for AmCon: When I heard there was an Iranian-Californian vampire movie where a lady vampire skateboards through a deserted town under the streetlights and the palm trees, her chador blowing out behind her like Dracula’s cape, I thought, That’s awesome! But by the time we actually reached the skateboard scene in “A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night” all I could think was, That’s terrifying! “A Girl” is a totally effective piece of atmosphere: dreamlike, black and white, with a... Read more
and charge them for it: Beyond the physical and emotional burdens, those under monitoring often pay for their confinement in the most literal possible fashion. As Marissa Alexander discovered in Florida, private companies often exact fees from the people they’re imprisoning. They average around $10-$15 per day — in addition to installation costs and fees imposed for drug tests or other “services.” Those unable to pay may be re-incarcerated in a cycle that harkens back to debtor’s prison. By the... Read more
My mom’s from Iowa, which means I grew up eating Maid-Rites, the greatest sloppy joe. You can find a bunch of recipes online but this is close to the even-simpler version we had. You can eat it on a bun or just fork it up out of a bowl. I added a bunch of extra stuff, but the moment I tasted that first bite of ground beef, tomato, onion, and oatmeal, I felt like the world’s happiest little kid. Ingredients... Read more
finds really impressive results: The results were that police use of force reports halved on shifts when police wore cameras. In addition, the use of force during the entire treatment period (on shifts both using and not using cameras) was about half the rate as during pre-treatment periods. In other words, the camera wearing shifts appear to have caused police to change their behavior on all shifts in a way that reduced the use of force. A treatment that bleeds over... Read more
tired and emotional Read more
asking why progressives keep greasing the camel: I just finished Andrew Cherlin’s new book, Labor’s Love Lost: The Rise and Fall of the Working-Class Family in America. It’s a solid piece of historically-informed synthesis. But it’s also full of examples of my least-favorite feature of contemporary sociology of the family. Because almost all writing that gets labeled “sociology” is done by members of the overeducated elite, the values common among that elite are taken for granted and treated as objectively... Read more
I have no actual opinion on the community-college plan but there are some good points here: …Why aren’t we at least asking ourselves if there’s something we can do to create more opportunity for people without diplomas, instead of asking how many more years we can keep everyone in school? Why do all of our proposed solutions essentially ratify the structure that excludes so many people, instead of questioning it? I have some ideas about what those policies might look like:... Read more
from the Gospels to the Golden Girls: The people in 68 Scarborough St., in Hartford, Conn., make an unlikely band of outlaws. The eight adults and three children live in a 6,000-square-foot house in a wealthy residential neighborhood, and pass their time with family talent shows. A photo of the crew in the Hartford Courant shows a dog in a maroon coat and a record player with actual records. The adults in the house are longtime friends who “intentionally came... Read more
at Substance.com: I could fill volumes with all that I saw. There were other situations where patients walked around with signs around their necks, saying, “I’m a loser,” “I’m nothing,” or “I’m not worth caring about.” The “transgressions” that earned these sanctions included getting in an argument with a more favored client, yelling at a case manager and getting high. There was little compassion in this place, and little-to-no therapy. Individual therapy was not permitted, although I’m still unclear why.... Read more
interviewin’ (bookhawkin’): In her book, Tushnet recounts how during her first week at Yale University, she decided to spend some time “gawking at zoo animals”—i.e., members of a conservative debate society. She reports how she “ended up in a long argument with one of the zoo animals, a Catholic divinity school student.” Through her contact with the debate society and its Catholic members, she came to encounter the Church. Like Pope Francis, those Catholic debaters journeyed to the edges, dialoguing... Read more
Eve Tushnet
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