Good morning.

→ ‘I got married at 23. What are the rest of you waiting for?‘ by Julie Shaw, for Slate

I’m a married millennial. I walked down the aisle at 23. My husband, David, was 25. We hadn’t arrived. I had a job; he, a job offer and a year left in law school. But we couldn’t buy a house or even replace the car when it died a few months into our marriage. We lived in a small basement apartment, furnished with secondhand Ikea. We did not have Internet (checking email required a trip to the local coffee shop) or reliable heat.

Marriage wasn’t something we did after we’d grown up—it was how we have grown up and grown together. We’ve endured the hardships of typical millennials: job searches, job losses, family deaths, family conflict, financial fears, and career concerns. The stability, companionship, and intimacy of marriage enabled us to overcome our challenges and develop as individuals and a couple. We learned how to be strong for one another, to comfort, to counsel, and to share our joys and not just our problems.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I get that this is one of those “subjective” positions. To each his or her own, I guess. That said, I married my wife at 22—she turned 21 three days before we tied the knot—and my experience has been very similar to that of Mrs. Shaw. For the first year or so we barely scraped by as I made about $800 a month, and we fought over stupid things like whether or not to keep the Kuerig coffee maker we got as a wedding gift. But damn it’s been fun to make it up as we go. I wouldn’t trade my wife for anything, or anybody.

→ ‘Linguistics Identifies Anonymous Users,’ via disinformation

Up to 80 percent of certain anonymous underground forum users can be identified using linguistics, researchers say.The techniques compare user posts to track them across forums and could even unveil authors of thesis papers or blogs who had taken to underground networks. “If our dataset contains 100 users we can at least identify 80 of them,” researcher Sadia Afroz told an audience at the 29C3 Chaos Communication Congress in Germany.”Function words are very specific to the writer. Even if you are writing a thesis, you’ll probably use the same function words in chat messages.”Even if your text is not clean, your writing style can give you away.” The analysis techniques could also reveal botnet owners, malware tool authors and provide insight into the size and scope of underground markets, making the research appealing to law enforcement.

This is great news. I’m coming for you, ‘glitterkitty42′.

→ ‘City makes gun ownership mandatory,’ via WXIA-TV

The Nelson City Council voted 5-0 Monday night to require every household to have a gun and ammunition, unless the residents of the household opt out. 

City council members in Nelson voted on the Family Protection Ordinance at their meeting Monday evening.

A gun ownership mandate? To quote conservative columnist David Frum on Twitter this morning, ‘”Good thing it’s not health insurance. That [would] be tyranny.”


Good Morning’ is a list of the three most interesting articles I read over coffee this morning. Topics generally include design, technology, politics and faith—oh, and sometimes goats. Feel free to subscribe via RSS, if you’d like.

Good morning!

→ ‘Buzzkill? How Climate Change Could Eventually End Coffee‘, via US News

Coffee is one of the world’s most traded commodities. Each year, more than $15 billion worth of coffee is exported from 52 countries—many of which are still developing and rely on the crop to buoy their economies. The industry employs some 26 million people worldwide.

But in recent years, keeping the world’s coffee drinkers supplied has become increasingly difficult: The spread of a deadly fungus that has been linked to global warming and rising global temperatures in the tropical countries where coffee grows has researchers scrambling to create new varieties of coffee plants that can keep pace with these new threats without reducing quality.

While coffee researchers can do little to prevent climate change, they’re hard at work to keep up as Earth braces for temperature increases of several degrees over the next several decades.

“Coffee is the canary in the coal mine for climate change,” says Ric Rhinehart, executive director of the Specialty Coffee Association of America. “If you can’t think about the long term risk for planetary impacts, think about the short term risk for your coffee. Know that a day without coffee is potentially around the corner.”

I’m sorry to say that this is no April Fools joke.

→ ‘E-bleeder: Is Nook on its deathbed?‘, via The Verge

The ending has yet to be written for Barnes & Noble’s Nook story, which began with the surprise debut of the original Nook e-reader back in late 2009. But recent plot twists don’t appear to bode well for the subsidiary known as “Nook Media,” which contains the company’s e-reader, tablet, and digital content businesses, and which two other companies — Microsoft and publisher Pearson — have bought into.

Over the past few weeks, Barnes & Noble has announced fire sale after fire sale for Nook products: Buy a Nook HD+ tablet and get a Nook Simple Touch free! Download the Nook app for Windows 8 and get free bestselling digital book and magazine titles! The latest deal, which was just announced last week, targets teachers as part of Barnes & Noble’s annual “Educator Appreciation Days,” offering a variety of discounts — including $20 off the Nook HD and HD+ — between April 13 and 21.

This is just an idea—one I may elaborate more on later in a lengthier post—but why don’t print books come with digital downloads the way that most CDs and DVDs do these days? Often, I want to own the book in both formats, but I’m not willing to spend the extra cash to buy a book twice, and it seems to me that this would be a fairly simple solution. I buy the book in print (which generally costs more than the price of the e-book, so there’s technically ”profit” on the distribution of the digital version), I get a download code inside the printed version, and I download it for my iPad/Nook/Kindle/whatever.

Since they own the supply chains to support both digital and print distribution, this seems like something Barnes & Noble could do pretty well. Either way, somebody should do it—Amazon at least. Does anybody want to nominate me for CEO?

And: ”OH MY GOD, WE’RE HAVING A FIRE!!! SALE.”

→ ‘Armed Correlations: The Facts of Gun Ownership and Violence‘, by Adam Gopnik for The New Yorker

What makes a correlation causal? Well, it should be robust, showing up all over the place, across many states and nations; it should exclude some other correlation that might be causing the same thing; and, ideally, there ought to be some kind of proposed mechanism that would explain why one element affects the other. There’s a strong correlation between vaccines and less childhood disease, for instance, and a simple biological mechanism of induced immunity to explain it. The correlation between gun possession and gun violence—or, alternately, between gun control and stopping gun violence—is one of the most robust that you can find. And the mechanism that connects weak gun laws to gun murders and massacres is self-evident: with guns around, ordinary arguments escalate into ones where someone gets killed, and crazy kids who dream of getting even with the world can easily find a gun—or, like Adam Lanza, many guns—to do it with.

I mean, c’mon: it’s hard to argue that an increase in gun ownership doesn’t directly result in an increase in gun violence. The same way it’s hard to argue that an increase in smartphone ownership doesn’t mean an decrease in conversation around the dinner table. iPhones and firearms are devices. With a purpose. Only, unfortunately, the purpose of a firearm isn’t merely to interrupt your mom at the dinner table with a rousing game of Angry Birds.


Good Morning’ is a list of the three most interesting articles I read over coffee this morning. Topics generally include design, technology, politics and faith—oh, and sometimes goats. Feel free to subscribe via RSS, if you’d like.

Can we limit soda sizes at fast food restaurants?
Should we make calorie counts on mandatory on menus?
Labels on foods with genetically modified ingredients (GMOs)?
Limits to the amount of caffeine in energy drinks?

A group of 18 doctors, researchers and public health experts jointly urged the Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday to take action on energy drinks to protect adolescents and children from the possible risks of consuming high amounts of caffeine.

“There is evidence in the published scientific literature that the caffeine levels in energy drinks pose serious potential health risks,” the doctors and researchers wrote.In their letter to Dr. Margaret A. Hamburg, the F.D.A. commissioner, the group argued that energy drink makers had failed to meet the regulatory burden placed on them to show that the ingredients used in their beverages were safe, specifically where children, adolescents and young adults are concerned. As a result, the group urged the F.D.A. to restrict caffeine content in the products and to require manufacturers to include caffeine content on product labels.

[...]

Energy drink makers have insisted their products are safe and that their levels of caffeine, a stimulant, are on a par with other widely consumed drinks, like coffee.

— via The New York Times

I doubt it.

Note that all of those measures have been recommended by doctors—professionals that assess and deal with the effects of  bad dietary decisions for a living—not Joe Schmoe with a personal vendetta against PepsiCo.

But nevermind that. We want what we want because, well, Freedom.

Freedom to have diabetes!
Freedom to have heart disease!
Freedom to deal with hypertension!
Freedom to have high blood pressure!

These are things we place a lot of value in in America.

Are we allowed to pass laws in this country that help people make better dietary decisions?
Is there a law against that?


Resources:

  • “Sugar-sweetened beverages are linked to more than 180,000 obesity-related deaths worldwide each year, according to new research presented this week at an American Heart Association conference.” [CNN]
  • “About 600,000 people die of heart disease in the United States every year–that’s 1 in every 4 deaths.” [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention]
  • “25.8 million children and adults in the United States—8.3% of the population—have diabetes.” [American Diabetes Association]
  • “About 1 in 3 U.S. adults—an estimated 68 million people—has high blood pressure.” [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention]
  • “FDA cautions consumers that products marketed as ‘energy shots’ or ‘energy drinks’ are not alternatives to rest or sleep. It is important for consumers to realize that, while stimulants such as caffeine may make one feel more alert and awake, judgment and reaction time can still be impaired by insufficient rest or sleep.” [FDA]

What kind of legacy do you hope to leave?

Oh, what? (all laughing) I never thought about leaving a legacy. There’s not a lot of permanence in what we do and everything seems so fleeting. When I think of a true legacy, I think of people who are architects and leave a building behind for a hundred years. Our culture has become so hyper-condensed and no one is going to remember us for our LOLcats.

I think I’m more excited about having a good time and living in the moment while I’m here.

This is Bobby Solomon of The Fox Is Black answering a question for The Great Discontent, and touching on my biggest pet peeve with our “hyper-condensed” culture: Impermanence.

I think the idea of leaving “a legacy” should be something we think about. Not in a puffed-up and prideful way, but in a realistic way that acknowledges the fact that, even if it’s small, we’re impacting those around us in some form or fashion.

Not knocking Bobby—I think his answer was great, and often it’s the people who aren’t obsessing over their so-called legacy that leave the greatest ones. That said, obsessing over a legacy and thinking about the one you hope to leave from time-to-time are two different things.

Make sure you read his interview.

Discussion in the Information Age

We consume a ridiculous amount of information every day.

Every second, every minute, every hour, our brains are learning something new about how the world works and, I think, in many ways, we’re better off for it. It means we’re able to talk intelligently about more subjects, and it means when we don’t know something about a given subject, we know where to find the information immediately.

The downside is thinking that because the information is available, we’re experts on any given subject.

The recent presidential election is a great example of this. Obviously the economy was a huge topic of discussion:

How do we deal with our deficit, and continue to make needed investments at home?

How do we create incentives to “put people back to work” in the USA?

How do we encourage businesses to “insource” instead of outsource?

All good questions. All worthy of intelligent discussion. But despite all of the reliable information available to us, most of these (extremely complex) topics were reduced to Internet memes and people’s opinions were thrown around as “fact” as they assumed, somehow, that because they read a few words that validated their point of view, they were suddenly experts on macroeconomic theory.

This doesn’t elevate the conversation.

As a reader, posting a link to an article on Gawker doesn’t mean you have any real authority on the basic tenets of the economy—or any other topic for that matter. It just means you’ve read and shared an article.

As for writers, I can’t think of many who actually set out to be “the authority” on a subject. Most are just hoping contribute to the discussion. To do nothing more than add their thoughts to the ever-growing canon of the Internet, and let them evolve as people build on and critique them for years to come.

The discussion is not elevated when you assume roles of authority on subjects you know nothing about. It’s not elevated when you pretend to have the right ideas, only to further an ideological agenda. And it’s not elevated when you’ve decided that you can’t or won’t pay attention to ideas that don’t fit said ideology.

The discussion is elevated when you realize that just because you have an opinion about something doesn’t mean you’re an authority on it. That we all have a lot to learn from one another. That the Internet is a great place to get new information when you need it, and a great place to deposit reliable, educated information or thoughts of your own to help move the conversation along.

You’ll shoot your eye out!

Ardent supporters of the Second Amendment like to say that the main reason they—constitutionally—have a right to bear arms is to “protect themselves” and/or in the event of a “government takeover.” Which is all fine and dandy, I suppose. The issue is that, in these United States, we had over 12,000 gun-related homicides in 2008 alone. Compare that to a mere 11 in Japan (do you think they have video games in Japan?), and we’re number one yet again, baby.

USA!
USA!
USA!

Anyway, unless I’m unaware of some major government takeover, these gun-related deaths must be the result of “self defense,” right?

Let’s look at a few examples of what Americans are killing each other over:

  • Trouble with Twitter in Tyler, TX: “An argument over who tweeted whom turned deadly after a man fired multiple shots in the parking lot of the Broadway Square Mall in Tyler.” [Source]
  • A contract dispute in Phoenix, AZ: “One person was killed and five more were injured in a Wednesday shooting at a Phoenix office complex at 16th Street and Orangewood Avenue… [...] The company had hired [the shooter] to refurbish office cubicles at two call centers in California, but a contract dispute arose.” [Source]
  • Dog feces in Dallas, TX: “An ongoing argument between neighbors about a couple dumping dog feces on their elderly neighbor’s patio came to a head Monday morning when the neighbor shot and killed them, police say.” [Source]
  • Grooming in Sweet Home, OR: “Barry Boydston was charged for attempted murder in December after he went to the Bubbles and Barks dog grooming business on Dec. 21. He was dropped at the location by his brother, Damon Boydston, who was arrested by Lebanon police for driving under the influence and felon in possession of a firearm. Barry Boydston allegedly entered the business and brandished a sawed-off shotgun at owner Cindy Blondin and her friend, Rebekah Katelnikoff, who was helping out there.” [Source]
  • The wrong driveway in GA: “The guy came outside and my brother’s girlfriend said he was screaming, ‘Get off my property!’ and he shot into the air. My brother was backing out fast because he was scared and he rolled down the window to say he was sorry and he was not doing anything wrong. Then the guy shot him in his head.” [Source]

Unfortunately, these five examples aren’t the exception. They’re the norm. Mass murders at movie theaters and elementary schools take over the news cycle when they happen (as they should) but, often, lives are lost simply because one of the “good guys” with a gun was having a bad day and ended up playing the part of the “bad guy”—or because the “good guy” with the gun had good intentions, but poor aim.

This isn’t a scare tactic. It’s reality in America, where the right to bear arms is as much of a religion as Christianity.


Further reading: “Since 9/11, Kurzman and his team tallies, 33 Americans have died as a result of terrorism launched by their Muslim neighbors. During that period, 180,000 Americans were murdered for reasons unrelated to terrorism.” —’Report: U.S. Muslim Terrorism Was Practically Nil in 2012‘, on Wired

Good morning!

→ President Obama’s second inaugural address

Together we determined that a modern economy requires railroads and highways to speed travel and commerce, schools and colleges to train our workers. Together we discovered that a free market only thrives when there are rules to ensure competition and fair play. Together we resolve that a great nation must care for the vulnerable and protect its people from life’s worst hazards and misfortune.

Through it all, we have never relinquished our skepticism of central authority, nor have we succumbed to the fiction that all societies ills can be cured through government alone. Our celebration of initiative and enterprise, our insistence on hard work and personal responsibility, these are constants in our character.

For we have always understood that when times change, so must we, that fidelity to our founding principles requires new responses to new challenges, that preserving our individual freedoms ultimately requires collective action.

Congratulations, Mr. President.

→ ‘The Poem Robert Frost Didn’t Read at JFK’s Inauguration,’ via Brain Pickings

Come fresh from an election like the last,

The greatest vote a people ever cast,

So close yet sure to be abided by,

It is no miracle our mood is high.

Courage is in the air in bracing whiffs

Better than all the stalemate an’s and ifs.

42 lines, and worth your time.

→ ‘Art & Code,’ by John Liwag for Proxart

A balance of art and the act of embracing technology is an interesting route to push everything forward from here on out. Developers know that there is beautiful code, which is built with care. Artists know that there are wonderful stories that the world can’t live without. Where humanity meets craft is story. If pieces of expression, creativity, and art have the ability to be personalized and personified on their own, why not push everything we’re making in that direction?

Letting your stories live, breathe, and interact further and farther than you physically can should be the goal. To let our stories spread like wildfire and live forever.

Speaking of inaugurations, Proxart is back, and John Liwag comes out swinging with this op-ed about the Internet’s coming of age.


Good Morning’ is a list of the three most interesting articles I read over coffee this morning. Feel free to subscribe via RSS, if you’d like.