Remember when the Internet felt like it was expanding your world? I have been on Twitter a little more than usual these last few days and in addition to the annoying way it reduces conversation into competing bumper sticker slogans, it makes the world seem so much smaller than it is. That’s why I am relying less on social algorithms for my news. Here are five interesting stories I found.
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“Sol Flores for Congress – ‘That Door'” (YouTube) – “I’ll fight as hard for you in Congress as I did to protect myself.” That’s the closing line of a striking campaign ad by Sol Flores, a Chicago community advocate who is running for Congress, in which she tells how she fought off a man who was sexually abusing her when she was 11 years old. The Chicago Tribune has a good profile of Flores, too.
- “U.S. Strikes Killed Scores of Russia Fighters in Syria, Sources Say” (Bloomberg) – Russian and American soldiers are fighting — and killing each other in large numbers — in Syria. To make matters more bizarre, the Russians appear to be private mercenaries working for Assad, and the “Russian assault may have been a rogue operation.”
- “The Bittersweet Beauty of Adam Rippon” (Vanity Fair) – Richard Lawson’s essay on ice skating is heartbreaking, beautiful.
- “The fight for the right to be a Muslim in America” (The Guardian) – Andrew Rice looks at how Islamophobia crept out from the fringes of the right-wing internet to the lives of Muslims living in tony suburban New Jersey after Trump’s victory. “It’s like his election has given permission to people.â€
- “Americans overestimate social mobility in their country” (The Economist) – Americans believe the U.S. is far more upwardly mobile than it actually is, while Europe is slightly the opposite. Interestingly, American beliefs of how probable it is for someone born into the lowest quintile to rise to the top is about even with the actual probability in the European countries.
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