Same weekend channel, same weekend reading:

• Obamacare and the Conscience of a Radical.
• It Gets Better, Unless You’re Fat.
• Waterboarding is a Joke at Dick Cheney’s Roast.
• Dear Television takes on Netflix:
  • The New Canon.
  • Why We Watch Netflix in the Middle of the Night.
  • Streaming Pam Beesly.
• The Men Who Set Themselves On Fire:

Unemployment is not only the loss of a job. It is the loss of dignity. It is the loss of the present and, over time, the ability to imagine a future. It is hopelessness and shame, an open struggle everyone witnesses but pretends not to see. It is a social and political crisis we tell a man to solve, and blame him when he cannot.

When you are unemployed, your past is dismissed as unworthy. Your future is denied. Self-immolation is making yourself, in the moment, matter.

• When Our News is Gerrymandered, Too.
• Rihanna On My Mind.
• Malala Yousafzai and the White Saviour Complex.
• How Not to Help Somalia.
• New Banksy Street Art Turned Into Student Protest Propaganda.

• Upstairs, Downstairs at the University of Chicago.
• Why Anarchists Aren’t Celebrating the Shutdown.
• Wait a Second before Cheering a Police Shooting.
• The Killing of Jonathan Ferell:

“You see one of his hands partially behind his back, concealed as he … continued to advance. He was given three commands to ‘Get on the ground. Get on the ground.’ He did not. And Officer Kerrick backed up and then felt the need to deploy his service weapon.”

Later in the story the police chief makes the obvious point that not complying is not a good reason to try and kill someone. People do not comply for all kinds of reasons. Sometimes they mean harm. But they also might not clearly hear you. They might be mentally disabled. Or–having just emerged from a car crash–they might be totally disoriented.

Having said that, it’s important to understand that, in America, it is broadly believed that police can–and perhaps should–kill people who do not comply with them. Roy Middleton was shot in his own driveway after a neighbor called the police on him, thinking he was a burglar breaking into a car. The car was Middleton’s. When the police arrived, they claim to have given Middleton orders to which he did not comply. Middleton thought it was neighbors playing a joke. The police claim he “lunged” at them.”It was like a firing squad,” Middleton told PNJ from his bed at Baptist Hospital. “Bullets were flying everywhere.”  The local sheriff doesn’t believe the police did anything wrong.

• Dozens Play Chess in Public to Defy San Francisco Crackdown.
• Cropped Out: Environmental History Through a Car Window.
• Three Types of Buzzfeed Lists to Learn Before You Die.
• The Weird Genius of The Act of Killing.
• The 29 Stages of a Twitter Storm.
• Eulogy for a Horse(_ebooks).

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