• Groups cast social "shadows" — and the size of those shadows matter: social penumbra = the number of individuals in the population who knows someone in a particular group; affects why some groups have made more political progress than others (e.g. gay rights vs. immigration) — Behavioral Scientist
• The miracle of the commons: far from being profoundly destructive, humans have deep capacities for sharing resources with generosity and foresight — Aeon
• On the history, present, and contradictory definitions of the elite — including social critic Paul Fussell's markers of the upper class: having many guests, tardiness, and rumpled bow ties — The New Yorker
• "No one is talking online anymore" — pretty much summarizes my social media approach these days
• What cake-cutting can teach us about equity, fairness, and the mathematics of resource allocation — Science News
• An exploration of envy in female relationships: "There's something gorgeously petty about many women's lives. They're not trying to be great. They're trying to be better." — The Point
• Anne Helen Petersen on the "optimization sinkhole" — what the superlative "best coffee maker" and "cooling sheets that will change your life" actually mean about our culture's obsession with productivity
• "How we classify countries and people — and why it matters" — BMJ Global Health
• Making (a little more) sense of misinformation, and why it's so easy to believe in — Undark

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Racism

• The racism of the "hard-to-find" qualified Black candidate trope — Stanford Social Innovation Review
• Fund Black scientists: Black scientists receive 2-fold fewer grants in biomedical sciences than white scientists. Suggestions: acknowledge the racism explicitly, set up policies to ensure equity, prioritize diversity in grant reviewing (scoring, panels), train NIH staff to recognize and stop racism — Cell
• Big Tech has used its power to control the field of AI ethics and avoid accountability: the ouster of Timnit Gebru is putting the movement for equitable tech in the spotlight — Fast Company
• Beyond the !Kung: "A grand research project created our origin myth that early human societies were all egalitarian, mobile, and small-scale." There are many examples of politically-stratified hunter-gatherer societies (Pacific NW, Florida, etc.) — our picture of early humans exemplified by the !Kung and similar African peoples is skewed and not representative of historic societies. Archaeology and anthropology are biased to underrate the sophistication of earlier cultures and overrate our own — Manvir Singh, Aeon
• More than McKinsey: "A rising generation should consider anew the merits of public service." Why millennials hate Pete Buttigieg — the "perfect avatar" of the generation, the epitome of over-achievement — and why public service might not be such a bad place to end up — Anthony M. Barr, American Purpose
• Why we can't stop talking about billionaires: tech billionaires emerged from a year of hardship as more than leaders of iconic companies — they are central, almost too central, characters in American life — Theodore Schleifer, Vox
• Low-skill workers aren't a problem to be fixed: "The label 'low-skill' flattens workers to a single attribute, ignoring the capacities they have and devaluing the jobs they do." Initiatives to "upskill" the workforce — the idea that workers just need to learn to code — overlook all the systemic reasons people are forced into poverty; in reality, different jobs require different skills, but some are valued much less — Annie Lowrey, The Atlantic

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Reactions to COVID

• Internally rearranged — The Examined Family

  "And it's not exactly over, but it's changing, and in this liminal moment, as we ascend into the sky, away from the thing that altered us, I want you to know that I see how you're internally rearranged. You're not the same. You're even more beautiful."

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Related

• Caste — Isabel Wilkerson
• Can't Even — Anne Helen Petersen
• Billionaire Wilderness — Justin Farrell
• Against "Feel Free to Take Some Time If You Need It" — Anne Helen Petersen
• Conditional Citizens — Laila Lalami
• Women & Power — Mary Beard
• The Undocumented Americans — Karla Cornejo Villavicencio
• Winners Take All — Anand Giridharadas
• The Dawn of Everything — David Graeber, David Wengrow
• Work — James Suzman