This week, I have been mostly reading:

• Tribal Scrum — by Dan Pirarro w/ Wayno:
  
• People and jobs? Or wealth? The government has to decide which to prioritise, and there is only one right answer — a sobering reality check from Richard Murphy: The choice appears to be between seeking to preserve the appearance of value and wealth that is implicit in our overinflated property values at present, which also underpin all UK banking, or seeking to preserve the ability of this country to make a living. But, and I cannot stress the point enough, the choice is illusory. In reality, the value implicit in land has already disappeared. It is folly to pretend otherwise. The only reason no one has yet begun to realise this is that we have a completely frozen property market at present. When that reopens prices will, as a matter of fact, tumble. And so too will new rents. All I am saying is that old ones have to follow suit: if we want an economy that generates income in the future then the blunt fact is that we now have to trash our balance sheet. Or rather, we have to accept that it has already been trashed and now deal with the consequences.
• We Don’t Need Progressives but We Really Do — Ted Rall:
  
• Socialist Feminism: What Is It and How Can It Replace Corporate ‘Girl Boss’ Feminism? — Sarah Leonard in Teen Vogue: Corporate feminism doesn’t mean much when your generation is more likely to have freelance work and haphazard gigs than an office. Many young workers are actually downwardly mobile […], doing delivery work for apps and gig-ified versions of white-collar work. Many are still in debt. And being your own girl boss is no answer — plenty of startups fail. Most young women face college debt, bad health care, and a worse job market. In response, socialist feminism is on the rise, mirroring the popularity of socialism in general. A socialist won huge support from young women in the last two presidential primaries. Democratic Socialists of America suddenly has flourishing feminist working groups all over the country. Feminist heroes increasingly include labor leaders like Sara Nelson, president of the flight attendants’ union. And one of the most popular politicians of our era, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, is a proud democratic socialist feminist. This generation of feminists is less interested in helping to paint a veneer of equality on capitalism than scrapping that system for good.
• Non Sequitur — by Wiley Miller:
  
• Why does ‘yellow filter’ keep popping up in American movies? — Elisabeth Sherman at Matador Network: There’s a phrase for this distinct color palette: It’s called yellow filter, and it’s almost always used in movies that take place in India, Mexico, or Southeast Asia. Oversaturated yellow tones are supposed to depict warm, tropical, dry climates. But it makes the landscape in question look jaundiced and unhealthy, adding an almost dirty or grimy sheen to the scene. Yellow filter seems to intentionally make places the West has deemed dangerous or even primitive uglier than is necessary or even appropriate, especially when all these countries are filled with natural wonders that don’t make it to our screens quite as often as depictions of violence and poverty. “It’s upsetting. It goes hand in hand with how racist Westerners perceive these places and people, especially when you think about how vibrant and colorful these countries’ cultures actually are. Applying these filters plays into stereotypes about these places and the people who live there,” Sulymon, a business analyst from California, whose family is from India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, tells me.
• Oh, the Places You Won’t Go! Jim Malloy Remixes Dr. Seuss and Dr. Fauci — in Print Magazine:
  
• The Prophecies of Q — Adrienne LaFrance in the Atlantic: Welch began to move through the restaurant, at one point attempting to use a butter knife to pry open a locked door, before giving up and firing several rounds from his rifle into the lock. Behind the door was a small computer-storage closet. This was not what he was expecting. Welch had traveled to Washington because of a conspiracy theory known, now famously, as Pizzagate, which claimed that Hillary Clinton was running a child sex ring out of Comet Ping Pong. […] Shortly after Trump’s election, as Pizzagate roared across the internet, Welch started binge-watching conspiracy-theory videos on YouTube. He tried to recruit help from at least two people to carry out a vigilante raid, texting them about his desire to sacrifice “the lives of a few for the lives of many” and to fight “a corrupt system that kidnaps, tortures and rapes babies and children in our own backyard.” When Welch finally found himself inside the restaurant and understood that Comet Ping Pong was just a pizza shop, he set down his firearms, walked out the door, and surrendered to police, who had by then secured the perimeter. “The intel on this wasn’t 100 percent,” Welch told The New York Times after his arrest.
• Also from Bizarro — by Wayno and Pirraro: