Monday’s Interests: Things Are Not as Bad as They Seem

Monday’s interests are all about News, Politics and Current Events.  Today we were interested in corroborating perspectives that things are not as bad as they seem, Jeff Bezos DC life, the man who brought down Lance Armstrong, China, and the lessening shock from the President’s tweets.

QUOTE

• “What explains the gulf between most Americans’ hopeful outlook on areas and institutions they know directly and their despair about the country they know only through the news? Would it make any difference if more people understood that the local progress they see was not an isolated anomaly but part of a trend?” — James Fallows

READ

• The Campus Victim Cult : A dialogue about why colleges and universities have become so hostile to freedom of thought (Heather MacDonald and Frank Furedi, City Journal)
• Everyday politics : Imperial Chinese conscription shows how ordinary people exercise influential political skills, even in a repressive state (Michael Szonyi, aeon)
• In China and India, men outnumber women by 70 million : Both nations are belatedly trying to come to grips with the policies that created this male-heavy generation (Simon Denyer and Annie Gowen, The Washington Post)
• The Silence: The Legacy of Childhood Trauma : I never got any help, any kind of therapy. I never told anyone. (Junot Díaz, The New Yorker)
• The Reinvention of America : Americans don’t realize how fast the country is moving toward becoming a better version of itself (James Fallows, The Atlantic)
• 50 Ways The World is Getting Better (Ben Carlson, A Wealth of Common Sense) 
• The Man Who Brought Down Lance Armstrong : Floyd Landis, a former teammate of the cyclist’s, just won more than $1 million in a legal case against Armstrong. Here are his thoughts on the suit, cycling, and his onetime rival (Matt Hart, The Atlantic)
• This magical drug mansion in Upstate New York is where the psychedelic ’60s took off : Owned by one of America’s richest families, Millbrook hosted Timothy Leary, Allen Ginsberg, Charles Mingus and more (Ahmed Kabil, Timeline)
• Inside Jeff Bezos’s DC Life : The Amazon founder and Washington Post owner has quietly become a freewheeling DC socialite—and soon he’ll be spending more time here, in the mammoth Kalorama home his family is renovating. What brought the tech giant to town in the first place? And what does he do, exactly, while he’s around? The story of how the world’s richest man is becoming a Washingtonian (Ben Wofford, Washingtonian)
• The world learns to ignore Trump : Diplomats and investors are starting to dismiss Trump’s policy tweets and other quickly shifting statements (Ben White and Megan Cassella, Politico)

LISTEN

• Tunnel Vision : When you’re hungry, it can be hard to think of anything other than food. When you’re desperately poor, you may constantly worry about making ends meet. When you’re lonely, you might obsess about making friends. This week, we bring you a March 2017 episode about the psychological phenomenon of scarcity. Researchers say this form of tunnel vision can affect our ability to see the big picture and cope with problems in our lives.

LOOK

• |

BOOKS