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At the close of the 2020-21 academic year, women made up 59.5% of college students, an all-time high, and men 40.5%, according to enrollment data from the National Student Clearinghouse, a nonprofit research group. U.S. colleges and universities had 1.5 million fewer students compared with five years ago, and men accounted for 71% of the decline.

This education gap, which holds at both two- and four-year colleges, has been slowly widening for 40 years. The divergence increases at graduation: After six years of college, 65% of women in the U.S. who started a four-year university in 2012 received diplomas by 2018 compared with 59% of men during the same period, according to the U.S. Department of Education.

In the next few years, two women will earn a college degree for every man, if the trend continues, said Douglas Shapiro, executive director of the research center at the National Student Clearinghouse.

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“Is there a thumb on the scale for boys? Absolutely,” said Jennifer Delahunty, a college enrollment consultant who previously led the admissions offices at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, and Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Ore. “The question is, is that right or wrong?”

Ms. Delahunty said this kind of tacit affirmative action for boys has become “higher education’s dirty little secret,” practiced but not publicly acknowledged by many private universities where the gender balance has gone off-kilter.

“It’s unfortunate that we’re not giving this issue air and sun so that we can start to address it,” she said.

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Many young men are hobbled by a lack of guidance, a strain of anti-intellectualism and a growing belief that college degrees don’t pay off, said Ed Grocholski, a senior vice president at Junior Achievement USA, which works with about five million students every year to teach about career paths, financial literacy and entrepreneurship.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/00221465211041031

A central paradox in the mental health literature is the tendency for black Americans to report similar or better mental health than white Americans despite experiencing greater stress exposure. However, black Americans’ higher levels of certain coping resources may explain this finding. Using data from the Nashville Stress and Health Study (n = 1,186), we examine whether black Americans have higher levels of self-esteem, social support, religious attendance, and divine control than white Americans and whether these resources, in turn, explain the black–white paradox in mental health. In adjusted models, the black–white paradox holds for depressive symptoms and any DSM-IV disorder. Findings indicate that black Americans have higher levels of self-esteem, family social support, and religiosity than white Americans.

https://www.ft.com/content/314a387b-4024-4855-9aad-d3d448dbc182

The largest declines in life expectancy were observed among males in the US, who experienced a decline of 2.2 years relative to 2019 levels, followed by Lithuanian males, with a decline of 1.7 years.

“For western European countries such as Spain, England and Wales, Italy, Belgium, among others, the last time such large magnitudes of declines in life expectancy at birth were observed in a single year was during world war two,” said José Manuel Aburto, the study’s co-lead author.

just imagining how crazy it would be to be to a female trying to date with a 1.5:1 ratio. not really sharing to be a white man apologist (though the WSJ optics point was interesting), but how brutal dating for women will become, or how much easier it will be to stand out as a guy.

“If you care about our society, one, and, two, if you care about women, you have to care about the boys, too. If you have equally educated numbers of men and women that just makes a better society, and it makes it better for women.”

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Pen15 (Season 1, 2019, Hulu) - 8/10 adolescent sexual fantasies about your crush’s underwear.  two best friends try to weather the complexities and misadventures of middle school together in this poignant comedy that is meant to tug at all your 2000s nostalgia heartstrings.  i describe this show as a mix of broad city (two female comedians playing best friends with incredible chemistry as well as comically ridiculous twists in certain stories) and big mouth (a crass, less everything-is-puppies-and-roses view of puberty and growing up).  

yes--this is very well tread, almost cliche territory.  one big difference in pen15 (other than the 2000s nostalgia) is the running gag is watching the two female protagonists (in their 30s) attempt to play whiny 12 year olds.  ymmv in terms of how much enjoyment you derive from it though they REALLY play up how annoying middle schoolers are and i do have to say it wasn’t my favorite part of the show.  

and, while the show does have some moments that are IMPOSSIBLY broad and ridiculous that generally succeed (a scene that i definitely taped and shared was a moment where maya cradles thong underwear for 30 seconds while this ethereal gregorian chanting plays in the background), the show i think succeeds more in the way that some moments are understated.  their yearning to fit in.  how much they care about each other.  how sex and peer pressure is so confusing.  EMOTIONS!  and in general, i feel like most of the conflicts feel very real and understandable and not manufactured (which i care a lot about!!).  (episodes are honestly a bit hit or miss, but do NOT give up before the last two episodes!!  also, episodes 101 (UGIS), ep 105 (thong underwear), and ep 106 (maya’s asian-ness))

(i would be remiss without comparing it to one of my favorite movies, eighth grade.  eighth grade was overall actually quite understated and existed almost entirely in this space where it was so ambitious in how uneventful the movie is, in some ways.  and eighth grade is about one girl who is very quiet and isolated vs two best friends.  but both pen15 and eighth grade hit similar notes in terms of how tender and sensitive and mean and amazing kids can be.)

reflecting on my own childhood after watching pen15....  i feel like even though these girls are the losers of their middle school, they were still way cooler (sexually, drug wise, alcohol wise) than me as a senior in high school????  and i’m just really thankful that the people at my school were nice enough not to bully me for my race or what i wore or my looks or my sexuality or any of A MILLION THINGS they could have done to make me feel like a loser.  

but hahaha so many random throwbacks.  LIKE AIM??? and wild things???  

I am hiding The you I show to you is just a lie

PEN15 (2019)

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Mrs. America (Hulu, 2020) - 7.5/10 states that have ratified the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA).  a stacked cast re-enact this dramatization of the 1970s fight against the ERA and the women’s liberation movement, which was a constitutional amendment to prohibit discrimination on the basis of gender.  

living in the silicon valley bubble of wokeness, it’s hard to imagine how ignorant/misogynist/stupid people would have to be to oppose something that seems so obvious and so fundamental to the way society should work.  on top of that, it’s hard to believe that the person who led the fight AGAINST the ERA was ACTUALLY A FEMALE, an antihero by the name of phyllis schlafly, played captivatingly by cate blanchett.  who, along with all the other characters, are really rich, complicated characters, with complex motivations and weaknesses and tough decisions.  and the show is really able to do some magic tricks to get you to root for and other times to feel sorry for.  

and, more broadly, it succeeds in helping viewers build empathy and understand how everything is not so simple, maybe like all great tv.  how the other side of the argument doesn’t really care about the law, per se, but laws have value and moral judgments, and nobody really wants to be called subservient or stupid or a prisoner to their husband.  they don’t want to be told that what they do every day and what they’ve devoted their lives to and what they prioritize most in their lives are backward and misguided and insignificant.  

at the end of the day, everyone wants to be seen and heard and validated.  definitely some parallels with the way that democrats paint republicans sometimes.  

did i mention that ROSE BYRNE looks EXACTLY LIKE GLORIA STEINEM????  along with character actress margo martingale, elizabeth banks, and crazy eyes from OITNB.  the show also does a good job seamlessly pulling in some real life footage (a la narcos) and stays true to a lot of the events of the decade (did you know phyllis schlafly really DID get pied in the face, and then IMMEDIATELY had that rejoinder comeback she had in the show??).  

there is a brief appearance by someone who plays RBG--who, despite the ERA not passing, was able to get a lot of gender discrimination protection enshrined in court precedence (#RIP).  and, as RBG masterfully uses in her court arguments against them, she draws out that having gender roles affords females certain benefits also (for better or for worse).  like, women originally actually bought alcohol for men in college because they could buy alcohol at a younger age than men because they were considered more mature.  or, mrs. america brings up, women aren’t expected to work or financially provide for the house.  

finally, the show is such an interesting reminder that MAKING DECISIONS and LEADING is difficult.  to build consensus, you have to rein in difficult personalities.  you have to compromise on your positions to win over centrists.  you have to entertain fringe positions to get more votes.  and it’s another reminder that even in the 70s, misinformation and polarization were already ingrained in society and debate.

finally, we listen to the main titles sequence at LEAST once a day and it is an INCREDIBLE main titles sequence and it BETTER win an award or i will be PISSED!!!  the song is incredibly fun, and then way they transition from iconography from both sides is so clever, but my favorite part is how the significance of each of the images slowly unfolds as the show progresses.  

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Every Oxygen Performance from Season 4 - World of Dance 2020

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NYTimes - The Scramble to Pluck 24 Billion Cherries in Eight Weeks

much like a good illusion cake, what starts off with a delicious detail of the high stakes game of of cultivating and delivering cherries zooms out into issues of essential workers, seasonal immigrant workers, and yet another thing to be thankful for and recognize how hard life can be out there.  that we can work from home safely and temperately and with stability and options is yet another thing that we should appreciate.

That could have been a disaster, because water likes to pool in the little divot by the stem. There it seeps into the flesh, making the cherry swell. Too much, and the cherry will burst through its own skin, causing splits; whole harvests can be lost this way. So dangerous is poorly timed water that cherry growers rely on fans, wind machines and even low-flying helicopters to dry ripe fruit before it is lost. Yet wind presents its own peril: It can knock cherries against one another or into branches, bruising them so that they’re rejected on the packing line, where fruit is sorted for size and quality with high-tech optical scanners. Rainiers, because of their color, are particularly prone to showing their past with telltale “wind marks,” tiny incursions of brownness on that golden skin. This cherry has just a few.

But it’s not to market yet. The window in which a sweet cherry can be picked for sale is excruciatingly narrow. Cherries don’t continue to ripen once they’re off the tree, the way a peach does, and once picked they don’t store for very long, even when refrigerated. If they’re too ripe, they won’t make it to the packing house, the truck or the airplane, the grocery-store display, your summery dessert. The sugar content must be Goldilocksian — neither too high nor too low. Wait even a couple of days too many, and it may be too late.

Paige Hake, the second generation of her family to farm this orchard, considered the cherry. Then she considered its neighbors, with their own wind marks, in the lambent heat of a June afternoon. She looked down the long green row of trees, lined with its strip of white plastic fabric, meant to reflect sunlight onto the undersides of the cherries, helping them color evenly. She consulted with her father, Orlin Knutson, who has been growing fruit on this stretch of dry sagebrush steppe near Mattawa, Wash., for 41 years, the last 31 of them organically. There was a refrigerated truck waiting by the gate, with a growing stack of full bins next to it. There was rain in the forecast, as well as more heat, and sugar levels in the cherries were rising as they spoke. They wanted to get these cherries harvested today; they were far enough along that it was probably now or never, a whole year of investment and work leading to this one afternoon. But it was getting late, and there were a lot of other cherries that needed to be picked, and today the crew of people available to pick them was smaller than they would have liked. She turned to me and pointed to the wind-marked cherry, still unsure whether it would be worth the cost of trying to get it to market. “Would you buy that at Whole Foods?” she asked.

The yellow cherry was one of a great many across the orchards of Washington State that were just beginning to ripen. Karen Lewis, who works with growers as a tree-fruit specialist for the agricultural extension service of Washington State University, has tried to calculate exactly how many individual cherries need to be picked during a whirlwind season that Jon DeVaney, the president of the Washington State Tree Fruit Association, calls “eight weeks of craziness.” Multiplying all the millions of boxes by the number of cherries they can hold, Lewis determined that as many as 24 billion individual cherries must be plucked, separately, from their trees and placed carefully into bags and buckets and bins, each and every one of them by human hands.

Lewis thinks that people who aren’t used to thinking much about the source of their food, or who assume that the food system is as mechanized and smoothly calibrated as a factory, spitting out produce like so many sticks of gum, ought to spend some time contemplating that figure and what it means. “I’m here to tell you that people do not think we harvest everything by hand,” she says. But hands, belonging to highly skilled workers, are needed for every last cherry. During the harvest, many thousands of people are out picking by dawn, nearly every day, their fingers flying as they watch out for rattlesnakes under dark trees. (Compounding the labor crunch, this is also the time when workers in the region must hand-thin more than 100 million apple trees, so that the remaining fruit can grow larger.) Later in the season, many of the same hands will pick and place each peach and plum and apricot, every single apple — five and a half billion pounds, just of apples, just in Washington, just last year. “I think those numbers are staggering,” Lewis said.

The cherry industry has done everything it can to squeeze every possible bit of extra time into the season. Growers plant at a range of different elevations: Every 100 feet above sea level, one orchard manager says, buys you an extra day until maturity. And they choose different varietals that ripen at slightly different speeds — most red cherries are marketed to the public simply as “dark sweets” but are actually a genetically distinct array, whose different sizes and tastes and unique horticultural personalities are intimately known by growers and pickers. If everything bloomed and matured all at once, Lewis said, there’s no way there would be enough bees, enough trucks, enough bins, to make the scale of the current cherry harvest possible. Most of all, there wouldn’t be enough people. There already aren’t.

#sunnyside (wash)

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Indian Matchmaking (Netflix, 2020) - 7.5/10 aunties watching you meet someone on a first date.  in this reality show, a renowned indian matchmaker tries to set up various indians, both in america and in india.  it’s hard to recommend any sort of reality show, especially a dating reality show.  but can it be high art?  the initial hook is that it gives a glimpse into what indian matchmaking is like, but it soon taps into some universal themes like being single, dating, and generational/cultural divides.  and--like any good entertainment, especially reality tv, it needs characters that you care about and root for and hate.  and i think the cast on this show DELIVERS!!!  ok haha not sure how much this review will stand the test of time, but, here goes...

indian culture.  i think one of the coolest trends of recent years is how a lot of lesser-profiled minority cultures now have shows that sort of celebrate rather than make fun of their differences?  like, i feel like big bang theory (which... ok i don’t think is necessarily is the worst show) basically uses nerd culture as something to ridicule.  but now you have stuff like atypical or black-ish (great) and fresh off the boat that do make fun of their stereotypes and culture but also celebrate its differences?  which <3.  (not to mention, never have i ever!  which, despite a rocky start, had a great second half.)

there is some criticism that the show perpetuates a lot of the “bad things” about indian matchmaking without passing judgment, especially around colorism and female gender roles and caste/religious preferences.  i’m not... sure that’s the point of the show?  it’s like... should blue planet have dedicated a portion of the show talking about how humans cause global warming?  

life.  i’m going to frame the following as assertions that are either implied or stated by people on the show.  which you are free to disagree with.  

people can be scored on how good of a partner they are.  they should be only matched with people of similar scores.  

it sucks being single / we don’t need anyone else to be happy

some of the things that we value in a partner are totally irrelevant (e.g.,--the divorce episode was a clever juxtaposition)

you can make a relationship work with anyone if you want

you should (shouldn’t) compromise your needs and personality for your partner

parents/society are irrationally obsessed with marriage (note: just got in a huge fight with my mom about this last week lol)

people do not need to be obsessed with “dating up”; it’s ok to “date down”.  

people can “make things work” if they are willing to make “adjustments” (this word is used a lot in the show--which to me is sort of belies the cultural importance of compromise in a relationship)

life is miserable if you are only looking for the negative

editing.  i think it was a pretty good creative choice to not be very rigid about story structure.  as such, the show feels a little more “real” than typical reality tv.   characters don’t have to make a decision or have to end up with someone or meet some sort of other convoluted goal (looking at you, are you the one or love is blind).  and it’s sort of cool that nothing happens in a vacuum.  we see the before, the after, the boring skype dates, the aftermath.  

i read that the editing on indian matchmaking is the unsung hero of indian matchmaking, which i would agree with!  there are random closeups of hands.  and like... some random side eye.  moments of humanity.  

there is a lot of stuff online on vinay + nadia.  i have to say that.... i agree that the facts that were told in the show were not that much of a departure from what actually happened.  but in some ways a “marvel” of production to create that sort of emotional reaction/storytelling/version of the story from those facts.  

spoiler free thoughts about some characters

ok i really don’t want to spoil the show by talking about the characters.  but the show DOES. NOT. EXIST. WITHOUT APARNA.  hahaha.  not to be overly dramatic.  

i messaged my cousin who’s mom reminds me of sima.  i think parents especially in asian cultures do nothing but pass judgment and nag.  but the way she listens so empathically.  <3.  i mean--she often has an agenda, don’t get me wrong.  but it’s not heavy handed or with that COMPLETE BLINDNESS in terms of complete disregard about the other person.  

nadia - O.  M.  G.  !!!!  “if nadia gets ghosted, what hope does anyone else in the world have???”  

pradhyuman - def gay, right??  omg.  his relationship with his sister.  <3

vyasar - like indian seth rogen!!  “could make someone laugh at a funeral” <3.  

ankita - <3 <3 (omg.  GEETA!!!!! :O :O)  that meme that’s like “when you think you have found your geeta and she gives you timbuktu).  

akshay (+ preeti) - wow.  he’s... confusing?   

ok joking aside i can only imagine how hard it would be asked to talk in your second language and not sound like you have the emotional depth of a 2nd grader.  

also, a link from my favorite linguist friend: Hinglish - 

In recent years, due to an increase in literacy and connectivity, the interchange of languages has reached new heights, especially due to increasing online immersion. English is the most widely used language on the internet, and this is a further impetus to the use of Hinglish online by native Hindi speakers, especially among the youth. Google's Gboard mobile keyboard app gives an option of Hinglish as a typing language where one can type Hindi sentence in English script and suggestions will be of Hindi language word in anglo script.While Hinglish has arisen from the presence of English in India, it is not merely Hindi and English spoken side by side, but a language type in itself, like all linguistic fusions (see Multiple language mixing, Bhatia, Tej K. 1987. English in Advertising: multiple mixing and media, World Englishes 6.1: 33-48). . Aside from the borrowing of vocabulary, there is the phenomenon of switching between languages, called code switching and Code-mixing, direct translations, adapting certain words, and infusing the flavours of each language into each other.[12][13]The Indian English variety, or simply Hinglish, is the Indian adaption of English in a very endocentric manner, which is why it is popular among the youth. Like other dynamic language mixes, Hinglish is now thought to 'have a life of its own'.[14]

unironically obsessed with aparna from indian matchmaking

bonus:

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via https://laughingsquid.com/the-tensegrity-sculpture/

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The Great, Season 1 (Hulu, 2020) - 8.5/10 missing beavers’ noses.  the writer of The Favourite helms this similarly kooky, anachronistic, regal, sexual, “occasionally factual” period piece, though it is quite a bit more vulgar and bawdy than the stately veneer of The Favourite.  This time, Elle Fanning plays Catherine the Great, trying to manage her unruly, drunk, childish husband (Nicholas Hoult).  

We need to talk about Catherine and Peter.  It’s a testament to both the writing and the actors, but the way they tread the line between BONKERS RIDICULOUS and INSPIRING LEADER is crazy.  Here is Sepinwall putting it in better words:

Hoult and McNamara smartly present Peter as an overgrown, oversensitive child. (He has his mother’s fully-dressed skeleton in a display case in the palace, forever seeking her approval even after her death.) He’s difficult to be around, and yet there’s something almost perversely endearing in how oblivious he is to his own worst behavior, and how badly he craves others’ approval even when he has supreme power. Tilt the angle on the character even a few degrees, or swap in an actor even a bit less fundamentally likable, and Peter could be unwatchable. Instead, he works as both comic engine and hissable villain. 

Catherine is the more complicated character, and Elle Fanning is really something to behold in the role: naive but capable of great calculation, passionate but vulnerable, ridiculous but inspiring, and able to make the show’s more dramatic scenes feel entirely real in the midst of the cartoonish antics elsewhere in each hour. She nails every beat of it, and is never less than intensely watchable. It’s a hell of a calling card as she gets deeper into the adult phase of her acting career.

Sort of reminds of The Other Two, which is ostensibly just a silly lark, but ultimately lands something quite hefty.  (And what a finale landing it is!!!)

From a storyline standpoint, some are sort of excessively goofy for my tastes, but I do have to applaud them giving even C-list characters randomly grey backstories?  I mean, who really is good and bad.  I mean, I guess what to expect when whispering the possibility of a coup amongst the court...

And, even moreso than The Favourite, there are a lot of real-life tie-ins!  Catherine really did build Russia’s first school for women, for example.  The list is quite long (and interesting). From Catherine’s actual memoris:

“In the first days of our marriage, I came to a sad conclusion about him. I said to myself, ‘If you allow yourself to love that man, you will be the unhappiest creature on this earth. With your temperament, you will expect some response whereas this man scarcely looks at you, talks of nothing but dolls and pays more attention to any other woman than yourself.’ . . . I took good care not to tell anybody that I had resolved never to love without restraint a man who would not return this love in full.”

Huzzah! 

I’ve been watching some other things.  rundown:

Catch me if you Can - Does not age well. Or maybe was never good to begin with.  4/10.

The Kids are All Right - Sort of reminds me of Marriage Story.  Compelling family drama with great actors and tough situations and people just wanting to be happy.  And fun to see Peeta before Peeta and LGBT family representation.  7/10.

Champion - This is like The Mindy Project set in a gym (well, Champions was also created by Mindy Kaling) in a half season now on Netflix.  It felt familiar and warm and I think she’s hilarious.  8/10.

Bojack Horseman, S6 (final season) - a very strong series finale and thematic strong series overall.  I think this show is ambitious and poignant and compelling even if I don’t fully grasp all the themes.  8/10.

Rupaul’s Drag Race (S12) - this season felt different in terms of people to root for and talent.  Interesting to watch the season virtually.  7/10.

Invisible Man - Decently scary with a good enough premise/plot.  7/10.

Dare Me - This slow-burn suspense thriller drama set in a cheerleading squad was... slow?  Albeit with one outstanding rashomon episode and how maybe teenagers aren’t moody just because they’re dickwads.  5/10.

Jumani: The Next Level - Not quite as good as the first but still balls to the wall FUN.  Quite a bit less heart though.  7/10.

Survivor: Winners at War (s40) - It was absolutely giddying to see all these winners on the beach.  Definitely some highlights with the first interesting (and emotional!!) finale in awhile with friendly fire and self sacrifice, but man this show feels tired.  6/10.

The Challenge: Total Madness - ok fine yes this show is a little bit trashy but OMG the cast is, as always, INCREDIBLE and their twist this season of the RED SKULLS is insane.  You LIVE AND DIE for the people you root for on the show.  8.5/10.

Awkwafina is Nora from Queens - Awkwafina is charming and gets by with her goofiness.  Some great moments including dumpling folding.  7/10.

Contagion - Feels scarier to watch during a pandemic.  They talk about R0!!  7/10.

Westworld, s3 - Their ability to create universes is incredible.  Sad that it’s blown on characters that nobody cares about with motivations that don’t make sense.  3/10.

Killing Eve, s3 - Ugh.  WTF happened to this show.  I mean, I love Jodie Comer but WTF.  3/10.  

Brooklyn 99, s6 - Sharp, fast, hilarious, full of heart.  Love it.  8.5/10.

Freak - Great first half.  Second half sort of loses some momentum.  Really clever the way they withhold information from the beginning.  6/10.

The Half of It - Great first part.  Everything from the church scene onward is ridiculous and ruins everything.  4/10.

Jojo Rabbit - If Wes Anderson did a WW2 movie.  Hitler-as-dreamt-of-by-an-8yo is incredible, as is his friend YORKI!!!!!! but not quite sure if the movie lands. But to live in a world where a movie with Rebel Wilson is nominated for Best Picture lol.  6/10.

Extraction - The most exhilarating action movie I've seen in a very, very long time.  Chris Hemsworth is magnetic and the movie plot is wayyy better than it needed to be.  8.5/10.

Nicholas Hoult, Gwilym Lee and Adam Godley in The Great (2020)

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The Miracle Sudoku

if this doesn’t inspire you to write puzzles, WHAT WILL??  via kottke

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How We Build This Podcast Every Day — Snacks Daily

I HAVE A NEW PODCAST OBSESSION (well other than joel kim booster’s urgent care, which i am also obsessed with).  but snacks daily is a daily podcast that covers market news for consumer products companies (generally). 

i mean the content is decent but HOLY MOLE the chemistry of these hosts.  it makes me happy.  like, jovial, woke bros.  (honestly sort of like JOEY FROM THE CIRCLE who is also lovable) (oh--my one sentence review of the circle: sort of a fun social experiment, it has its moments but generally peaks at episodes 3-10; love joey and sammie and the casting/editing is incredible)

CAN YOU IMAGINE TALKING LIKE THEY DO ON A CASUAL BASIS.  omg.  <3

can you whip up the takeaways for our friends on james’s tumblr?

#snacks #snacksdaily #hyhysd #robinhood

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if you ever wanted to read a 2000 word piece about Michael Bar-bar-o’s voice (of the NYT The Daily podcast), click this link!!  some excerpts:

In person, he is owlishly handsome (the little round glasses he used to wear amplified the effect, though he has lately swapped them for more rectangular frames), of roughly average height, and indifferently dressed, with a corona of salt-and-pepper curls and a scruffy, too-busy-to-shave beard. In 2017, People magazine named him one of the 15 sexiest newsmen.

But most of Barbaro’s admirers don’t see him. They hear him. The appeal is the voice and the peculiar prosody that gives The Daily its pulse. (“I think I like the way @mikiebarb says ‘natalie’ more than the way my girlfriend says it?,” Times reporter and sometime Daily guest host Natalie Kitroeff wrote on Twitter. “Help.”) His delivery sits between the clipped authority of NPR and the pirate-radio shagginess of the archetypal podcaster; it is remarkably free of filler (a beloved grandfather, his story goes, trained the ums and likes out of him) with deliberative pauses that never hit exactly where you expect. These gaps are practical (they make it easy to edit tape), but they’re also stylistic, a soothing, if syncopated, snare-drum beat.

That voice is a development of the show, which is not to say an affectation. Barbaro (BAR-BAR-O; he says each syllable is stressed equally, though on-air it sounds like he’s giving the O short shrift) cops to having undergone “a second pubescence” finding his voice on tape.

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Still, making The Daily is a huge effort. The days can be punishingly long, and the show eventually instituted a four-day workweek for producers, acknowledging that those staying late into the night to close an episode effectively work two days in one. Technically, Lisa Chow, a Daily editor, explained to me, the show should be finished by 3 a.m., when a sound engineer in London takes over to put on the finishing touches and get it delivered to your phone by 6 a.m. New York time. But on one day that I observed The Daily, during the Sondland hearings, the recording and editing began around 9:30 a.m., and Balcomb didn’t leave until 4:30 a.m. Alex Halpern Levy, a speechwriter and political strategist and one of Barbaro’s best friends, told me Barbaro carries a microphone around with him to rerecord the “what else you need to know today” segments that end every episode, in case of news developments. In order to get clean sound, he has been known to burrow beneath bedcovers.

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The day you’re on The Daily, you hear from your friends from elementary school, your college buddies. My mom’s best friend’s daughter gets in touch,” says Dana Goldstein, the education reporter who was on the show in December to discuss America’s anxiety over its high-schoolers’ stagnating standardized-test scores. “My friends don’t typically congratulate me when I have an A1 story” — a Timesism for the front page.

She pulled up a text message from a friend in London whose interest borders on the obsessive. “She said, quote, ‘I noticed the pause between “This” and “is The Daily” is getting longer,’ ” she read. “ ‘I am so fascinated. Tell us everything.’ ”

FYI:  pros·o·dy/ˈpräsədē/noun - the patterns of rhythm and sound used in poetry."the translator is not obliged to reproduce the prosody of the original"

#media #the daily #new york times #michael barbaro #podcasts #prosody

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Jordan vs. Josh 💪 End of the Rope Elimination | The Challenge: War of The Worlds 2

top 5 moments of TV of 2019

hmm others....

ARE YOU THE ONE RAIN SCENE WITH JENNA/KAI (and jax reveal)

succession board room scene / succession finale (fine, technically s1)

fleabag s2 finale ending

RPDR - first lip sync between evie / brooklynn

blown away - midseason double save

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it’s maybe a little unclear to me why this podcast exists, i mean, do we really need a 15-year time-delayed podcast about a tv show?

YES

jenna fischer and angela have a super fun chemistry

i love me a good BTS and is this AN INCREDIBLE BTS or what

i waver back and forth on whether the office is THE BEST SITCOM OF ALL TIME (i generally think the answer is yes, on most dimensions and rubrics) (fwiw i think P&R is incredibly overrated imho and doesn’t age well; and while i do love community especially from a META standpoint and how bold it is, it doesn’t quite have the consistency and volume of the office) BUT I AM BACK ON BOARD THE OFFICE TRAIN and YES IT IS THE BEST SITCOM OF ALL TIME

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though concerns with the format:

given that the office had 201 episodes over 9 seasons and this podcast certainly will NOT last 201 episodes, it makes me sad because i actually am famously a huge fan of the final season, 

and, even if they DID last 201 episodes, could they possibly have office related content to make it that far??

what about shitty episodes???

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fwiw my rubric for “best sitcom” would be:

humor level

consistency

how well it’s aged

volume (number of seasons)

other elements (e.g., heart/emotion)

brooklyn 99 i am really happy with and particularly impressed by the sheer density of jokes but has gotten a little one-note and ultimately nothing will ever beat the jim/pam trump card.

superstore - i was so bullish on this show but the last two seasons have been v weak.  but a really strong ensemble comedy that i was hoping would take over the throne of the office.

community - #meta but the last two seasons were uneven.  but it definitely has become legendary in my book for certain episodes (obvs paintball but also some more subtle ones (”montage” episode is particularly incredible/meta) and i would be remiss if i didn’t mention the ALTERNATIVE UNIVERSES episode, with also some touching episodes about love and friendship.  

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he title is a bit of a misdirect though it does start with this fun image:

Peter Rahal, the 33-year-old energy bar impresario who sold RxBar to Kellogg for $600 million and became something of a consumer products legend in the process, stands in the gigantic, spotless kitchen of his new Miami Beach mansion. Behind him, floor-to-ceiling windows revealed his pool, his outdoor bar, and Sunset Harbour. Throughout the house are expensive-looking modernist metal chandeliers. The kitchen drawers are filled with gold utensils.

And for dinner, Rahal is eating a can of beans.

Correction: He isn’t even eating the beans. He’s just showing the dinner for one — chickpeas, eggs, avocado — that he makes most nights.

Rahal bought the fully furnished house for about $19 million in May. He splits his time between his longtime Chicago apartment and this place; he chose Miami Beach in part because Florida has no personal income tax. A Ferrari 488 and a cream Vespa are parked in the driveway. A housekeeper, who comes daily, keeps the seven bedrooms spotless, though most are usually empty. Upstairs, there are his-and-hers dressing rooms; the “hers” — which has a Lucite-leg stool topped with pink tufts sitting forlornly at a vanity — is untouched. It’s as if when Rahal was sending wire instructions to get his RxBar money from Kellogg, he ticked a box requesting the “newly rich bachelor” package and this setup fell from the sky.

lol:

But things pretty quickly started changing for Rahal in unexpected ways. The $600 million figure bedazzled his employees, and he suddenly morphed from founder-boss into figurehead. “You used to be able to just think out loud. It would be like, ‘Hey, that tree’s really interesting,’” he says, indicating at a palm tree. But with his new status, whatever off-the-cuff thing Rahal said sent staff scurrying: “Oh, Peter wants extra trees like that there.”

it later touches into some more weighty stuff:

In spring 2018, Rahal read Skin in the Game by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, a former trader turned essayist who argues that people must risk personal success and failure to work at their peak.

or

The can of beans sits unopened on the kitchen counter, and Rahal, who has a sore throat, makes himself some green tea with honey instead of eating dinner. He looks tired as he stirs the tea with one of the gold spoons that came with the house. The clinking of metal against the ceramic mug is the only sound to be heard: There’s no music playing, no TV on, no cats or dogs or neighbors or birds or even cars in the near distance.

That’s one of the problems Rahal seems to be grappling with: More money, generally, means less struggle, and if it’s struggle that made him, how does he find that going forward?

It’s weird being so rich, so quickly. Rahal’s now socializing with a group of youngish guys — and it is mostly guys, in his new Miami circle, at least — who have inherited or made a ton of money. He’s invited out to steakhouses with movie producers and music producers. He’s throwing an Art Basel party. He and his new friends talk about the relative tax rates of Florida versus Puerto Rico. He lives on an island with a guardhouse. If he wants to date someone, or if he meets a new potential friend, they tend to do a standard Google check of his name, and the top search results are about how much money he has.

Rahal has to rough up his life. He tries to do this daily, even with small things, like carrying his groceries from the store rather than taking a cab. He fasts for 18 hours at a time. He regularly alternates first-class flights with middle-seat coach tickets.

It also means that to trigger the sense of adversity that’s gotten him this far, Rahal has to rough up his life so he doesn’t get too comfortable. He tries to do this daily, even with small things, like carrying his groceries from the store rather than taking a cab. He fasts for 18 hours at a time. He regularly alternates first-class flights with middle-seat coach tickets. He forces himself to read, which, with dyslexia, he says, is painful.

“With some people, an event like this would change them,” says Shah, his Chicago friend. “And suddenly, Peter’s life has changed — he went through a divorce; in every way, Peter’s life has changed — but I feel like he is what he is.”

And though Rahal says he’s incredibly grateful for everything he has, he’s trying to figure out bigger ways to reintroduce struggle to his life — like starting another company where he stands to lose a lot.

“Humans’ natural tendency is to remove pain, and we’ve come to a point where we’ve done it so well I find myself seeking uncomfortability,” Rahal says. “The question is if you want to grow.”

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the wework story has been fun to follow in its drama (and appreciating the relative stability in my life).  (also--i have gotten really into succession so corporate intrigue is very in rn.) the link has a fun narrative element as well as random bits like:

Neumann was eager to go public. “The numbers will speak for themselves,” he told me when I interviewed him in his office in April, just before his vacation... “I’m excited to show to people that when you do what I said, it also works financially. I think it’s good to have a report card.”

The expectations had some justification. In a frenzied effort to secure the roughly $100 million in fees for representing WeWork’s IPO, the world’s biggest banks had fallen over themselves to convince Neumann they understood the grandiosity of his vision. Morgan Stanley told WeWork its valuation could hit $104 billion, Goldman Sachs estimated the high end at $96 billion, while JPMorgan said it might reach a more modest $63 billion, according to the Financial Times.

matt levine (who also linked to the article in the best newsletter, money stuff) will be quick to point out that startups often pick banks that are most generous with their valuations, not the most accurate, which leads to weird incentives like these.  but maybe adam neumann just an oblivious visionary!

but man, this ending:

There remains at least one WeWorker who has done well by his shares. Well before the IPO process even began, Adam Neumann had already cashed out well over $700 million in WeWork stock through a combination of stock sales and loans, according to the Wall Street Journal. Neumann is no longer CEO, but he still has his role on WeWork’s board, the homes in Gramercy and the Hamptons, plus a townhouse in the Village, a 60-acre estate in Westchester County, and a $21-million residence in the Bay Area complete with room shaped like a guitar. Neumann had a spectacularly embarrassing summer, but setting aside whatever lawsuits or investigations that could emerge, he’s set for life. Really, no one played the post-recession economy as perfectly as Neumann did: fill acres of empty commercial real estate with armies of freelancers, tell everyone you’re raising global consciousness, and walk away a billionaire. In his final town hall as CEO, Neumann argued that WeWork had “played the private market game to perfection.” He was speaking about the company he would soon no longer run, but he might as well have been talking about himself.

...good for him?  scott galloway of original wework takedown fame is later interviewed on the same publication (he is dramatic and colorful):

If you want to talk about real toll here — the real toll is that there’s somewhere between 5,000 and 15,000 WeWork employees who took a job and a big part of their compensation — the reason they took these jobs was because of equity value. And it’s impossible not to count your money 30 days out from an IPO. It’s impossible to tell your husband to not start looking at houses. It’s impossible not to tell your parents, “Let’s think about going on a family cruise together.” It’s impossible not to start thinking that you can afford that new car. $47 billion? We’re probably talking about several thousand people who were going to be millionaires. Now most of them are probably thinking that in the next 30 days there’s a one-in-two chance I don’t have health insurance. You want to talk about the sheer human toll? The notion that Adam Neumann was fired? My God, he got on the last helicopter out of Saigon.

#wework #adam neumann #rebekah neumann #softbank #jpmorgan

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At [a body temperature of] 85 degrees, those freezing to death, in a strange, anguished paroxysm, often rip off their clothes. This phenomenon, known as paradoxical undressing, is common enough that urban hypothermia victims are sometimes initially diagnosed as victims of sexual assault. Though researchers are uncertain of the cause, the most logical explanation is that shortly before loss of consciousness, the constricted blood vessels near the body’s surface suddenly dilate and produce a sensation of extreme heat against the skin.

All you know is that you’re burning. You claw off your shell and pile sweater and fling them away.

a long read about what it’s like to get hypothermia and die.  

ESPECIALLY RELEVANT IF YOU”VE SEEN ESCAPE ROOM (2019), which i finally watched and actually quite enjoyed (like a 7.5/10).  

via kottke

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omg.  apples (like ants) fall into the category of endlessly exciting. prepare for the rise of the COSMIC CRISP:

Barritt, then the head of the apple-breeding program at Washington State University, made the cross that led to Cosmic Crisp in 1997. (Because of how long it takes test trees to mature and produce fruit, 22 years from cross to launch is fairly quick when it comes to bringing a new product to market. “Biology is just a real problem here,” said Barritt.) Its parents were Enterprise, a robust, late-ripening, long-storing apple, and a relatively new player called Honeycrisp — much despised by growers, who found it finicky and frustrating, with at least a quarter of its fruit never making it into grocery stores. Still, the latter’s large cells gave it a texture, juicy and explosive, unlike any other apple on the market; before long, consumers’ demand, and the prices they were willing to pay, was so high that growers were planting the damn thing all over the place in spite of themselves — and also starting to think differently about apples in general. (McDougall called Honeycrisp “the 8-billion-pound gorilla in our industry.”) The experience of an apple is really five things, Barritt explained. Only two of them, sugar and acidity, are actually about flavor, and there’s a natural divide between people who like sweet and those who prefer tang. It’s the three measures of texture that unite us all: “Everyone likes crisp, everyone likes juicy, and nobody likes soft.”

a fun article combining apples, agriculture, branding, consumerism, economics, and ultimately, identity.

identity through food:

One wonders what he would think of today’s grocery stores. “Food has become such a dream world, really,” O’Rourke, the marketing economist, told me recently. He was ruminating on so-called superfoods and on the way food marketing tends to focus on “extrinsic qualities” — a brand, a logo, a story — more than the food itself. We want what we eat to save our lives; to reflect our worldliness, the uniqueness of our identities; to fulfill our desire for the new and interesting. One result is that some of the most staple of staples — things like bread or milk or apples — are having a hard time competing. Though DeVaney laughed that people will balk at a $5 price on a 10-pound bag of potatoes, but not on a pint of specialty ice cream, he knew which side of the divide he wanted apples to be on. “We really don’t want consumers buying their food the way they buy gasoline: assuming that everything is identical and they’re just buying on price,” he told me. “Apples need to offer the same kind of novelty within the apple category as consumers can get when they buy…” he trailed off, thinking. “Dragon fruit!”

lol: 

They all politely made clear that this was the sort of romantic but deeply dumb question that only an industry neophyte would ask.

#romantic but #deeplydumb