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Mother Jones
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It’s the last day of the month, and that’s when the State Department releases additional tranches of Hillary Clinton’s email from her stint as Secretary of State. Here’s one from State’s chief of protocol keeping Hillary apprised of a joke Obama told about her at the White House Correspondent’s dinner. Don’t worry, it’s unclassified:
If you want to browse through them yourself, click here. Who knows? Maybe you’ll be the first to find the smoking gun that destroys Hillary once and for all!
Link:
State Department Releases 5,500 More of Hillary Clinton’s Darkest Secrets
Mother Jones
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I’ve come to believe that saying nice things about Hillary Clinton can be a subversive act.
Well, I don’t know about subversive. A little unusual, maybe, but that’s all. So what accounts for Doyle’s affection for Hillary? Basically, the fact that Hillary is still alive and kicking after spending nearly her entire life on the receiving end of attacks that would turn most of us into sobbing wrecks who refuse to answer the doorbell:
It’s almost as if, after a quarter-century of being attacked for her appearance, personality, and every waking move, breath, and word, Hillary Clinton is highly conscious of how she is perceived and portrayed, and is trying really hard to monitor her own behavior and behave in ways people will accept. Which is “disgusting,” of course. We want “authentic” candidates. Remind me: How well did the public and media react the last time she appeared in public without makeup? Or raised her voice? Or laughed? Or went to the goddamn bathroom? Or did any “authentic” thing that a real-life person does every day?
….Honestly, ask yourself: How long would you make it, if people treated you the way you treat Hillary Clinton? Would you not just be furious by now? Would you not have reached levels of blood-vessel-popping rage and despair? She’s been dealing with it for decades, and keeps voluntarily subjecting herself to it, and knows exactly how bad it will get and exactly what we’ll do to her, and yet she is running for president again, and—here’s the part I love, the part that I find hard to wrap my head around—she might actually win. That is awe-inspiring.
Yeah, pretty much. I like Hillary Clinton too,1 and for much the same reason as Doyle. I view her as nearly the exact opposite of her reputation in popular culture. She’s not cunning or devious. In fact, she’s the farthest thing from that. She’s dutiful and always has been. She wants to do good. She’s demanding of herself. She’s not naturally extroverted, but forces herself to do what needs to be done. She’s not naturally brilliant, but she’s a studier and a hard worker. And I imagine that the relentless attacks she’s put up with have indeed wounded her pretty deeply. Unlike her husband, she’s not the kind of person who can brush them off as just part of the game.
Do I like Hillary because of all this? Sure, though not in any deep sense. I don’t really like people I’ve never met. But I sure as hell admire her. She could have ended up like Richard Nixon, but she didn’t. She keeps gutting it out, over and over. For that, she’ll always have my esteem—and maybe even my affection.
1I also like Bernie Sanders. I used to like Martin O’Malley, but not so much anymore.
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Let’s play a game! What is this a map of?
The answer is 3, support for Donald Trump among Republicans. But I tricked you. It’s also a map that shows where racially-charged internet searches are most common. Here is Nate Cohn on Trump’s support:
His geographic pattern of support is not just about demographics — educational attainment, for example. It is not necessarily the typical pattern for a populist, either. In fact, it’s almost the exact opposite of Ross Perot’s support in 1992, which was strongest in the West and New England, and weakest in the South and industrial North.
But it is still a familiar pattern. It is similar to a map of the tendency toward racism by region, according to measures like the prevalence of Google searches for racial slurs and racist jokes, or scores on implicit association tests.
But remember: no fair confusing correlation and causation! This might just be a big coincidence.
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Look what I found at the 99¢ store last night: Mexican marshmallows. (Cat shown for scale.) According to the package, they can be used to make all manner of tasty treats. So what should I make? Or should I just toss them into a bowl tonight as a New Year’s Eve party appetizer?
And speaking of that, when did New Year’s Eve become NYE? I’ve only just noticed it this year, which probably means it started five or ten years ago. Is this a texting thing invented by those ubiquitous “millennials” I hear so much about, because they didn’t want to spell out the whole thing once a year on their “smartphones”? Or what?
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Via Christopher Ingraham, we have some new research showing when to get married if you want to minimize your risk of divorce. Here is Nicholas Wolfinger: “My data analysis shows that prior to age 32 or so, each additional year of age at marriage reduces the odds of divorce by 11 percent. However, after that the odds of divorce increase by 5 percent per year.”
Hmmm. In the chart it looks more like 29 is the ideal age, but I got married at 32, so I’ll take it. Unfortunately, this is for people getting married now. For people who got married back when I got married, the older the better. Today, for some reason, it’s the older the better until age 32, and then the divorce risk curves back up. Why the change? After a bit of statistical argle bargle, Wolfinger admits he can’t really figure it out. But he’s willing to guess:
My money is on a selection effect: the kinds of people who wait till their thirties to get married may be the kinds of people who aren’t predisposed toward doing well in their marriages. For instance, some people seem to be congenitally cantankerous. Such people naturally have trouble with interpersonal relationships. Consequently they delay marriage, often because they can’t find anyone willing to marry them. When they do tie the knot, their marriages are automatically at high risk for divorce. More generally, perhaps people who marry later face a pool of potential spouses that has been winnowed down to exclude the individuals most predisposed to succeed at matrimony.
I totally agree on the congenitally cantankerous observation, but I’m not sure that’s changed much since 1995. There were lots of cantankerous people back then too. So I’ll put my money on some other explanation. I’m just not sure what it is yet.
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Here’s an interesting poll analysis from Reuters. It shows demographic shifts since the 2012 elections, and it turns out that most groups are pretty stable. There are three exceptions. On the plus side for conservatives, Jews have become slightly more Republican. But on the minus side, Hispanics and young whites have become significantly more Democratic.
Hispanics are no surprise. Republicans have spent the past three years loudly opposing comprehensive immigration reform and playing “can you top this?” when it comes to border security. Then along came Donald Trump, with his murderers and rapists and his big, beautiful wall. The only surprise here is Hispanics haven’t moved further away from the Republican Party.
But it’s certainly odd that Republicans are losing both Hispanics and young whites. Or maybe not. Older whites are generally attracted to traditional conservative values and the vague racial dog whistles that Republicans specialize in. But younger whites are probably turned off by social troglodytism—especially anti-gay animus—and don’t respond to the dog whistles one way or another. So they’re leaving.
I guess it’s time for yet another Republican post mortem that they can then proceed to ignore. Why wait until after the election, after all?
From:
Republican Demographic Problems Aren’t Just For the Future Anymore
Mother Jones
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Let us continue our year-end search for random things to write about because nothing important is happening. Did you know that the number of twin births has been rising steadily for the past three decades? It has. And the number of triplet births skyrocketed through 1998, but has been dropping ever since.
This comes from the CDC’s final report on births for 2014, which is chock full of everything you might want to know about US birth and fertility rates. The increase in triplet births is most likely due to the rising use of fertility therapies, and the drop after 1998 is likely due to improvements in fertility therapies. The reason for the steady increase in twins is less clear, since it seems too large to be accounted for by fertility treatments.
Interestingly, blacks have the highest twin rate and Hispanics have the lowest. For triplets, whites have the highest rate—probably because the triplet rate is influenced by expensive fertility treatments, which whites are more able to afford than others. Other statistics for 2014:
Number of cesarean births: 32 percent
Number of babies that are firstborns: 38.8 percent
Number of babies that are 8th-borns or higher: 0.5 percent
State with the most births: California
State with the highest birth rate: Utah
State with the lowest birth rate: New Hampshire
Births to unmarried women: 40.2 percent
Number of mothers with weight gain of less than 11 pounds: 8.7 percent
Number of mothers with weight gain of more than 40 pounds: 21.6 percent
Number of births in hospitals: 98.5 percent
Number of births 3+ weeks early: 9.5 percent
Number of babies with very low birthweight: 1.4 percent
Number of black babies with very low birthweight: 2.9 percent
Teen birth rate: 2.45 percent, yet another record low
Taken from:
Here’s a Whole Bunch of Interesting Facts and Figures About Births and Babies
Mother Jones
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Over at the Washington Post, Jessica Contrera has a list of what’s out and what’s in for 2016. I assume that all the out stuff used to be in, and I was curious how many I had heard of. Answer: 45 out of 64. There were 19 items on the list that I had no clue about. Vetements? Ghosting? Pulp? (Actually, I’ve always liked my OJ pulpy, but I didn’t know this had become a thing.) Additionally, there are items like squad goals and walls, which I either understand or can figure out, but which I also didn’t know had become things. I assume squad goals are like group goals, but for small groups? Let’s google it.
Crap. I was totally wrong:
Everyone has a different name for that group of friends you do everything with….A group of friends is called a squad now (as seen in the phrase: squad deep, when your whole crew is together). Squads, of course, have goals….So, what are squad goals, then? Well, there’s no official definition for it (yet), but here’s mine:
Squad Goal (skwäd/ɡōl) (noun) (plural noun: squad goals): an aspirational term for what you’d like your group of friends to be or accomplish.
Your squad goals are entirely dependent on the members of your squad; so, while some people’s squad goals involve looking like the celebs in the famous Ellen selfie, others might involve reading every Jane Austen book in the NY Public Library. Much like eating a Reese’s, there is no wrong way to squad goal.
This was a thing in 2015? Seriously? I guess this is yet another reason I’m not really going to miss 2015. I’m guessing that 2016 is the year that Donald Trump finally gets his inevitable comeuppance, so it’s almost bound to be better. Right?
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Whereas 2014 brought us the ramen burger and a full fledged quinoa craze, 2015 brought a whole new set of tasty trends. Let’s run through a few of our faves, shall well?
Overall Trends
The death of dairy. With more non-dairy options entering the market at a fast clip, dairy consumption was down in 2015. Through the first seven months of the year,U.S.dairyexports shrunk 11 percent.So what is moving in instead? A larger variety of dairy-free options.Ben & Jerry’s announced their first non-dairy line, and larger coffee houses continued to move past soy milk, with additions of coconut, almond and hemp options.
Plant-foods. In 2015, vegetable-based cuisine continued its steady march toward the new normal. More high-end restaurants began adding creative vegetarian options to their menus (sayonara, simple side salad) and the National Restaurant Association noted an overall 5 percent increase in vegan and vegetarian dining options. However, the increase in plant fare doesn’t necessarily exclude meat. Omnivorous spots are also kicking up their use of local, fresh produce, pairing them with meaty accents. This brings us to…
Local. The focus on going local only increased in 2015, with more emphasis on environmental sustainability and hyper-local sourcing, the National Restaurant Association reported. Farm-to-table restaurants, neighborhood co-ops and CSA shares continued to rise in popularity as more consumers wise up to sustainable farming methods.
Less processed foods. More and more consumers are choosing to skip processed foods, with whole foods skyrocketing in 2015, according to the National Restaurant Association. Some tops favorites: sweet potatoes, avocado and leafy greens.
Specific eats
Cold brew coffee. Cold brew coffeecoffee and espresso prepped with cold water instead of the traditional hot varietysaw an uptickin 2015. Starbucks launched a cold brew line and FourSquare recorded over 200 independent shops serving the chilly beverage.
Fancy ice cream sandwiches. Ice cream between brownies, cookies, waffles oh my! Although dairy was down this year, the ice cream sandwich had a bit of an uprising, with revamped versions of the childhood favorite gracing menus across the country. The trend could possibly be traced back to LA’s trendy Coolhaus, which features ice cream stuffed between a load of strange architecturally inspired options, including fruit pebble cookies.
Avocado toast. According to Eater, 2015 was the year of the Avocado Toast. On Foursquare, mentions of “avocado toast” increased 270 percent from 2014, and overall internet searches for the nibble spiked greatly.
So what will we see in 2016? Experts and top chefs alike are expecting an uptick in seaweed consumption, African-inspired flavors and pulses, aka legumes. Bring on the lentils!
Related
Is Yogurt the Key to Happiness?
5 Foods and Herbs that Eliminate Stubborn Pain
Best Tips for Cooking Beans
Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.
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