the weekly lynx (2/14)

• 5 Problems in Movies You Only Notice If You're Old--This is a worthwhile article to read in general. However, if you want the short version, it is this: when you're older, you gain more empathy, and you start to realize how horrible people in the films treat each other. I've been working with teens since I was myself a teen (first at the pizza place, then as a teacher). I'm not one of those to stereotype 'these youth today,' but if there is one commonality, it is that most of them are unable to see anything from any perspective other than their own. I firmly believe that most people don't get a good sense of empathy until they live a little. That is why the thing that makes me proudest about my kid is that she is as much concerned for others as she is for herself. This, however, is not something you see in the media all that much.
• Invisible Islands: Privacy is a myth on the Internet--If I have one chief disappointment with the last decade or so, it's that people's right to privacy has been slowly eroded. We're spied on everywhere. Someone is watching everything we do. And yet very few people care. I mentioned to a friend that I use Spider Oak, an online storage site focused on privacy. My friend's first response is "that would be good if you were a child pornographer." The idea that the only people who want privacy are those who have something to hide is repugnant to me. But how can you combat the constant surveillance, particularly when online? One of the scarier things I've learned about our government is that simply using privacy-oriented web material (such as TOR) is enough to get you on the NSA watch list. This is definitely something that everyone should educate themselves on...and then get angry and do something.
• 11 Facts That Will Change The Way You Think About Jails In America--Radicals used to talk about the military industrial complex. Well, now we really have a prison industrial complex. More and more, laws and law enforcement seems to be more than anything else about terrorizing and imprisoning anyone who thinks or looks differently. Hell, in my little town of Bowling Green OH, we have a SWAT team, a bomb dog team, an armored personnel carrier, and hi-def surveillance cameras. This has got to stop.
• Jim Crow lynchings more widespread than first thought, report concludes--History is darker than most people are taught. Hatred is widespread than most people thought. And this stuff isn't just in the past either.
• Having the brakes removed from your car is a personal decision--The awesome Cory Doctorow's Swiftian answer to the anti-vaxxer movement.

In spite of what these links suggest, I'm actually not in that bad of a mood this week!