No new Insider content this week, as I’ve been hard at work (really) on the top 100. It’s all phone calls at this point; I’ll start writing at the end of this upcoming week, most likely, although that depends on me getting through my list of calls too. I did chat on Thursday, and posted my Top Chef recap yesterday.
And now, the links …
- The New Yorker cover image this week, regarding the attack on Charlie Hebdo, is very strong.
- Antibiotics: US discovery labelled ‘game-changer’ for medicine. The research describes the discovery of a new class of antibiotics that targets cell walls in Gram-positive bacteria, a method of attack to which bacteria are less likely to develop resistance through evolution.
- Via NPR, Why some chefs refuse to stop serving bluefin tuna.
- A longform piece on how the courts continue to fail sex workers by treating them as criminals. The piece itself is disjointed, but I’m including it because the content, especially Love’s story, is compelling.
- This week in People Are Idiots: Two Infants Too Young For Vaccinations Contract Measles From Unvaccinated People At Disneyland.
- My friends at mental floss have the story of the fight against U.S. censorship of Ulysses. Bringing the book into the country was illegal, so Joyce’s American publisher, Bennett Cerf, arranged to have someone smuggle the book in a very obvious way, so he’d have an actual test case to take to court. What followed was something of a comedy of errors.
- A heartwarming story – no, really – about a British student who decided to help a homeless man who offered her £3 for a taxi when she lost her debit card. The fundraiser, now closed, raised over £45 thousand, and the man who tried to help her will get his own flat, with furniture and the first month of rent paid.
- Salt Lake City Found The One Solution To Homelessness No Has One Tried. It’s from The Daily Show, so it’s silly, but the point that it’s cheaper to provide free housing than to pay for the medical and emergency costs associated with the homeless population is a real and key finding.
- Mine too:
Whoever hacked this traffic sign in #LosAngeles is my new hero http://t.co/OxRYGwSC4g pic.twitter.com/lsiFOnhiLV
— Grove Atlantic (@groveatlantic) January 9, 2015
Salt Lake City’s approach isn’t completely novel. Malcolm Gladwell wrote of Denver’s program for housing their homeless back in 2006: http://gladwell.com/million-dollar-murray/
My only problem with the sign hack is that the audience whom I would most like to get the message (children) likely shouldn’t see it offered with such choice language.