The Currently Week of 7/28

This week's favorites are below! Send me your suggestions for anything you think I should include!

Your millennial news of the week, this week we want our CEO's to be Activists and avocado toast aside, apparently we are the largest group of homebuyers.

WATCH

They Call Us A Monsters - A Documentary About Juvenile offenders and why we need reform. You can also watch this short film written by 3 of the young men featured in the film called LOS.

READ

Why the Myth of Meritocracy Hurts Children Of Color Recap: As early as middle school, kids who were only taught only about meritocracy report lower-self esteem when they see others like them are not in positions of power or authority and start to believe "stereotypes" about themselves. A small study sample, no doubt, but fascinating research.

A Brief of History of the Coffee Shop As a Symbol of Gentrification: Why coffee shops have always been symptomatic of changes in a neighborhood. Very relevant to the LA coffee shop wars. On a related note, here are 5 ways to fight gentrification in your area.

How Your Fear And Outrage Are Being Sold for Profit: If you don't read anything else this week, read this. Every click we make, every exaggerated headline we read and believe is changing the news and what is written about the world we live in. The newsfeed algorithm has become the most important channel of information in our lives and the impact is felt every where.

Want To Be Happier Buy More Take-Out and Get A Housekeeper: This piece argues that outsourcing tasks we hate makes us happier. (Side note: My mom used to be a housekeeper so you are also creating jobs when you do this.)

How This Young Woman Is Breaking Down Beauty Norms One Photo At A Time

On a lighter note, I love everything in this list and I really want to add it to my Summer wardrobe.

LISTEN

The new Arcade Fire Album- Everything Now

Beautiful Anonymous- One phone call, no names. They open up the line to stranger and they cannot hang up no matter what the topic is.

DO GOOD, BE GOOD

The News This Week Was BANANAS

The two main topics in the news were healthcare and tweets about transgender members of the military. Obviously, we should all stand with our LGBTQ members and remember that an attack on one of us, is an attack on all of us.

What happened with healthcare and why?

Last night 3 Republicans voted with Democrats to kill the "skinny" repeal Obamacare (which is actually called The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act) which would eliminate certain elements of the Affordable Care Act known as Obamacare and also included a total defunding of Planned Parenthood and cutbacks to Medicaid.

Why do so many people love and hate the same law?

Obamacare is actually different depending on what state you live in. This is how we ended up with people who have had such vastly different experiences. Some people on higher income brackets are paying thousands of dollars for healthcare which obviously makes them upset. Which makes me ask, why do insurance companies get to operate in our country and treat our health as a for profit venture and raise premiums at their pleasure?

Back to Obamacare, some states actually rejected the money that the federal government offered to offset the cost of premiums and implementing insurance. They were upset about a few parts of the law, but mostly the mandate. But here is the issue, without the mandate it would have been way hard to convince insurance companies to participate in the program at all. See they need healthy people in the plans to offset the cost of sick people. (Again, do we see who has the real power here?)

Here in California, we accepted all the money and implemented our own health system where people could buy insurance that is known as -Covered California. We also expanded our Medi-Cal program so that it would cover many people who were left without coverage because they were too young for Medicare (think of a 61 year old woman) or children and teens.

As a self-employed family, we benefit from having access to lower premiums, and in a pre-Obamacare world I wouldn't have been able to purchase insurance at all since my medical history and "pre-existing conditions" would have made me ineligible.

It was hard not to feel like elements of our existence were on the line. Very few people could actually pay for their healthcare costs of out pocket if they had to.

But even more devastating would be the impact of defunding Planned Parenthood, and losing Medicaid which would only result in more issues for our society.

To me this is a conversation about empathy and what kind of world we want live in. Do we want to be the richest country in the world where we do not care for our sick, elderly and our children?

What happens next? Gosh, probably more tweets. A new bill could be introduced at any moment. In the meantime, you can thank your Senators who voted no, particularly the 3 Republicans who were needed to make this happen.