Long Reads

[Smith Corks One]

If they stick to raiding cockfighting rings, I wouldn't mind if they deported every last one of those disgusting mother [expletive]. They can deport the white trash Americans they catch there too.

I was shocked how widespread it was when I was in the Philippines. I didn't witness any fights, thank God, but it seemed like just about everybody (males at least) had some birds they bragged about fighting. I assumed that even though it was so out there, it must still be illegal, if only technically; but then I started seeing advertisements on TV for these big fights that were going to be televised. Just repulsive.

[Tim]

If they stick to raiding cockfighting rings, I wouldn't mind if they deported every last one of those disgusting mother [expletive]. They can deport the white trash Americans they catch there too.

I was shocked how widespread it was when I was in the Philippines. I didn't witness any fights, thank God, but it seemed like just about everybody (males at least) had some birds they bragged about fighting. I assumed that even though it was so out there, it must still be illegal, if only technically; but then I started seeing advertisements on TV for these big fights that were going to be televised. Just repulsive.

I tend to agree, but readily admit I don't understand the culture. I pause to throw stones though you are certainly more informed on this issue than myself.

[Freed Roger]

Inside Alex Honnold's brain

http://nautil.us/issue/61/coordinates/t ... climber-rp

understatement of the century.

Alex Honnold doesn’t experience fear like the rest of us.

[GeddyWrox]

This is a GREAT read on race and politics.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics ... mmigration

[doe_boy]

Just finished The Decameron by Boccaccio

Started reading it in 1982.

[Freed Roger]

kind of interesting graphics and thoughts on measuring time left not by days but by remaining events.

https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/12/the-tail-end.html

The one on books gets me for odd reasons - at my current rate I may only read 100 or so books. Which may explain my recent impulse to quit on books that I'm not liking - instead of my prior theory of it being due to short attention span in smart phone social media

Am ever more aware the # of visits with family etc are dwindling.

[pioneer98]

This is a fascinating story originating from the 2008 housing crisis.

The million-dollar brownstone that no one owned

On December 12, 2013, a three-story brick townhouse in a swank part of Brooklyn sold for $20,000. A mysterious organization called AOTA LLC bought it from a guy named Barrington Adrian, who had bought it 10 years before from Rosa Perez, a Puerto Rican lady, who had lived there for 30 years with her son Eddie, and still lived there when I moved in in 2011.

How could a house in a desirable neighborhood sell for less than the price of a parking space underneath a condo on the same block?

It took me years to find out, and years to tell this story. It’s a hard story to tell. One that’s both personal, financial, and also historical, since it’s the story of a house that remains all but unsalable today. No one person will buy it. And no one person will buy it because the house has what’s called a “clouded history.” And the clouded history is the result of the mortgage crisis that happened 10 years ago, which nearly brought about a second Great Depression and did bring about 8 million Americans losing their homes.

[pioneer98]

The Harper's article mentioned in that above article is also bonkers. I thought I was pretty well-read about the whole 2007/8 financial crisis, but I had not heard of MERS before. Maybe I had just forgotten it, I definitely did not grasp its role in all of this.

Stop Payment!

A key section:

“What’s happened,” said Christopher Peterson, a law professor at the University of Utah who has written extensively about MERS, “is that, almost overnight, we’ve switched from democracy in real-property recording to oligarchy in real-property recording.” The county clerks who established the ownership of land, who oversaw and kept the records, were democratically elected stewards of those records, said Peterson. Now a corporation headquartered outside Washington, D.C., oversaw the records. “There was no court case behind this, no statute from Congress or the state legislatures,” Peterson told me. “It was accomplished in a private corporate decision. The banks just did it.” Peterson said it was “not a coincidence” that more Americans than at any time since the Great Depression were being forced out of their homes just as records of home ownership and mortgages were transferred wholesale to a privatized database.

[pioneer98]

A story about a high school girl who was raped in Texas in 2006 and basically exiled from the community and her rapists went unpunished.

What do we owe her now?

[GeddyWrox]

THIS IS A MUST READ. Chilling.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/ar ... on/568324/