There’s Never Been a Story Like Britney Spears’s

The ugliness of that particular incident—an allegedly traumatizing moment involving minor children—is a reminder of some of the deeper stakes underlying Free Britney. Spears’s first involuntary hospitalization in 2008 took place after she’d locked herself in a bathroom with one of her sons and refused to give him over to Federline, who by that point had been awarded full custody of their children. In the years since then, she regained a 50/50 custody split. But after his 2019 restraining order against Jamie, a new agreement gave Federline 70 percent custody—and Federline’s lawyer says that in reality, he is with the children “closer to 90” percent of the time. It’s not unreasonable to wonder whether Spears’s newly overt campaign against her father’s control is, in part, a bid to see her kids more.

The complete article

Spencer Kornhaber — The Atlantic

Image source

Why People Loot

There was a video of some people driving in a luxury SUV and then looting. Why does looting come along with many protests?

The style and organization of a protest can also encourage—or discourage—vandalism. Fisher and Ray have found that protests that are preplanned and have coherent leadership tend to result in less vandalism than spontaneous protests that lack a central message. Without a formal structure or norms for behavior, protests can spin out, especially after dark. In fact, one way to prevent looting during a protest is just to call it a “vigil,” a word that connotes quiet and calm. Take the 2017 Women’s March in Washington, D.C., as an example: The demonstration had a set agenda, speakers, and protest path, and was unusually peaceful. Today’s protests are more spontaneous, and the people involved have varying goals. “Some people want the three officers who haven’t been charged to be charged,” Ray said. “Some people want policing to just completely end, on the other end of the spectrum.”

The complete article

Olga Khazan — The Atlantic

Image source

America’s Patchwork Pandemic Is Fraying Even Further

This point cannot be overstated: The pandemic patchwork exists because the U.S. is a patchwork to its core. New outbreaks will continue to flare and fester unless the country makes a serious effort to protect its most vulnerable citizens, recognizing that their risk is the result of societal failures, not personal ones. “People say you can’t fix the U.S. health system overnight, but if we’re not fixing these underlying problems, we won’t get out of this,” says Sheila Davis of Partners in Health. “We’ll just keep getting pop-ups.”

The complete article

Ed Yong — The Atlantic

Image source

How Not to Tank Your Relationship in Quarantine

wired-couples

When your partner does something that bothers you, don’t go with your gut reaction. Think before you blame, and be especially wary of what psychologists call the “fundamental attribution error.” When we do something wrong ourselves, we often blame it on temporary external circumstances: Yes, I lost my temper a couple of times today, but that’s just because of all the stress from the quarantine. But when our partner does something wrong, we’re inclined to wrongly attribute it to permanent internal flaws: He lost his temper because he has lousy self-control and doesn’t care about how I feel.

The complete article

JOHN TIERNEY and ROY F. BAUMEISTER — The Atlantic

Image source

Why Child Care Is So Ridiculously Expensive

104823590-rsz_1gettyimages-520648150

In the United States, per-child spending doubled from the 1970s to the 2000s, according to a 2013 paper by Sabino Kornich of the University of Sydney and Frank Furstenberg of the University of Pennsylvania. Parents spent more on education, toys, and games. But nothing grew faster than per-child spending on child care, which increased by a factor of 21—or approximately 2,000 percent—in those 40 years.

Although wrapping your head around 2,000 percent growth might be difficult, the underlying cause isn’t so mysterious. As more women entered the labor force in the late 20th century, the work of caring for infants moved from the unpaid world of stay-at-home parents to the world of salaried labor. The 1970s and ’80s—the two decades when the female labor participation rate grew the fastest—also saw the greatest acceleration in child-care spending, according to Kornich and Furstenberg. Raising young children is work—and it always has been work—but the rise of dual-earner households has forced more families to recognize this work with their wallets.

The complete article

Derek Thompson — The Atlantic

Image source

Tarantino’s Most Transgressive Film

various_onceuponatime

As usual, you can’t ignore a Tarantino movie.

We can’t have a movie like this. It affirms things the culture wants killed. If men aren’t encouraged to cry in public, where will we end up? And the bottom line is the bottom line: Audiences don’t want to see this kind of thing anymore. The audience wants the kind of movies the justice critics want. But the audience gave Once Upon a Time in Hollywood the biggest opening of Tarantino’s career. The critics may not get it, but the public does. Is Tarantino making a reactionary statement at a dangerous time? Or does the title tell the truth, that the whole thing—including those old masculine values—was always just a fairy tale, a world “that never really existed, but feels like a memory”?

The complete article

Caitlin Flanagan — The Atlantic

Image source

The Era of Fake Video Begins

lead_960_540

Fake news will soon become passé. Fake videos are soon going to dominate media.

But the problem isn’t just the proliferation of falsehoods. Fabricated videos will create new and understandable suspicions about everything we watch. Politicians and publicists will exploit those doubts. When captured in a moment of wrongdoing, a culprit will simply declare the visual evidence a malicious concoction. The president, reportedly, has already pioneered this tactic: Even though he initially conceded the authenticity of the Access Hollywood video, he now privately casts doubt on whether the voice on the tape is his own.

The complete article

Franklin Foer — The Atlantic

Image source

The Ethics of Donald Trump Jr.’s India Adventure

7177e6ac1f_trumptowerspunemumbaikolkata

This week Trump Jr. visited Delhi. All newspapers were covered with front page ads selling real estate brandishing the Trump brand.

“When these sons go around all over the world talking about, one, Trump business deals and, two, … apparently giving speeches on some United States government foreign policy, they are strongly suggesting a linkage between the two,” Richard Painter, President George W. Bush’s chief ethics lawyer who is a professor of law at the University of Minnesota, told me. “Somebody, somewhere is going to cross the line into suggesting a quid pro quo.”

He added: “It might not be the Trump boys. It might be somebody working for them. It might be somebody over in India or in some other country who believes that’s the way to curry favor with the United States government, to get something in return from the United States government, to do a deal that’s favorable to the Trump Organization.”

The complete article

Krishnadev Calamur — The Atlantic

Image source

The Amazon-ification of Whole Foods

20170828_070936-1-630x473

So, what is Amazon doing with Whole Foods.

But it would be a bigger mistake to analyze Thursday’s news in a vacuum, because this announcement is bigger than heirloom tomatoes and two-hour delivery windows. In the broader context of Amazon’s ambitions—to build an operating system for the home, to expand into pharmacies and health care, to become a hit-making television production studio—this is the logical next step in turning Prime into the ultimate “life bundle,” a single membership program to bind consumers to every possible commercial need. As Amazon extends into more product areas, it can own both the search platform and the product, so that when a dad says to the smart speaker on his counter, “Alexa, I need brown rice and pork,” the product that arrives is an Amazon-branded box containing Amazon–Whole Foods–branded rice and pork.

The complete article

Derek Thompson — The Atlantic

Image source

Did 13 Reasons Why Spark a Suicide Contagion Effect?

13-reasons-why_0

There is a debate going on whether the Netflix series 13 Reasons Why should have depicted suicide the way it did.

The study, while troubling, is not entirely surprising. In May, I examined how 13 Reasons Why managed to break virtually every rule that exists when it comes to portraying suicide, featuring a graphic, prolonged scene of the main character’s death in the final episode and glamorizing it as a force for positive change in her community. One of the biggest concerns among psychologists and educators was that the show might spark a contagion effect, where increased coverage of suicide in the media leads to a related increase in suicide attempts. Netflix doesn’t release data regarding its viewing figures, but the wide discussion of the show on social media (it became the most-tweeted about show of 2017) implies that a significant number of people watched it, particularly teenagers. The rush to produce a follow-up season (currently being filmed and scheduled for a 2018 release) indicates the show has been a big hit for the streaming service.

The complete article

Sophie Gilbert — The Atlantic

Image source