Jun 3, 2022 3 min read gun violence

You should read - June 3

Just one thing

America's impotence in the face of gun violence continues to dominate my thinking. As of June 2, there had been at least 20 mass shootings since the Uvalde massacre. The answers are right there in front of us. Yet, we are held hostage by the death cult that is the Republican Party.

The Science Is Clear: Gun Control Saves Lives (Scientific American)
As Long As There Have Been Guns in America, There Have Been Attempts to Regulate Them (Esquire)
Rod Miller: Regulate Our Militia, And Regulate Them Well (Cowboy State Daily)
Analysis: Gun deaths dropped in California as they rose in Texas: Gun control seems to work (Los Angeles Times)
Faith, family, firearms drive Georgia’s devotion to Second Amendment (Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
“It Will Happen Again”: Texas Leaders Have No Plans to Prevent the Next Uvalde (Texas Monthly)
Greg Abbott Is Full of Shit (Texas Observer)
All These Brave Men (Jessica Valenti)
Uvalde Shooting: A Case for Defunding the Police and Disarming Teens (Teen Vogue)

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You have to start with the principle. (Anil Dash)

Reasonableness is a slow method of failure in which the first step is to concede half of the goal up front, the turning point is losing the passion and backing of the most enthusiastic supporters to disillusionment, and the final step is poisoning the well for future efforts by providing a cautionary example of defeat.

The Myth of “Radical” Black Politics That Stymies Progressive Politics (The New Republic)
Democrats: left v leadership battle plays out in US primaries (The Guardian)

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Collected Ephemera

We Are Not Living in a Simulation, We Are Living In the Past (The Convivial Society)
Saturn Devouring His Son is the defining metaphor of our era, it seems.
Like capitalism itself, business journalism is broken. Can it be fixed? (The.Ink)
The fetishization of Amazon culture and practices reminds me of late 90s infatuation with GE and Jack Welch. And, look how that turned out. One can only hope.
Replacement theory and NIMBYism have the same racist roots (America Magazine)
I see this in my local families Facebook group when people say they oppose affordable housing because they want to "preserve the community character". That "character" was shaped by racist housing convenants and redlining.
Five Stories in Which Aliens Attempt to Reshape the Earth (Tor.com)
I think I speak for all of us when I say, I, for one, welcome our alien overlords.
The Secret Nazi History of Einstein Bros. Bagels (Kveller)
No wonder their bagels are so terrible.
The Heart-Essence of Buddhist Meditation (Tricycle)
It's funny how words like zazen and shikantaza, totally unknown to me most of my life, have entered my daily vocabulary. And those are just highly specific to zen practice. I'm not terribly familiar with the other forms. Buddhism is big.
One Million Youth Became Daily Tobacco Users, Most Used JUUL E-cigarettes (University of California San Diego)
A few years ago, I was contacted by a JUUL recruiter. I told him his company was on my "will not work for" list. He was persistent. He told me, "I joined our company because we have a 50-60% adoption rate by cigarette smokers; that's millions of people choosing to not smoke combustable cigarettes because of our product." I looked him up today. He's no longer working for JUUL. But, no surprise, he's subsequently done a stint at Facebook. One addictive product after another.