Want To Rule The World? Talk To Millennials Like They’re Human

The Article: The First Person To Talk To Millennials Like Human Beings Will Rule The World by in Esquire.

The Text: The results are in: Millennials are going to change the false two-party dichotomy that is currently destroying America.

But it’s not because they’ve seen the waste and corruption that a two-party system brought with it, ruining an economy that Millennials now have to inherit. According to The USA Today and the Third Way think tank, it’s because they love Netflix.

“Millennials have come of age in a period of expansive customization of goods and services,” the report concludes. “Their experiences have led them to an á la carte worldview, including in politics.”

This is not what’s happening.

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Obamacare Didn’t Fail. Let’s Move On Now.

The Article: Obamacare fails to collapse. Time to move on, folks. by Paul Waldman in The Washington Post.

The Text: If you pick up any newspaper today, you’re likely to find a story about the fact that today is the (somewhat loose) deadline to sign up for insurance under the Affordable Care Act. The deadline will also be a major topic on cable news, and will probably lead all three network newscasts this evening. There will be some uncertainty and some arguments over what the numbers mean.

But we should mark this day, because barring some kind of unforeseen catastrophe, it’s the last time the ACA will be the lead story everywhere in the media.
Of course, there will be another open enrollment deadline every year, and new insurance policies taking effect every January 1. But today is the last of the law’s key dates, when everyone’s attention turns to it. We had the dreadful opening of healthcare.gov (and the state exchanges) on October 1st, then on January 1st the last round of key provisions took effect, and today open enrollment concludes. And that’s the end of major ACA news events.

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Want An A On Your Next Awful, 143-Word Paper? Be An Athlete

The Article: Here’s the Awful 146-Word “Essay” That Earned an A- for a UNC Jock by Jordan Weissmann in Slate.

The Text: The University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill has already been embroiled in a scandal for allowing its athletes to enroll in fake courses for easy credit. Now, the whole controversy has a rather potent visual symbol to go along with it: a 146-word, ungrammatical essay on Rosa Parks that earned an A-.

Mary Willingham, who spent a decade tutoring and advising UNC’s jocks before turning into a whistleblower, unveiled the paper during an interview with ESPN. As the segment explains, academically troubled UNC athletes were encouraged to sign up for so-called “paper classes”—which were essentially no-work independent studies involving a single paper that allowed functionally illiterate football players to prop up their GPAs, thus satisfying the NCAA’s eligibility requirements. Here’s the sort of work that was involved:

And here’s the text.

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Why Are We Arguing About Birth Control In 2014?

The Article: In 2014, why are we still arguing about birth control? by Dr. Jeanne Conroy in CNN Online.

The Text: The headlines seem like something from the past: Congressional hearings are held to debate women’s access to contraceptives. A talk show host uses a derogatory and misogynist term to describe a graduate student seeking access to contraception on her campus. And for-profit employers are suing the government to avoid providing coverage for contraception within their employees’ insurance plans on the basis of their personal beliefs.

But this is no flashback: These conversations about contraception are happening now, in the present day, with outdated views and inaccurate information playing a leading role.

As physicians dedicated to improving the health of women, we ask: Why is contraception still seen as controversial in the face of overwhelming evidence about its benefits? Why is birth control questioned, in this day and age, despite its widespread acceptance and use?

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Obama, More Fiscally Conservative Than Reagan

The Article: Obama Is More Fiscally Conservative Than Reagan by Joe Weisenthal in Business Insider.

The Text: Why isn’t the economy surging?

Because we’re still running a policy of government austerity.

This chart, via our friend Matt Busigin, shows that at this point in his Presidency, Reagan was running a deficit as a % of GDP that’s higher than what Obama is today.