Branson’s Virgin America airlines might be gobbled up by Alaska Air. Virgin loyalists will likely be disappointed, but Alaska Air is the best airline around.

Academic tracking is branded as racist by some, but it’s good for minority honor students.

I support localized minimum wages in part because a lot of the jobs affected are not those that can easily be relocated. When you’re talking about a statewide $15/hr minimum wage, though, you’re talking about over 1/3 of the manufacturing jobs in California.

Even if Trump is thwarted, I don’t think I’ll ever forgive the Trumpkins for driving me to vote for Ted Cruz. To be honest, I am still not sure whether he is a phony careerist or a genuine maniac.

If you care about smoking, drinking, and vaping, here’s a helpful index on where in Europe you should live.

Accusations are flying that through “acting workshops,” actors are being forced to pay for auditions. {via Saul}

how-to-hack-an-election/”>hacking elections in Latin America for a while. If the Trump era passes, maybe the GOP should give him a call.

We really, really hate each other. Relatedly, Alan Jacobs riffs off Scott Alexander’s seminal piece on hating the outgroup.

I’ll confess, I was hoping this article would be about Saddam-like body doubles for Ted Cruz.

Melvin Rogers argues that civility matters.

The UK is moving closer to mini-nuclear.

Bren Smith says that seas will save us! Well, more specifically, ocean farming.

Join the Wizard’s Chill Quest. If he’s a wizard, though, why does he need a Kickstarter?

I sort of want to go to this impersonating a Monsanto executive to give Rearden’s speech from Atlas Shrugged.

Vigilantism! With drones! Not sure it’s actual vigilantism, but it’s certainly interesting. Other sex-worker “vigilantism,” though, may be backfiring.

I’m reading a book on parenting difficult children (I love Lain, but we have a difficulty problem). I may have some more thoughts on the book to share at a later date, but there was one disconnected tidbit I wanted to share. The author, John Rosemond, was trying to make the case that parents should not ask their children questions that (a) the parent knows the answer to and (b) the child doesn’t want to answer. In the specific context of the book, it was “Do you have chewing gum in your mouth?” and the rationale against this is that the child will lie or evade answering and it creates unnecessary drama. Instead, the parent should simply say “You have chewing gum in your mouth and you need to spit it out.” It’s a fair point, within certain constraints. But I found the example he used to be kind of funny:

If a state trooper pulled you over and asked, “Excuse me, but were you speeding?” would you admit it if you had been? C’mon! Be honest! The closest you’d come to telling the truth would be, “I don’t think so.” That’s why state troopers, when they pull you over, simply say, “I stopped you because you were speeding.” If they ask no questions, speeders are far less likely to tell lies.

I found this funny because, well, isn’t it the case that the cops always ask you a question when they approach you? That question isn’t “Were you speeding?” but rather “Do you know why I pulled you over?”

The rationale, from what I understand, is that if you give the correct reason, you’re going to have a hard time denying it later. Or something like that. Apparently the question has gone out of style, but I think a lot of cops never got the memo if that’s the case.

In response to a hate crime, a German soccer team digitally altered a photo of their team to make the players appear black to “make it clear that [players who were victims of hateful acts] are an inherent part of our team, and not a minority on whom you can use violence to let off your personal frustration.” Which naturally lead to some concern:

Is this ever a good idea? After two of their teammates were victimized by what the club called a racist attack, members of Deinster SV posted a photo showing their faces digitally altered to make them appear black skinned. The highly questionable bit of photoshopping actually came from a good place – their teammates are Sudanese refugees and the players wrote on their Facebook page:

“Violence against refugees is pathetic. Emad and Amar, you are one of us just like everyone else and we’re happy you are with us.”

In fairness to the players, their post has more than 17,000 responses on Facebook, almost all of which are positive. But a few commenters couldn’t help but note that even this well-intentioned gesture hits a little too close to home for some.

The author asks “Is this ever a good idea?”

Well, in the US it’s certainly not. Not ever. The thing is, though, that this wasn’t the US. We were not the target audience. The African-American population here that understandably objects to blackface was not the audience here. Whether they should have done it, or not, is not especially our business. Or, more precisely, it is not up to a German soccer team to conform to our sensibilities. If the applicable population in Germany feels the same way, then the team ought to apologize. If a bunch of people half the world away, who were neither the targets of derision or sympathy object, it’s not really our business any more than a swastika in India.

We have a very specific history with blackface, as outlined in the article. Though I sort of take exception to the example of Aloha (wherein, from what I understand, looking white was an intended part of the character), we have a history of minstrels and mockery. Does Germany have that history? Or is the blackface more associated with the Dutch holiday? The article simply doesn’t say, and we’re not really qualified to fill in all of the blankis.

There are other cases where maybe we can get involved, but only if we own some ownership over the situation. Telling Southern Italy “Hey, it’s actually not cool to use the Confederate Flag like that” is somewhere between entirely appropriate or understandable. It’s our symbol. Even then, there should be a degree of mutual understanding that it doesn’t quite mean to them what it means to us. But somebody’s gotta tell them, if they don’t know. If they do? Well, there’s global multiculturalism for you, I guess.

They sort of admit the context angle at the end, but nonetheless close with “our cultural referees to pull out a red card in protest” as though it’s our business to be referees in this particular case.