VICE: This Was a Quiet Week but There Were Still Eight Mass Shootings in America

Over the past seven days, America witnessed eight mass shootings that left four dead and 29 wounded, bringing the US mass shooting body count so far this year to 273 dead and 945 injured. That means at least as many people have died in US mass shootings in 2016 as perished in the 1979 crash of American Airlines Flight 191, which killed 271 passengers and two people on the ground at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport in an historic national catastrophe.

Meanwhile, Europe suffered zero mass shootings over the past week, leaving the continent's body toll in such attacks so far this year steady at 37 dead and 125 injured. [...]

Although Injuries involving children tend to draw at least a bit of local press, none of these incidents were apparently unique enough to garner much national scrutiny. But it's worth remembering that even in this good week, America was still hemorrhaging from large-scale gun violence. The comparatively low body count of the past few days is still obscene by most global standards, and ought to be intolerable domestically, as well. Instead of hoping in vain that the mass shooting onslaught might relent, Americans should reflect on what it means that this is what we consider merciful—when "just" 29 people are wounded and four more killed in one week's worth of mass gun violence.

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TED-Ed: The history of marriage - Alex Gendler

A white, puffy dress. Eternal love. A joint tax return. Marriage means something different to everyone and has changed over time and across cultures. Alex Gendler traces the history of getting hitched, providing insights on polygamy, same-sex unions and even marriage between the dead and the living.

The Guardian: Lost cities #10: Fordlandia – the failure of Henry Ford's utopian city in the Amazon

Officially, Ford’s interest in Brazil was a business venture: the monopoly on Sri Lankan rubber maintained by Britain was driving up costs for his new Model A cars, so he wanted to find a cheap source of latex that would allow the Ford Motor Company to produce its own tyres, to cut costs.

But Ford’s vision ran much deeper. His goal was not simply to ship latex back to the company’s Dearborn HQ – it was to build his vision of the ideal city. A city that would fuse the same concepts that Ford had championed throughout his career, and bring a better future to a forgotten part of the planet. And that city would bear his name: Fordlandia. [...]

The city was built with a separate neighbourhood, the Vila Americana, for the American staff who worked there. Grandin points out that this development was separated from the areas intended for Brazilian workers. “It was offset a bit, similar to the relationship of suburbia to a city,” he says. The Vila Americana had the best view of the city, and was the only section with running water; while the Brazilian workers made do with water supplied by wells. [...]

It was perhaps under Johnston that Fordlandia came closest to Ford’s original ideal. He succeeded in bringing many of the amenities typical of American towns into the heart of the Amazon basin. The centrepiece was an entertainment facility that screened Hollywood films and also held dances. Health and education facilities were also improved. Johnson saw to it that many of Ford’s behavioural edicts were put into place, including a strict diet (though the alcohol provision still remained hard to enforce), and an emphasis on gardening.

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Salon: Class dismissed: Is the Trump campaign driven by racism or economics? The only possible answer is both

But the study concludes no such thing: Trump support, it found, was strongest amongst staunch conservatives, blue-collar workers and veterans’ families. Trump voters were likely to live in white enclaves, and in places with high white middle-aged mortality rate and low intergenerational mobility. Rothwell’s study, aside from its much-touted finding about the relationship between Trump support and manufacturing jobs — which says less than it may seem to at first blush — therefore lends credence to the argument Matthews and company are eager to reject: Many Trump voters have economic problems that they wrongfully interpret through the lens of xenophobia and racism.

Liberal commentators, overly eager to dismiss the notion that bigotry emerges within class and economic contexts, are ignoring the evidence — such as the fact that Trump and his supporters have been explicit about their economic populism, including their criticism of free trade. In doing so, liberals absolve the Democratic Party’s Clinton-era mainstream for its embrace of immiserating economic policies, and thereby playing a role in Trump’s rise. Democrats should not get off the hook so easily. [...]

If there is no economic context, and Trump’s supporters are just mired in primordial racism, then they are forever lost in the morass of right-wing politics. This bolsters the vision of the Democratic Party as comprising an alliance of affluent whites and people of color with a political agenda of multicultural neoliberalism, where economic reforms can be limited to improved educational options and after-tax redistribution. If Trump voters are just “idiots” appealed to “not at a low intellectual level but at a sub-intellectual level” (as Jonathan Chait has put it) then progressives can forget about the angry white guys.

The Bernie Sanders campaign, however, held out another possible future: a multiracial working-class movement with socialist politics, seeking a fundamental reordering of power relations. That Sanders did so well in many white working-class regions where Trump also won big, like West Virginia, made such a strategy seem feasible for the first time in decades, if not longer. This conclusion is bad news for both parties’ establishments and the interests they represent. It’s difficult to believe that it was exclusively the racism or sexism of Democratic primary voters in poor white states that motivated them to support a self-described socialist who likes to cite Denmark as a model country.

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Quartz: Men suffer when they make more money than their wives

Researchers from the University of Connecticut analyzed survey results from over 3,000 married men and women between the ages of 18 and 32 from 1997 to 2011. They found that when a man’s contributions made up a larger share of the total household income, their overall physical and psychological health was lower than when both partners contributed equally. Women, meanwhile, showed increased psychological well-being as they earned a larger share of income. The UConn study, though unpublished and not yet peer-reviewed, will be presented on Sunday (August 21) at this year’s American Sociological Association’s meeting in Seattle. [...]

To be sure, these results were self-reported. Munsch and her team were not able to look at medical evaluations of their responders’ mental and physical health. And these results aren’t able to shed light on partners who are in same-sex relationships or cohabiting relationships and are unmarried.

Still, the results of this study help make the case for the benefits of a dual-income household where financial responsibility is shared equally. “Our study contributes to a growing body of research that demonstrates the ways in which gendered expectations are harmful for men too.” Munsch said in the press release. When men are expected to fit a masculine mold, they are less able to express emotion and affection, which can lead to feelings of alienation. “Men are expected to be breadwinners, yet providing for one’s family with little or no help has negative repercussions.”

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