Weekend Reading forecast says 74% chance of weather happening. Also sports I guess. Have at it:

• How Expensive It Is To Be Poor.
• Blizzards and the Birth of the Modern Mayor.
• Islamaphobic Bus Ads Covered with Muslim Superhero.
• The Cops Don’t Care About Violent Online Threats. What Do We Do Now?
• And a feminist writer interviews one of her online trolls.
• Is It Time to #KickOutTheKKK?
• The Age of the Drone: No-Fly Zones and the Future Fear of Blue Sky.
• Oregon was Founded as a Racist Utopia:

The constitution was put to a popular vote in the state in 1857 and included two referendums that were to be voted on independently. The first was whether they should reject slavery. Roughly 75 percent of voters opted to reject the adoption of slavery. The second measure was whether or not to exclude black people from the state. About 89 percent of voters cast their vote in favor of excluding black and mixed race people from the state. And thus, the exclusionary aspects of the state constitution were adopted.

[…]

The voters who overwhelmingly embraced this exclusion rationalized it not as blind hate, but as a progressive move that was simply keeping their new land “pure.” Utopia often means starting from scratch, and just as often it means excluding undesirables.

• Students were Tear-Gassed and Pepper Sprayed Over 300 Times in Alabama Schools.
• Racial Bias, Even When We Have Good Intentions.
• For the Public Good: The Shameful History of Forced Sterilization in the U.S.
• French Prisons Prove to be Effective Incubators for Islamic Extremism.
• Shot by the Police in Albuquerque:

Since 1987, the police department has shot at least a hundred and forty-six people. The shooting of Michael Brown, in Ferguson, Missouri, looked almost routine to people in Albuquerque. They had seen such incidents many times before. Few people protested, and no one paid much attention. Police violence appeared to be a matter of concern only to Albuquerque’s underclass: those who are mentally ill, addicted to drugs, Native American, or Hispanic and poor. David Correia, a professor of American studies at the University of New Mexico, told me, “There’s this myth here of tri-cultural harmony—indigenous people, Mexican-Americans, and Anglos—but this precarious arrangement is built on a long history of violence against Spanish-speaking and indigenous people that still plays out.”

The city has hired a succession of experts, a new research team every few years, to analyze the police department’s use of force, but officials seem to have viewed the act of commissioning a report as a proxy for doing something about the problem. Samuel Walker, an expert in police accountability who was hired in 1996 to co-author one of the reports, after the police killed thirty-two people in ten years, said, “When we gave an oral presentation to the city council, I had a very strong impression that many city-council members were not interested.” He described his conversation with Martin Chávez, the mayor, as one of the most hostile interviews he’s ever conducted. He said that the police chief would not look him in the eyes when he briefed him. One city-council member refused to meet with him or return his calls.

• Kobane after the Islamic State – a Town in Ruins.
• Ivy League Endowments, and Why Harvard Owns California Vineyard Real Estate.
• Lost at Sea, Legos Reunite on Beaches and Facebook.
• Prosecutors who challenge the police are penalized.
• Money Talks, on inequality and “money as speech.”
• Alfredo Jaar’s depiction of a divided America at MLK’s funeral.
• The Map Maker’s Conundrum.
• Netflix’s Secret Special Algorithm is a Human.