The amazing photos accompanying this Open Thread are by Andreas Hemb and Christian Vizl.

1. “The three most popular movies at theaters in the United States and Canada in 2017 — “Star Wars: The Last Jedi,” “Beauty and the Beast” and “Wonder Woman” — were each driven by female characters, something that has not happened in at least 37 years, as far back as full box office data is available.”
2. What Research Tells Us About How Women Are Treated at Work
3. Well-adjusted man with good priorities sues Iliza Shlesinger over women-only comedy show 
   “Shlesinger’s “Girls Night In” is described as “a hybrid stand up show and interactive discussion between Iliza and the women in the audience aimed at giving women a place to vent in a supportive, fun and inclusive environment.”
4. In the heart of Anti-Trump Country, voters still pine for an America better than its president | Will Bunch
5. The Partisanship of Feminism – The Atlantic
   “A liberal woman’s emergence as a serious presidential contender in 2008, and then as her party’s nominee eight years later, drove feminists of both genders toward the Democratic Party and anti-feminists of both genders toward the GOP.”
6. The Elusive Backfire Effect: Mass Attitudes’ Steadfast Factual Adherence by Thomas Wood, Ethan Porter :: SSRN
   A new study finds that citizens are more open to facts that go against their partisan preferences than some other studies have found. One possible reason for the difference, according to the paper: previous studies have used undergraduate samples rather than general population samples.
7. The past year of research has made it very clear: Trump won because of racial resentment – Vox
8. Trump’s Pick to Run 2020 Census Has Defended Racial Gerrymandering and Voter Suppression Laws – Mother Jones
9. Sarah Silverman’s response to a Twitter troll is a master class in compassion – Blog | q | CBC Radio
10. What Liberals Get Wrong About Identity Politics | New Republic
11. #NotYourModelMinority: Asian Americans in the affirmative action debate | Urban Institute
12. Justice Department inquiry renews debate over whether top colleges hold some applicants to an unfair standard — and what the data say about Asian-American applicants.
13. The Uncomfortable Truth About Affirmative Action and Asian-Americans | The New Yorker
14. Investigating Whether Affirmative Action Hurts Asians – The Atlantic
15. What the Trans Moment Has to Offer Radical Feminism – The TransAdvocate
    “For to describe accurately the class of potential and actual victims of rape would necessarily mean including people who are trans, nonbinary, gender nonconforming, intersex, and otherwise not specifically cisgender.”
16. How a Nearly Successful Slave Revolt Was Intentionally Lost to History | Smart News | Smithsonian
17. Why dolphins are deep thinkers | Science | The Guardian
    Dolphins make plans and use tools.
18. No, #MeToo Is Not a Witch Hunt – Pacific Standard
19. This might be the best map of the 2016 election you ever see – Vox
20. These are the arguments against net neutrality and why they’re wrong | TechCrunch

Happy end of 2017, everybody!

1. High School Is Too Late to Start Teaching Consent to Kids – Rewire
2. Emergency rooms are monopolies. Patients pay the price.  – Vox
   ER “fees rose 89 percent between 2009 and 2015 — rising twice as fast as the price of outpatient health care, and four times as fast as overall health care spending.”
3. An ex-cop from Arizona was acquitted for shooting an unarmed, sobbing man – Vox
4. After Trent Franks, men worry if asking subordinates to bear their child is still okay – The Washington Post
5. Focus group with Alabama voters who are sticking by Roy Moore (HBO) – YouTube
   This was from before the election, but I think still interesting slash horrifying.
6. Trump Protesters Facing Felonies Say U.S. Wants To Criminalize The First Amendment | HuffPost
   “The government would have you believe that everyone, the hundreds of people in that section, are breaking the law simply because they didn’t get up and leave.”
7. Letters of Note: To My Old Master
   “Jourdon’s 1865 reply to the person who enslaved his family, dictated from his home on August 7th, is everything you could wish for.”
8. Obsessing over the deficit could further imperil those whom the tax bill leaves worst off.
   “In this interview, Stephanie Kelton, a professor of economics at Stony Brook University and former economic advisor to Bernie Sanders, explains why.”
9. “Chain migration,” and why Donald Trump wants to end it, explained – Vox
10. The Insane Plan to Give North Korea a ‘Bloody Nose’ | The American Conservative
11. A Nashville Man Spent Two Decades Behind Bars. Now The Government Wants Him To Go Back. | Nashville Public Radio
    He was let out early by the Obama administration’s initiative to reduce the sentences of people in prison for crack, and by all accounts he is now a model citizen.
12. Stash House Stings: When the Government Can Invent Crimes and Criminals | Cato @ Liberty
13. Police Officers Should Be Trained in De-Escalation. It Works.
14. A Pill to Make Exercise Obsolete | The New Yorker
15. Are Soas students right to ‘decolonise’ their minds from western philosophers? | Education | The Guardian
16. Yacob and Amo: Africa’s precursors to Locke, Hume and Kant | Aeon Essays
17. Professors say they won’t advise students to work or study at U of Rochester
    Due to dissatisfaction with how Rochester’s administration protected a professor who was accused of sexual harassment by multiple graduate students and professors.
18. How the discovery of extraterrestrial life would change morality | Aeon Essays
19. Research suggests that increased pornography reduces rape – TUOC
    I think this is interesting. However, the argument that this research proves that porn reduces rape is treating correlation as causation. It could also be the case that the social changes that cause a society to decriminalize porn, also cause a reduction in rape.
20. And after I wrote the above, I read this post in which a TUOC reader makes a similar argument (but better).
21. ‘The Shed at Dulwich’ was London’s top-rated restaurant. Just one problem: It didn’t exist. – The Washington Post
22. Proposed New Jersey Legislation Could Extend Voting Rights to Convicted Criminals | Observer
    If this becomes law, then NY will become the third state in which currently-incarcerated felons can vote (the other two are Maine and Vermont).
23. Comment on “The Age of Outrage” by Jonathan Haidt – joftius – Medium
24. Law Reviews reexamine prison gerrymandering case law | Prison Gerrymandering Project
25. Wilfrid Laurier Exonerates Lindsay Shepherd, We Can All Move On Now – VICE
    What happened to Shepherd seems inexcusable – especially lying about student complaints when there had been none. Also, I don’t agree with the “move on now” message of the headline, exactly; this specific incident is being put to bed, but there are larger issues involved.
26. Interesting graph of single motherhood rates and crime rates from Philip Cohen.
    The two trends, which once appeared to be moving in tandem, have seemingly diverged completely.

1. “The hypocrisy is astounding”: this tax bill shows the GOP’s debt concerns were pure fraud
   In other news, ocean still wet.
2. Can We Cut the Crap on the Debt from the Tax Bill Hurting Our Kids? | Beat the Press | Blogs | Publications | The Center for Economic and Policy Research
   The GOP tax bill is terrible – but the problem is not the effect of future debt on the children.
3. GiveDirectly is launching their randomized control trial of long-term guaranteed basic income in Kenya. The Unit of Caring has gathered some highlights.
4. Letting robots kill without human supervision could save lives | New Scientist
   You can’t read the whole article, because paywall, although you can read enough to get the gist of the argument.But honestly, I added this to the link farm because I just love the headline, about which someone on Twitter wrote “Was… was this written by killer robots?”

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5. What alarmist articles about transgender children get wrong.
   It’s not true that 80% – or anywhere near 80% – of transgender children either desist or detransition.
6. Detransition, Desistance, and Disinformation: A Guide for Understanding Transgender Children… | Julia Serano
7. Prepubescent Transgender Children: What We Do and Do Not Know – Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry
   Only the first page here. To read the whole article, email me and I can hook you up.
8. When “desisters” aren’t: De-desistance in childhood and adolescent gender dysphoria | Gender Analysis

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9. ‘Lady Bird’ Star Laurie Metcalf Might Be the Best Actress Working Right Now
   I saw “Lady Bird”; the movie was wonderful – it did mostly the usual coming-of-age narrative moves, but it did them all so well – and Metcalf, as the main character’s mother, was astounding. (Metcalf is most famous for playing Jackie on “Roseanne.”)
10. Speaking of Roseanne, one of my favorite TV shows ever, there’s going to be a tenth season next year, with Metcalf and the rest of the original cast (including John Goodman) returning to their old roles. I hope it’s good.
11. The Rise of the Post-New Left Political Vocabulary | The Public Autonomy Project
    Long and (to me) interesting comparison of New Left and Social Justice Left jargon, asking why the vocabularies changed and if it matters.
12. Obama won lots of votes from racially prejudiced whites (and some of them supported Trump) – The Washington Post
13. Liberals Are Becoming Knee-Jerk Anti-Trumpists | New Republic
    “The left should be encouraging the president’s moderation on foreign policy rather than distorting the truth about alleged gaffes.” Article by Jeet Heer. (In context, I think “moderation” means not that Trump is a moderate, but that Trump has moderated his rhetoric and approach compared to his previous statements.)
14. The Right Way, And The Wrong Way, To Measure the Benefits Of Tax Changes | Tax Policy Center
15. Facing deportation, Lucio Perez is adapting to life in Amherst church sanctuary | masslive.com
16. “Here is a fantastic example of the difference between the male and female gaze. Patty Jenkins’ Amazon warriors on the left. Zack Snyder’s on the right.”
    I don’t think I agree with the terminology – perhaps I would call it a fantastic example of women as subjects vs objectification – actually, I’m not sure that’s right either – but whatever the terminology, it’s a striking comparison.
17. The Zombie Fungus Takes Over Ants’ Bodies to Control Their Minds – The Atlantic
    Turns out the fungus is even creepier than previously thought. It’s like they plagiarized their ideas from “Get Out.”
18. Sandy Hook Victim Noah Pozner’s Family Driven From Boca – The Forward
    Conspiracy theorists seem ridiculous, but they can (further) destroy people’s lives.
19. How to stop sexism and raise a son who respects women.
20. ZOA Rolled Out The Red Carpet For Steve Bannon — And It Backfired – The Forward
    The headline doesn’t really reflect the article. “Zionist Organization of America rolls out the red carpet for Steven Bannon, and this illustrates major divisions in the US Jewish community, and also Alan Dershowitz makes a cameo and is a jerk” would have been more accurate.
21. A comic about every comment thread under any content involving a fat person existing. Ever.
    I’m jealous that I didn’t create this strip.
22. An LAPD officer accidentally filmed himself putting cocaine in a suspect’s wallet – Vox
23. Myths of the 1 Percent: What Puts People at the Top – The New York Times
    According to this economist, the answer isn’t trade, or information technology, or declining unions, or immigration. “Almost all of the growth in top American earners has come from just three economic sectors: professional services, finance and insurance, and health care, groups that tend to benefit from regulatory barriers that shelter them from competition.”
24. Reflections of an Affirmative-Action Baby – The Atlantic
    The author, a white man, writes “the affirmative action I enjoyed, and the sexual harassment Sarah suffered, were connected. I was given extraordinary opportunity at TNR, in large measure, because talented women like Sarah Wildman were not.”
25. Marvel takes on colonialism and white supremacy in ‘Thor: Ragnarok’
    The movie is an anti-colonial fantasy disguised as a screwball comedy disguised as an action movie. I really enjoyed it.
26. Detroit cops posing as drug dealers tried to arrest Detroit cops posing as drug buyers and then they all had a fistfight in the middle of the street. This would make an awesome movie.
27. The Disappearing Right to Earn a Living
    Do we really need someone to be licensed to hook up a stereo? “In the 1950s, about one in 20 American workers needed an occupational license before they could work in the occupation of their choice. Today, that figure stands at about one in four.” This is an issue I agree with libertarians about.
28. Hari Kondabolu’s The Problem with Apu attempts to shut down The Simpsons’ racist caricature for good – The Verge
29. The Last of the Iron Lungs
    The reporter found and interviewed the (as far as they know) last three people still using iron lungs to survive. All three are polio survivors, and boy, do they not like anti-vaxxers.
30. I love Yoshitoshi Kanemaki’s wood carvings. Check out Kanemaki’s Behance page, and be sure to look at the gallery for the statue at the top of this post, which includes multiple angles as well as making-of photos.
31. The bottom image is by Alessandro Sicioldr, another wonderful artist with a tendency to go all multi-face. Check out his behance, too.