What is a good book/website/resource if I want to get significantly more informed about personal investment? I know what all of the major definitions mean, but I have no idea how to evaluate my TIAA-KREF retirement package, for example, or how to evaluate the different options of what to do with some extra inheritance or something.

Ideally, I'd like to move up several levels of expertise, not just get minimally acquainted with basic ideas.

Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast was one of the centers that was framed in the fetal-tissue-sale video farce. It's illegal to kick PP off state and federal medicaid funding if they haven't committed any violations of policy or legal, but Texas is trying to do it anyway. BUT! AND! They're also trying to kick Planned Parenthood Greater Texas and Planned Parenthood South Texas off funding, because they're affiliated with PPGC. These three clinics apparently serve 13,000 Medicaid patients.

(Assholes! I hate them! But if you hate on Texas, be sure to do it with delicate nuance because it's annoying if you paint the whole state with a broad brush.)

Via Trivers

Have you ever wanted to look inside the neocon mind? I mean, really look at it? No, of course you haven't.
Too bad.

.@adesnik @DouthatNYT No objective evidence Empire was "evil." A liberal regime w meritocracy, upward mobility. Neocon/reformicon in spirit.

— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) October 20, 2015

E. Messily writes: I kind of wish I didn't finally have a stupid diagnosis* so I could try this.

*No, I don't.

(I got to it via a friend who seemingly forgot I was deaf and sent me a link to this podcast or whatever it is, along with the question 'have you heard of CrowdMed?'. It might or might not be an interesting link; I can't really tell.)(Transcript)

Heebie's take: the transcript is a quick read. It's great for people who want to talk to House. Or you can just share your medical woes here, and we'll diagnose you.

Hypothesis: female villains are more fun to read about than male villains.

Esquire story on some open carry activists. I can really sympathize with someone who's been through trauma and needs something to help them feel secure, but a security blanket shouldn't be something that's dangerous to other people.

You're Uncle Joe Biden, in your seventies, grieving horrible losses, but beloved by millions and in a position to ride a wave of respect and adulation for the rest of your life, touting whatever cause is dearest to you. Do you throw that away for a bruising fight where all that goodwill disappears, where you're the guy keeping the first woman from the presidency, and where you'll start with a huge disadvantage and tiny chance of victory? Don't do it, Joe.

1. Andre the Giant.

He is in no sense cut or ripped or "muscular"; it's not clear that he works out at all. He's stronger than other strong men the way you're stronger than your 10-year-old nephew. When he fights Chuck Wepner, a boxer who'd gone 15 rounds in a title fight with Muhammad Ali, no one bothers to tell Wepner that wrestling is staged. That way his reactions will look more believable. Andre sort of confusedly toys with him; it's like watching a classics professor try to pick up a chicken. A little awkward, but it's not like the chicken is a threat.

2. Ermahgerd Gersberms!!

Like other popular Internet-specific dialects, from LOLcats to Doge, Ermahgerd is a game in linguistics: in this case, the strangulation of almost every vowel sound into an "er." According to Ari Spool, a New York-based reporter and self-described meme scientist for Know Your Meme, rhotacized speech--that is, speech in which the "R" sound is somehow disfigured--tends to be amusing for English speakers.

and

For her part, Goldenberger never felt unduly embarrassed about her sudden and unexpected celebrity. If the photo had been an authentic depiction of an authentic moment--an actual artifact from her awkward tween years--she may have felt different. To her, though, it was clearly fiction: just a picture of a kooky made-up character.

Having a Monday off is much better than having a Friday off. There are four parts to a long weekend:
1) The joy of anticipation
2) The short week
3) The long weekend
4) The pain of returning back to the grind.
If you have a Friday holiday, then you shorten (1), and (1) and (2) have to share one single week, and you have nothing to mitigate (4).

If you have a Monday holiday, then you get two full weeks to enjoy - the anticipation week is separated out from the shortened week. And knowing that you only have four work days takes the sting out of (4).

I guess Fall Break is truly over.

Oh, barf. This guy provides therapy targeting the ultra-rich:

And as they stroll through Manhattan, what issues are America's 1% struggling with? There is guilt over being rich in the first place, he said. There is the feeling that they have to hide the fact that they are rich. And then there is the isolation - being in the 1%, it turns out, can be lonely. It seems F Scott Fitzgerald was right, the very rich "are different from you and me". Especially in 2015.

There are too many things to quote, but:

[I]t's "easy to scapegoat the rich" [said Jamie Traeger-Muney, a wealth psychologist]. "Sometimes I am shocked by things that people say. If you substitute in the word Jewish or black, you would never say something like that. You'd never say - spoiled rotten or you would never refer to another group of people in the way that it seems perfectly normal to refer to wealth holders."

and:

If wealthy Americans talk about the unique challenges that come with their wealth, people often dismiss their experience. "People say: 'Oh, poor you.' There is not a lot of sympathy there," she said. "[Wealth] is still one of our last taboos. Often, I use an analogy with my clients that coming out to people about their wealth is similar to coming out of the closet as gay. There's a feeling of being exposed and dealing with judgment."

are good places to start. Oh, and the growing inequality keeps making things worse for the poor dears. So awkward.

Via E. Messily