Weekend Reads 8/12/17

Parenting Is Not a "Job," and Marriage Is Not "Work"

A big reason we call motherhood a job is to impress upon our patriarchal, work-obsessed society the value, importance, and difficulty of women’s unpaid domestic labor. But in adopting the vocabulary of an oppressive system in order to improve women’s prospects within it, we concede the nature the system itself. If everything is work, then talk of "work-life balance" is a sham.

Baseball’s ‘Hot Hand’ Is Real

Some pitchers’ streakiness manifests in a pronounced downside when they’re cold, like what happens to Texas Rangers lefty Cole Hamels. When he’s on, Hamels’ fastball is just a tick faster than average for him. But when he’s off, he loses about two and a half miles per hour compared to his average fastball.

Trump won't stop Americans hitting the Paris climate targets. Here's how we do it

The global effort to confront climate change was hobbled for many years by the mistaken idea that only national governments and international rules could solve the problem. The Paris agreement, which recognizes and supports voluntary carbon-reduction efforts by cities, regions and businesses, was an important step in the right direction. Ironically, no one has done more to demonstrate the agreement’s strengths than its most prominent critic: Donald Trump.

No Country for Colin Kaepernick

After years of media and political backlash against the tactics of Black Lives Matter, from efforts to criminalize marches to proposed legislation that might allow drivers to kill protesters with impunity to wild claims that the movement’s strategies actually kill people, Kaepernick simply chose not to stand.