Americans are ill-equipped to assess the credibility of the things they read.”

“Miami-Dade County is suing former Miami Marlins owner Jeffrey Loria and the new ownership group led by Derek Jeter seeking money from the $1.2 billion sale of the team.”

“The Army has awarded Medals of Heroism, the service’s highest medal for Reserve Officers’ Training Corps cadets, to the three JROTC students killed defending their classmates from a gunman at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida on Feb. 14.”

“Spies looking to infiltrate, compromise and direct a foreign organization look precisely for chaotic and disorganized contexts. They look for gullible people. They look for pleasers. They look for people who are desperate, broke, blackmail-able. These are all features, not bugs. This must have made the Trump campaign an irresistible target for Russia. Because it had all the key vulnerability points in spades. I think anyone who makes this argument really doesn’t know what they’re talking about.”

RIP, Billy Graham. You know who Billy Graham is. The Slacktivist puts his obituary into context.

“A look at the Twitter feeds of students like David Hogg shows that they are a remarkable foil for the pro-Trump media’s trolling tactics. Like the pro-Trump media, they, too, are an insurgent political force that’s native to the internet. And while they use legacy platforms like cable news to build awareness of their names and of their causes, much of the real work happens online.”

“It’s time to reexamine the evidence that Clarence Thomas lied to get onto the Supreme Court — and to talk seriously about impeachment.”

“But I, for one, have found myself humbled to near-silence by these brave teenagers, and not just because they are media savvy and seemingly without fear. They are extraordinary. With each spin of the news cycle, these students are offering a lesson for all of us about what protests can look like, and how we can reimagine social justice, in the Trump era.”

Meet Sherri Nichols, one of the great early pioneers of the baseball statistics revolution.

Related Posts:

This entry was posted in Blog stuff and tagged . Bookmark the permalink.