The thing is, if smoking is to remain legal, smokers need to be able to smoke somewhere. We’re not going to effectively ban it in a giant game of process-of-elimination.

The thing is, if Australian officials can’t actually be expected to look at every game that’s released, the best solution is not “well, then, games just won’t be released.”

Even critics of the Confederate Flag are rolling their eyes at the removing of Dukes of Hazzard from TV, but Tommy Christopher argues that – even though Dukes of Hazzard actually had more black characters than did Friends – it’s actually complicated. Made more so, in my view, that I’m not sure anything legitimized the use of the flag among my generation as much as that TV show did. I’m personally hoping that this spurs A&E to do a reboot with a couple good ole boy weed-couriers driving a car sporting a new design.

The headline says it all: Woman gives birth, fights off bees, starts wildfire in Northern California

A man in Texas says “Fuck that alligator,” gets eaten by alligator. The death was avenged, however.

I’m not saying this is okay, but I will say that people have died in fights over dumber things.

Man, I did not need to see this so soon before our three-legged flight to Alaska.

Is Puerto Rico’s debt crisis about to cause a mass exodus?

BBC explains how you dismantle a nuclear submarine.

James Poulos argues that Silicon Valley and the Pentagon should team up to colonize space.

Residents of Beijing are fleeing the pollution.

A study from BYU looks at the happiness in marriage and divorce, and has some interesting findings, among them that the trajectory from happiness to unhappiness in divorce is not as gradual as many of us assume.

That time when Ray Bradbury was lectured that he didn’t understand his own book, and five other misunderstood books.

A few weeks ago I found a really good deal on a Thinkpad T520. One that was $100 below the price point of purchasing one. So what the hell. It didn’t have an SSD hard drive, so I went ahead and ordered one. Everything else was just right.

The funny thing is, when it arrived it did have an SSD hard drive. Weird, right? It also had the wrong version of Windows, Home Premium instead of Home Basic. A win! Then I looked at the corner of the screen bezel to see if it was a W520 or a T520 (I couldn’t remember which I’d ordered), and I saw it was a… T510. I looked to make sure that it had the 8GB of RAM, and while it did I noticed that it had an i5 rather than an i7 processor.

So… I must have gotten the wrong computer. Truth be told, the specs were kind of a wash. Better OS and better HD, worse model number and processor. Should I say anything? I decided to go ahead and contact the seller. Maybe I could get them to knock off $25 or something from the price. Or maybe he needed to know that he had sent my computer out to someone else. And if I were the seller, I’d want to know.

I got a very, very panicked response in a few minutes. He asked me to send the computer back and he’d throw in an extra hard drive with the right computer. For a few reasons, namely that working out the timeline in my head the computer would not be arriving until after a trip we’re taking later in the month, I didn’t want to do that. I wrote back saying that I either wanted to buy the computer he sent me, or if he’d sold it someone else, I would prefer to just get my money back.

I admit that I pressed my advantage a little bit because I knew he was panicked. At the same time, I told him that as long as we came to a satisfactory resolution, he wouldn’t get a negative review. It was obviously an honest mistake. It was also apparent that English was not his first language, and I have a real soft spot for immigrant entrepreneurs. We haggled a bit over the price of the machine that I’d been sent. He looked up other T510’s and saw that they were selling for about $175 less than I’d purchased. But, he pointed out, I’d gotten a better hard drive than is in most of those machines. So we added the cost of the hard drive upgrade and that was that. I could have pressed harder (considering that he’d offered me a new hard drive!), but I also could have mentioned that some of the specs on the machine were unusually good (specifically, the 1920×1080 resolution) and that was worth more to me than the hard drive.

The end result is that it was a pretty good deal all around. I would have paid the T520 price for the T510, but instead got it for $120 less than I was willing to pay. He, on the other hand, did not get a negative review and I suspect would have been willing to sell it to me for the $175 discount if I’d pushed him on it.

A little while ago, Cameron Crowe took some heat for casting Emma Stone in a role for a character with a Vietnamese name. In his (non-apology) apology, he wrote:

Thank you so much for all the impassioned comments regarding the casting of the wonderful Emma Stone in the part of Allison Ng. I have heard your words and your disappointment, and I offer you a heart-felt apology to all who felt this was an odd or misguided casting choice. As far back as 2007, Captain Allison Ng was written to be a super-proud ¼ Hawaiian who was frustrated that, by all outward appearances, she looked nothing like one. A half-Chinese father was meant to show the surprising mix of cultures often prevalent in Hawaii. Extremely proud of her unlikely heritage, she feels personally compelled to over-explain every chance she gets. The character was based on a real-life, red-headed local who did just that.

From the start of this “controversy” I had wondered if this was the case. That the fact that she didn’t look Asian was built in to the character. Since it is, that makes casting a non-Asian actor very appropriate. Which lets Cameron Crowe off the book, at least as far as I am concerned. You could ask “Well, why doesn’t Crowe change the character to match our preferred casting.” Which itself might be reasonable, if the story would be better that way. Maybe so. Haven’t seen it.

This drags us a bit into how frustrating these sorts of conversations almost always are. People point out something that looks like an example of racism or sexism. Defenders say “Hey, sometimes things work out that way.” And sometimes, as in this case, they can actually point to particular circumstances that do justify otherwise awkward casting. Or justify a fifty-seven year old actor with a 20-something female love interest. Or an all-white cast. Or any number of things. Which brings us to Maggie Gyllenhaal:

Maggie Gyllenhaal recently lost a film role because she was apparently “too old” to play the love interest of a 55-year-old man, the 37-year-old actress revealed in a new interview with The Wrap.

“There are things that are really disappointing about being an actress in Hollywood that surprise me all the time,” Gyllenhall said. “I’m 37 and I was told recently I was too old to play the lover of a man who was 55. It was astonishing to me.”

While she declined to identify the project’s name—because Gyllenhall is all class—she said she was eventually able to laugh off the rejection.

“It made me feel bad, and then it made me feel angry, and then it made me laugh.”

It’s hard to assess whether this decision was appropriate to the story or not, without knowing what the story was. There are times when it might indeed be appropriate to cast two characters of differing ages. I mean, it wouldn’t have quite worked if Mrs Robinson had been the same age as Ben Braddock in The Graduate (though, notably, Mrs Robinson is not who the Ben Braddock ended up with). And with any single example, a decision can be justified. It’s when the decisions create a pattern that the complaints take on significance, and even if every single instance can be justified because that’s sometimes how things happen, patterns should not be ignored.

Now, the answer to this could be “That’s just capitalism, baby!” Which is the answer you usually hear when the pattern is pointed out. Or when people complain about the lack of minorities, female leading parts, or whatnot. (It’s certainly something I hear whenever I talk about how TV shows overwhelmingly take place in a handful of places, or Trumwill’s Law.) And depending on the subject, I sometimes believe it’s true (and other times believe it’s mostly a product of the creators being white, male, urbanite, liberal, etc.)

In the case of racial casting, though, and the sexism/ageism thing, it’s not entirely clear to me whether it’s capitalism or not. I mean, I’m inclined to say “Not entirely” on the first and “Mostly” on the second. That’s guessing, and I think the impetus should be on Hollywood to better demonstrate that it’s not actually them because I have a general suspicion. But whether it’s Hollywood or Hollywood pointing a mirror back at the paying public, it is worth talking about and I believe a lot of people are entirely too dismissive.

I got some old Sesame Street shows on video. They come with a disclaimer. Here’s the story on that. (Oscar the Grouch being orange was weird to see.)

Speaking of Sesame Street, is it responsible for the gentrification of Brooklyn?

This is, indeed, some pretty impressive photoshopping work. Beautiful of horrifying at the same time.

Now that’s a state slogan: You can die on Mars, or you can live in South Dakota.

Sometimes being smart can help you be much more impressively unwise.

If you think that alpha males and hypergamy are a problem today, it was way worse 8,000 years ago.

In his argument against raising the minimum wage, Reihan Salam makes a point that I have in the past: The appropriate minimum wage for Massachusetts is probably not the appropriate minimum wage for Mississippi (even if we assume the same value system).

For a nation that consumes so little electricity, North Korea is evidently an ecological disaster.

Some Alabamians are saddled with such court costs that they end up committing crimes to pay for them.

The biggest lab diagnostic company in the country is about to let patients bypass doctors and order tests on their own.

How Superman kicked the KKK’s butt.

New Coke was easily the biggest fiasco in soft drink history. Despite its infamy – or perhaps even because of it – I’m surprised they never tried a re-release. I bet a lot of people would love to get another chance to try it and see if it was as bad as remembered/advertised.

Some teenagers designed a movable village of tiny houses for the homeless.

The coolest one of this list of eight celebrities criticizing Nashville Country is Merle Haggard’s: “Too much boogie boogie wham-bam and not enough substance.”

It’s easier to live with less when you have more.

Varad Mehta says that we can’t let the Wookies win, but Anthony Domanico disagrees.

Emma Pierson contemplates being an affirmative action admit.

A report suggests that Austin needs to increase the number of granny flats.

A couple years ago, Sweden instituted a program to text people who knew CPR when there is someone around who needs it, and now they’re texting blood donors when their donated blood is used.

Jane The Actuary looks at College For All, Lee Siegel, and path dependency, with an eye towards Europe’s different expectations for its college-bound than we have.

Whenever there is a breakout at the zoo, it’s only the flamingos that get away. Here’s why.

It looks like Terry Pratchett will have no successor to write the Discworld novels.

Good walls make good coworkers. I actually found, over the years, that I prefer cubicles to offices and prefer the open environment to a closed one. This is, for me, quite odd.

Here are the eight strictest states when it comes to homeschooling. North Dakota, I’m disappointed in you.

In Mansfield, Ohio, Stranger Danger training has possibly saved children from a nefarious man who got out of his car to wave to his children.

InsideClimate News wonders why TV meteorologists don’t believe in climate change. Jose Duarte says that the “97% consensus” on climate change is closer to 80%.

Relatedly, Francie Diep looks at physicians who don’t believe in evolution.

If you’ve lived or work there, Minnesota may owe you money. But if so, they aren’t telling. Some of y’all may recall a few years ago I found out Deltona owed me money (somewhere between $100-200, if I recall). I found out about it shortly before I found out that it was going to claim it outright.

The Atlantic looks at what it would take to double a cell phone’s battery life. Getting to 24 hours with intense use is something that absolutely happens. If you want to take away my removable batter, you absolutely need to do that first. If Samsung hasn’t by the time I need a phone, I may have to get LG (assuming they don’t flip).

Wall Street Journal looks at how colleges are struggling with Chinese student application fraud.

Meanwhile, Asian-Americans are suing Harvard and hiring consultants to tell them to downplay the whole ‘coming from Vietnam with $2 in a rickety boat and swimming away from sharks’ thing. (Perhaps swimming lessons are a mark of privilege…)

Maybe we don’t need to see St. Louis burn, because Puerto Rico already has:

The report cites one surprising problem: the federal minimum wage, which is at the same level in Puerto Rico as in the rest of the country, even though the economy there is so much weaker. There are probably some people who would like to work, but because of the sickly economy, businesses can’t afford to pay them the minimum wage.

Someone working full time for the minimum wage earns $15,080 a year, which isn’t that much less than the median income in Puerto Rico of $19,624.

The report also cites regulations and restrictions that make it difficult to set up new businesses and hire workers, although it’s difficult to know just how large an effect these rules might or might not have on the labor market.

A report by the New York Fed also suggests that Puerto Rico has a relatively large underground economy employing a big part of the population. These workers aren’t taxed or counted in formal employment numbers.

In any case, it’s relatively expensive to hire and pay workers in Puerto Rico, which along with the high cost of transportation, energy and other goods, means that fewer tourists are planning trips to Puerto Rico than they were a decade ago and the number of hotel beds is the same as it was four decades ago, according to Krueger and her colleagues.

This doesn’t speak to the appropriate minimum wage level in high-cost places like Los Angeles and Seattle, but it does point to the dangers of setting a national minimum wage with those places in mind and disregarding other places. Notably, the Washington Post itself downplayed the downside to the Puerto Rican minimum wage just a few months ago:

Based on that experience, Freeman thinks a few things might happen if the federal minimum goes up to $12. First, some companies might find ways to work around it, either by having their employees work off the clock or by turning them into independent contractors. That’s not ideal, but it at least allows people to keep collecting some paycheck.

“There are many ways that firms and workers will make sure that people don’t lose their jobs,” Freeman says. “If you say that 90 percent of the people get higher wages, and that’s what you want to have happen, and then 10 percent find ways to wiggle around so they keep their jobs, that’s a pretty good outcome.”

Second, if jobs do disappear, Freeman figures that people will move to areas of greater opportunity. “Minimum-wage workers tend to be young people, so they’re reasonably mobile,” he says. “Mississippi is the lowest-wage state in the country. If it tips you to move to Georgia, which has higher wages, that’s a reasonable response.”

Which, to me, involved a lot of handwaving away. I don’t mind people moving from Mississippi to Atlanta for the sake of greater economic opportunity. I don’t even mind bribing them to move if it’s better for the economy overall and better for their long-term prospects. But this isn’t really that. This is sort of handwaving damage done to the Mississippi economy in a “burning a village to save it” sort of capacity. And unnecessarily so, given the lack of portability of most minimum wage jobs. A lot of people won’t leave, and a lot of jobs will still need to be done. And allowing them to work for less – and allowing employers to pay less – is not a strike against the dignity of the worker, who can afford to live as well in Mississippi as someone with a higher minimum wage would be able to live in Atlanta.

But even setting aside the emigration question, there remains the question about those who stay behind. Which is the problem that Puerto Rico is facing now and the problem that Mississippi too would face. And could become a problem for a majority of the country. The $12 minimum wage nationally is analogous to the hike that occurred in Puerto Rico, to the point that the Washington Post felt comfortable pointing to it as a reason not to fear its repercussions.

Minimum wage advocate Arindrajit Dube is unmoved, however. There almost certainly is more to it than just the minimum wage. And perhaps the Krueger report is misguided entirely? The problems described therein, though, do seem real and precisely of the sort critics of the minimum wage have argued would occur.

Again, this isn’t an argument against raising the minimum wage – or even raising it aggressively in places – but it does suggest a degree of caution is warranted. Contrary to what I’ve heard some people say, raising the minimum wage to $12/hr (much less $15) is not bringing it in line with historical norms. It’s breaking new ground, at least over a dollar an hour highest than the highest minimum wage we’ve ever had (and which we had only briefly). That should be reason for concern, and Puerto Rico provides justification of proceeding with caution.

{Link via Oscar Gordon}

Sayeth the Transplanted Lawyer:

From where I sit, it’s fantastically obvious that anti-discrimination law at both the Federal and state levels ought to include rather than exclude sexual orientation as a protected class. We’ve protected sexual orientation by statute in California the same way we’ve protected race and sex and religion since 1992, with no apparent adverse consequences to either our economy or our citizens’ ability to enjoy religious freedom. Congress should pass ENDA. Further, Congress should amend Title VII to include sexual orientation as a protected status, and not rely on the courts to use questionable language and logic games to shoehorn “sexual orientation” into “sex” or “marital status.” If Congress does this, it can write in protections for religious freedom, and not have to rely on courts to do that, too.

This has happened already in Utah, whose body politic is dominated by no less conservative a religious institution as the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints, found a way to reconcile itself with the inevitability of same-sex marriage. But bringing Republicans around to the notion that such a legislative scheme represents the best of all remaining possible worlds for social conservatives may take some work: it will require people of good faith who disliked the Obergefell ruling and see a need arising from it to protect religious liberties to accept that the perfect cannot be allowed to be the enemy of the good — and it will require people of good faith who, like me, rejoiced at Obergefell to concede that sincerely religious people are not going to give up their religious beliefs that same-sex marriages are strictly legal matters which their consciences forbid them from blessing.

It’s been interesting watching the “what next” debate light up on Twitter focusing around polygamy (goosed on by Freddie deBoer who openly advocates it, but mostly by conservatives who are itching to be able to say “I told you so”), when the more fertile ground really is, as Burt says, anti-discrimination law. Perhaps it’s because polygamy is simple to talk about, and a lot of people don’t even know that anti-gay discrimination is actually still legal. The dude in Tennessee probably thinks that his sign is okay because Freedom of Religion, when in fact it’s okay because of the absence of anti-discrimination law that most people probably assume is in place. Indeed, the whole debate in Indiana was built around the premise that their RFRA was allowing forbidden discrimination when said discrimination was not actually forbidden.

And even I have been wrong on this in the past. When I lived in Deseret, the legal counsel of my employer was fired when the company’s president discovered that he was gay. This came right after the rest of the staff had been let go. He was the one they felt could do the job of what used to be a department of three, but apparently only if he preferred the intimate company of women to that of men. And when this happened, I was really quite stunned to find out that it was perfectly legal according to Deseretian law. The company’s president didn’t even need to find an excuse. Gay? Fired. Even in Deseret, and even among my Mormon coworkers, the firing was largely seen as deeply unfair and wrong. The marijuana firings were understood and defended. Somebody may have defended the company’s right to do it (I can’t recall), but nobody defended the decision to.

And with this in mind, I was not surprised when Utah passed the law that Burt refers to. The LDS Church itself signed off on an employment-housing anti-discrimination law in Salt Lake County some time back. It’s going to be pretty hard to find prolonged, vocal opposition to those things. Except, that is, right after people are licking wounds after being slapped down in court and as some Republicans are looking for ways to retaliate. In the same way that the law in Utah was delayed by the ruling that allowed gay marriage, so too will anti-discrimination law. No matter, though, as I don’t expect it to take long.

One of the main reasons that Utah’s law passed is that it stuck to what mattered. My main concern will be the desire to, as Burt states, simply add sexual orientation to the protections offered on the basis of race or religion. That might be a desirable aim, but Utah would have no law right now if they’d insisted upon it. Maybe it should be illegal for Tennessee hardware guy to put up such a sign – it is certainly worthy of condemnation either way – but it also strikes me as not being nearly as fundamentally important as employment, housing, and other essential and emergency services. And for what it’s worth, the Human Rights Campaign agrees with me. As public attitudes change, as Burt and I both believe they will, we can revisit and simplify it.

When I bring this up, a lot of people are bothered by the symbolism of actively allowing discrimination in all but the most obvious of cases or, really, anywhere that we disallow discrimination against racial minorities. I understand the impulse, though I also see different situations as different (in the same way we allow certain gender discrimination where we don’t allow racial discrimination). But most importantly, we should not let our feels and symbolism trump things that will actually make lives better for gays and lesbians that live in states where complete non-discrimination just isn’t possible. Utah passed a law, and North Dakota was on the road to passing a law until the freakout over Indiana sent everybody running for cover. Progress can be made, state by state.

From here it is tempting to take it to the federal level and say “Screw North Dakota and the law we didn’t pass. We can make their law do what we want. Well, we certainly can, but I don’t think that’s particularly advisable. At least, not yet. Because there are things we can make them do and things we want them to do that we cannot make them do. Playing too firmly on the first set of issues makes progress on the second more difficult. We can make Tennessee Hardware Guy serve gays, but we cannot make him put out a sign that says “Proceeds from sales to gay customers will go to [anti-gay group].” Nor can we prevent them from putting up signs like the one that angered the lesbian couple in Canada to the point that they did not want to do business with that establishment.

Some things can’t wait for consensus. The rights and privileges of marriage were – at least arguably – among them. I firmly believe that anti-employment and anti-housing (including hotels and whatnot) discrimination are also among them. But at a certain point after that, I think it actually does more good for gays who live in Utah to have limited but locally supported protections than federally imposed ones that breed resentment. My calculus on this may change in the future (as it did – or came close to doing – on court-imposed SSM), but that’s where we are right now. Let’s get the essentials passed. And as minds and hearts change, further laws can be passed (or, even more optimistically, rendered unnecessary).

Priceonomics has an article about the end of the one-hit wonder:

From 2005 to 2010, the fraction of songs by artists that never made the chart again hit an all-time low. It’s important to keep in mind that these numbers are conservative, as several of the bands that generated these possible one-hit wonders could still hypothetically produce another hit someday. In other words, UGK still has a chance to write another “International Players Anthem” and scale the charts again (note: as one reader points out though, this particular chance is extremely unlikely).

This is part-and-parcel of a larger phenomenon that they talk about, which is the increasing conservatism of the radio in general. My favorite story is when a conglomerate purchased a very popular radio station in Colosse that was known for introducing new artists to the nation. They decided that the station would be even more popular if they declined to play any single that hadn’t been on the radio for at least a month. Within a year, they seemed to have changed formats and were playing techno and dance music. But for the same reasons that the radio stations are not keen on playing new music, they’re also less keen on taking a chance on any new artists. Which means that they’re less likely to run across that otherwise mediocre band with that one great song. Or more favorably, it could be described as giving artists with that one hit much more investment, helping to assure that they will have follow-up hits.

It’s an interesting article, and you should read it.

According to the chart of one-hit wonders, the nineties were a watershed year for them. I mean, sure enough if I look through the list there are a lot of songs there that I like. The nineties were the prime of life as far as listening to new music, so of course they would ring familiar. The top song on the list is Duncan Sheik’s “Barely Breathing” which holds a particular sentimental value. Also holding some sentimental value is Deep Blue Something’s “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.” Unlike “Barely Breathing” that I like through and through I am relatively indifferent to the song itself, but some time after its release I met Porky, and it informally became our song. Which if you remember the song, is kind of odd because it’s a song about a relationship falling apart and seems about as sincere as a snake.

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Some of those on the list I was surprised to see, mostly because I remember followups that I thought were as good as the initial release. For instance, after “Sonny Came Home,” Shawn Colvin released “You and the Mona Lisa” which I consider far more memorable. And while I consider “The Freshman” to be the best Verve Pipe song, I thought “Hero” was a pretty solid follow-up.

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When I got Rhapsody in 2004, I actually started listening to some of the CDs of a lot of one-hit wonders from the 90’s. And… well for a lot of them there was a reason that they only had that one hit. This was not news to me. Everybody’s taken a chance on a CD only to discover that either they poured their heart out into the one song, or it was the one song that they didn’t write themselves. One of the biggest surprises, though, was Marcy Playground, whose “Sex and Candy” makes the list towards the bottom. It turned out, they were a band that I liked through-and-through.

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Of course, good music stopped coming out around 2011, which coincidentally is when I turned 33:

When you reach 33 years or older, you will stop discovering new music, according to a new online study. New research, based on U.S. Spotify users, concludes that 33 is the average age when people stop listening to new music.

“While teens’ music taste is dominated by incredibly popular music,” the study says, “this proportion drops steadily through peoples’ 20s, before their tastes ‘mature’ in their early 30s.”

The study reports one reason for people’s transition away from popular music:

“First, listeners discover less-familiar music genres that they didn’t hear on FM radio as early teens, from artists with a lower popularity rank. Second, listeners are returning to the music that was popular when they were coming of age — but which has since phased out of popularity.”

The research also suggests that “men and women listen similarly in their teens, but after that, men’s mainstream music listening decreases much faster than it does for women.” While people with children tend to stop listening to new music earlier than their peers.

I actually started stopping well before 33. Mostly. Every now and again I will fire up Pandora and find some new artists. But country, which was one of my staples, started shifting away from what I enjoy. The local music scene – and its general flavor – that fueled a lot of my listening kind of died. Alternative and a lot of pop speaks rather specifically to a phase of life I’ve passed. So the primary use of that genre is to take me back to a different time, and old music does that better because it was there with me. Also, I listen to less music of any stripe.

Another factor that could have hastened the decline of my interest in new music was is the collapse in price for exposure. Which sounds wrong, but near the tail end of the phase of my life where I listened to new music, Rhapsody occurred. And then, suddenly, it was all there. In an alternate timeline, I would have had to buy CDs one at a time and would have had to try new things and give them a chance. Remember when you were young, your resources were limited, and you got that new CD? How you listened to every track? These days, apart from the audiobooks I listen to in lieu of music, I no longer have to listen to a song for long enough to really absorb it. I’m not as invested. In that sense, those who argued against the availability of music may have had more of a point than I realized.

Either that, or really it just all went downhill in 2011.

How activists investors are improving our lives, Olive Garden edition.

Ever want to give a eulogy at your own funeral? Now, maybe, you can.

Ross Elliot argues that better suburbs make for better cities.

Fortunately for people who like their contact lenses, people in power like contact lenses, otherwise they might not be legal.

Is there really any way that gun control can work in the age of 3D printers?

I disagree with some of the examples of antagonists who were right, but I pretty much agree about Iceman.

Katerina Cizek argues that Canada needs to recognize that it is a nation of highrises.

Well this is a lovely story, if true. A man’s wife runs off with their daughter. Sixteen years later he finally tracks her down, discovers that she spent most of that time in foster care, and then is handed a bill.

According to Brookings, even controlling for the obvious factors, getting welfare correlates with unhappiness. They blame the stigma.

The rise and fall of Subway. There’s actually a case that this is less about Subway and more about the state of affairs of those who sell to those who are well off and to those who are not.

Professor Alan Matthews argues that Ireland should, in the words of Michael Brendan Dougherty, “stop making food its people can eat, start planting trees they can’t sell.”

Hayley Manguia reports that the class of 2014 is doing alright. Naturally, I’m more interested in the helpful chart about positive and negative outcomes for various majors.

Wait, there’s an equivalent of the Kelley Blue Book for… used sneakers?

Not only is the Great Inversion not really happening in the US, but Europe is suburbanizing.

1) The political implications of this may be pretty significant. Though the numbers didn’t disfavor the GOP until more relatively recently, this issue was singularly a stumbling block with the GOP towards a significant portion of the electorate with outsized influence. They’re not going to go flocking to the GOP now, and wouldn’t if the GOP had switched sides sooner, but going forward more people might actually be willing to hear the GOP out. This, combined with the disparate impact in housing ruling (which may damage the Democratic Party in the suburbs), has enormous potential consequences for future political alignment.

2) I would have preferred that this be settled democratically, but some of my earlier concerns about bypassing public opinion hold less weight since public opinion on the issue has shifted. While marriage tends to be a state issue within certain parameters, this is a case where a patchwork of wildly different laws was not tenable. So I find myself not particularly inclined to get upset at the “judicial activism” here. As a practical matter, it is time.

3) I am happy with the result, though less than happy with the ruling itself. I wish that Kennedy had used a different bases for the decision. I’m a bit surprised that Roberts didn’t go along, though that might have been with the comfort of the outcome not being in doubt and had Kennedy waivered, he might have switched. Many of Roberts’s criticisms about the nature of the ruling seem on-point. I’m not worried that public approval of SSM will lead to public approval of polygamy, but am worried that this ruling may allow public approval to be bypassed.

4) That this was settled the way it was is due in good part to a failure of opponents to read the very clear writing on the wall and navigate the situation better once it was clear how this was going to turn out in the long run. Sometimes compromise puts you in a worse position by moving the Overton Window, but sometimes – as in this case – you’re merely propping up a dam that would will only burst with a greater flood when it comes down.

5) A significant chunk of the Democratic Party should be pretty ashamed of themselves. This all could have happened sooner – and with more democratic legitimacy – if they’d shown an ounce of courage on the issue. I’m not even talking about 2004 when there was a significant price to be paid, but between 2007 and 2012 when there wasn’t a huge price (or maybe even a price at all), and they declined to pay it anyway. They could have helped drive public opinion.

6) Twitter was pretty depressing. A lot of liberals seem less happy about their victory than that the other side lost. A lot of otherwise pragmatic conservatives seem to want to dig in rather than say “let’s move on.” This is in contrast to Facebook, which for once actually seemed more grounded in its response.

7) I don’t have a particular problem with states wanting to change the marriage process to avoid clerks being required to issue marriage licenses to marriages that they disapprove. I didn’t object wildly to plans in Oklahoma to do this, and I thought Alabama’s plan made good sense. The latter didn’t pass, and now we’re in a situation where clerks are refusing to do their jobs and gay couples are either left in limbo or having to county-shop when they shouldn’t. The likelihood of this ruling was known well before know. The time to make these provisions was this spring, when legislatures were in sessions. If you didn’t do it then, that’s not anybody’s problem but the state’s. If they want to try again, they can, but until then the county clerks need to do their job or be removed from their post. I support a right of any pastor – whether at a church, running a business, or itinerant – to refuse to perform these services. But public officials are public officials. A judge or JP may have absolute discretion over with whom to conduct ceremonies, but a clerk should issue licenses or file them without regard to personal beliefs. Our government simply can’t function otherwise.

8) I am unclear on what the social status of a rainbow confederate flag is (which I saw in several pictures during the brief window when gay marriage was previously allowed in Alabama).