Sunday Reads...

An irregular round up of interesting reads.  Most of these made me go "hmmmmm," none of them imply concurrence:

Quote of the Day:
Those who promise us paradise on earth never produced anything but a hell. – Karl Popper.

• The data is signaling a slow-down in payrolls. 
• Will notes the fascist nature of the crony “Consumer Protection Bureau.”
• Childhood health has a coloration to adult conservative versus liberal ideological outlooks.  And apparently brain scans of liberals versus conservatives are observably different.
• “Problematic news consumption” appears linked to mental health issues.
• Losing the First.  Americans increasingly seem to be falling out of love with Free Speech and prefer fascism.
• Good news!  Americans are increasingly in favor or larger families.  A hopeful trend for sure.
• Ouch.  Members of Congress behaving badly.
• Long-Covid or long con? Understanding and learning still requires the humility of real science.
• More troubling data on the use of puberty-blocking chemicals in minors.
• The Bermuda Triangle is so Boomer.  Meet the “Alaska Triangle.”
• Unhealthy for civil society:  One Party has nearly abandoned “religious” affiliation. 
• An interesting mediation on the loss of religion in communal life and the “wanting” the void creates.
• Revisiting “Sporting Excellence,” distilling 14 attributes of “greatness.”
• The relationship between a decline in “independent play” by children and later mental health is studied.
• The odd story of the TED company hating Martin Luther King.
• Why pandemics are always political – it’s an issue of institutional structure.
• A guide to the varied voices and casts in the woke/anti-woke debates.
• Elon Musk didn’t read the Constitution (shocker).  The President is merely the top administrative bureaucrat, not the nation’s CEO.
• “Liquid courage” has now an evidence-based concept.
• It was always going to be thus:  THC impairs driver safety.  And thus, maybe its ok that the young(er) are driving less given the prevalence of impairment in their system.
• Is brandishing a copy-cat value amongst officers in blue?
• Evidence abounds for the “broken window” approach to community safety.
• Exposure to blue light (think tablets or phones) has a profound impact on hormones, potentially disruptive for children.