Wednesday Links!

Good morning. Tomorrow is Take Your Daughters to Work Day, and this is the fifth year in a row our nine-year-old has declined to observe me at work because “it’s not interesting to watch you write. I already do that EVERY DAY.” My six-year-old will be with me all day, though, and no doubt she will experience a real thrill when I show her my best tweets of the day, so long as every single one of those tweets has something to do with Moana.

Anyway, happy Wednesday! You should read about DoggoLingo this morning and start your day right.

A federal judge in California has temporarily blocked Trump's order to withhold federal funding from sanctuary cities.

“She’d then emerge onto the stage before thousands of people, ‘as effortlessly as you or I would get in an elevator’”: Yesterday would have been Ella Fitzgerald’s 100th birthday (and more, and more, and more).

Hannah Giorgis on who owes Henrietta Lacks’s family:

. . . black people have been the source of America’s most precious, violently extracted gifts. If we recognize these as debts largely unpaid, what bearing does that have on cases like Henrietta’s, in which the law is ill-equipped to solve an economically complicated moral imperative? If the medical industry owes Henrietta compensation for her cells, do the publishing and entertainment world owe the living Lacks family members (further) resources for access to the content these industries also profit off of?

Jaya Saxena talks with Dr. Katrina Kimport about the mental and emotional work of preventing pregnancy, which (of course) disproportionately falls to women.

Clarissa Wei on writing about Chinese cuisine as a Chinese person: “Food is political for us; it always has been.”

THREAD

This piece, in the words of my friend Tim, really doesn’t go where you’d expect.

When Kids Philosophize:

First up: the six-to-eight-year-olds. One of Critchley’s students, Joseph Lemelin, whose research interests include the history of ancient philosophy, was discussing the idea of change with them. “What is philosophy?” he asked, in a friendly way, to start things off.

“I want my mommy,” someone whimpered.

“Does liking mushrooms make me who I am?” Lemelin asked. “What makes me me?”

“Look it up,” one boy replied.

Alaina Leary on how autism representation onscreen has a long way to go.

The deep roots of conservative opposition to the environmental state, explained.

So glad I set up that Phillipa Soo Google News alert, tbh

“She kept talking, and he kept nodding, and saying ‘Yeah, totally,’ and thanking her for bringing this to his attention. She was probably just on her period, he thought. Across the table, his sister made a final plea: maybe he hadn’t realized how his behavior affected the women in his life. She thought that if she could just communicate how it made them feel, how it belittled them and held them back and undermined their achievements and sometimes made them want to literally scream with frustration, he would definitely stop. Nevertheless, he persisted.”

The Fight for Disability Rights Must Extend to Death Row

“And every agency is, like, bigger than any company. So you know, I really just see the bigness of it all.” (Oh my God.)

A bit of hope? EMILY’s List says more than 11,000 women have contacted them to say they want to run for political office next year.

Did you happen to miss Jess Zimmerman's incredible essay on harpies and ambitious women? Here’s your chance to make it right.