Hello, hope everyone enjoyed VP nomination week, almost certainly the most normal news cycle of the year since January.
Links
If you’re a fan of cop shows or re-considerations of familiar material, I highly recommend this piece on rethinking (the long history of) cop shows by a fan of them.
This profile of Breonna Taylor’s sister — who was not home at the time of the shooting but lived with Taylor and Taylor’s boyfriend — and her relationship with her older sister (growing up, she was the basketball team’s water girl so she could tag-along) is worth reading and really sad.
Baseball pitchers are throwing majority non-fastballs this year, which is sort of interesting. (Not sure about the thesis in that piece, though — seems like nobody’s hitting because they were quarantined all spring.)
The New York Times has all the inside details on who else was a strong contender for the VP pick and how various people’s interviews went. (The quotable Elizabeth Warren: “He won; I lost.”)
Meanwhile, if you want to read some people actually happy about something (unusual as of now), my colleagues talked to a number of longtime Democratic advisers who are also black women — they’re all thrilled about Kamala Harris.
FiveThirtyEight unleashed their modeling of the election this week (they’re giving Biden a 71% chance of winning, which is about equal with Hillary’s in their 2016 model). Nate Silver broke down a lot of factors in that model and where there’s uncertainty generally with this one — think it’s worth reading if you’re interested how the economy and absentee voting might affect the results.
Tangentially, Jamelle Bouie argues people are just going to have to risk it and go vote in person.
Really striking poll question answer here on how much/little help people want from the federal government.
Dolly Parton herein on changing the name of what was formerly the Dixie Stampede: “Well, I don’t want to offend anybody. This is a business…Don’t be a dumbass.”
Light book commentary
Extremely light.
A note on all this
Thanks for subscribing. Hope you enjoy. The goal here is just to offer up some links you may have missed, and maybe the occasional commentary on something in politics or a book I may have read that you, the reader, might enjoy. If you have thoughts on any of this, hit me up at katherinemillernyc@gmail.com or just tweet at me.