Reading List

The most recent articles from a list of feeds I subscribe to.

A quarter of America’s “farms” aren’t really farms

The meat and dairy industries — along with the farms that grow corn and soy for animal feed — are some of the biggest polluters in the US. Yet they’re largely exempt from environmental regulations. An argument that industry lobbyists and allied politicians often make is that there are simply too many farms to regulate. […]

Why kids are all posing like this in pictures

This story originally appeared in Kids Today, Vox’s newsletter about kids, for everyone. Sign up here for future editions. My kids were posing for a picture the other day when the older one, like big siblings since time immemorial, threw up a pair of bunny ears behind his little brother’s head. Or so I thought. “That’s not […]

The big problem with “no tax on tips”

The Democratic Party’s problems have a two-word solution: “economic populism.” Or so suggests much recent commentary (including, to an extent, my own). Yet, the merits of “populist” economic policies depend a lot on how that term is defined.  “Populism” is best understood as a rhetorical mode that portrays political life as a conflict between the […]

This counterintuitive advice about kids and phones makes a lot of sense

If you’re a parent, you’ve probably grappled with the question of when your kid should get a smartphone. There’s a nationwide movement, Wait Until 8th, that argues that devices should be kept out of kids’ hands until they’re deep into middle school. Some families manage to hold out even longer. Andrew Przybylski, a professor of […]

Exclusive: RFK Jr. and the White House buried a major study on alcohol and cancer. Here’s what it shows.

Most Americans still don’t know that alcohol can cause cancer — and the alcohol industry is working hard to make sure it stays that way.  For the past three years, the industry, aided by its allies in Congress and later the Trump administration, has sought to discredit and eventually bury a major analysis that offers new […]