Election polls, Alzheimer's, Tea, Microaggressions, Secrets

Presidential Sensation Deez Nuts Is A 15-Year-Old Iowa Farmboy

Ben Collins & Emily Shire | Daily Beast | 19th August 2015

Insightful without fully realising it. Around 8% of voters polled in three states said they would vote for a joke independent presidential candidate, "Deez Nuts," over Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton. "The polls are pretty long. By the time we drop Deez Nuts on them, they’re pretty deep into the poll" explains the pollster – but with no further comment about what that means for the credibility of the polls more generally (1,230 words)

Slipping Away

Shannon Proudfoot | Macleans | 14th September 2015

Jo Aubin has Alzheimer's, aged 38. His mother died aged 47 of the same disease, and Jo has a genetic mutation that made his own illness inevitable – but no one expected it would happen so soon. The first effects probably began when Jo was 10 years old, and the diagnosis has put a different lense on many of the changes and behaviours that Jo has exhibited over the course of his adult life (8,470 words)

Can Drinking Tea Turn You Into A Whore?

Emily Brand | The History of Love | 3rd October 2013

Yes, say notables from eighteenth-century England; perhaps each generation has its own fear of the new. "Men seem to have lost their stature, and comliness; and women their beauty. Your very chambermaids have lost their bloom, I suppose by sipping tea." For young girls, "the gossip of the tea table is no bad preparatory school for the brothel" (330 words)

Where Microaggressions Really Come From: A Sociological Account

Jonathan Haidt | The Righteous Mind | 7th September 2015

The concept of "microagressions" comes out of a shift towards a new moral culture. In "cultures of honour" people must "avenge insults on their own"; in "cultures of dignity", "people are assumed to have dignity and don’t need to earn it." But in the new "cultures of victimhood," people "must appeal for help to powerful others or administrative bodies, to whom they must make the case that they have been victimized" (4,450 words)

The Secret To Getting Top-Secret Secrets

Jason Fagone | Medium | 17th July 2014

Jason Leopold issues endless Freedom of Information Act requests to the U.S. government. By law, citizens can ask for any “agency record” whatsoever; the government doesn't always have to oblige, but citizens can always ask. Even for things so “outlandishly secret” that the request seems preposterous, “like the emails of Keith Alexander, former director of the NSA.” But Leopold got them (5,830 words)

Video of the day: Mythopolis

What to expect: Modern lives of ancient Greek mythological characters

Thought for the day

Virtue never has been as respectable as money
Mark Twain