On the Road With Lee Fields & The Expressions
With the release last month of It Rains Love, one of his most nuanced and hypnotically grooving albums yet, Lee Fields is celebrating 50 years as a soul journeyman. Fields, who has deep roots in the golden era of funk and soul, paved the way for artists like Sharon Jones and Charles Bradley—he counts them…
Chicken Farmers Thought Trump Was Going to Help Them. Then His Administration Did the Opposite.
Free range chickens on a farm in Cromwell, Oklahoma. Preston Keres/ZUMA This story was originally published by ProPublica. By late 2016, many of the nation’s 25,000 chicken farmers said they had grown bitterly frustrated by the administration of President Barack Obama. Under Obama, top officials had promised to help farmers by tightening regulations on meat…
“Tales of the City” Is Back, and Its Characters Can Actually Afford to Live in San Francisco
Charlie Barnett and Murray Bartlett in “Tales of the City”Courtesy Netflix Tales of the City, Armistead Maupin’s beloved saga of life in San Francisco, begins with a fantasy of affordable housing. As the serial opened in the San Francisco Chronicle in May 1976, Mary Ann Singleton, a naive yet plucky tourist from Cleveland, has just…
America Is the Place To Be, Part 2
Earlier today I posted a chart showing average household income in the US vs. other developed countries. Several people understandably wanted to see this chart with median incomes instead of means, since high income inequality can artificially increase means even if middle-class families are struggling. Unfortunately, a reliable measure of median incomes that’s consistent between…
Jay Inslee Says He May Defy the DNC on a Climate Change Debate
Michael Brochstein/ZUMA Washington Governor Jay Inslee says he won’t rule out participating in a primary debate on climate change, a move that—if he followed through—could risk his being barred from participating in the formal Democratic National Committee sponsored debates. “I cannot rule out any other debate that would highlight both the necessity of defeating the climate crisis…
Nobody Is Defending Phrenology Today
This popped into my Twitter timeline via Cory Doctorow: When I teach about phrenology in the context of racist Victorian justifications for colonization, students often stare at me as though I’ve lost it, certain that no one could ever have been that stupid. Turns out people are still that stupid today. https://t.co/5YLsJsy28E — Laura Seay…