I had a conversation with some friends last weekend, who all said - to a one - that they'd all been taught to do their nails in their childhoods (as girls). I think this means both that they were taught that one ought to have their nails done, and also they were taught proper techniques and how to keep it from looking like ass. FWIW, they all grew up in different parts of Texas, but I swear they are regular, progressive, informed adults.

I don't think I've ever seen my mom wear nail polish? I felt a little like a curious anthropologist in the conversation. Such interesting customs! I don't think this would be limited to Texas, but it does reflect a certain milieu, and it's at least not universal.

However, I was the normal one in a different conversation, where I found out my friend grew up going to a prison rodeo outside of Houston. What that meant is that they'd round up all the prisoners with less than a year left in their sentence, and put them in the corral, and then they'd tape a pardon between the horns of a bull, and let hijinks ensue. Good lord. What planet is this?!

96 years old is a good run.

Ten years or so, around here, the vibe around here was that it was irresponsible to send someone to law school as safe path to a quiet job with a stable income. If they were going to a high end law school, or if they had a specific career path in mind, and if they'd thought through the debt implications, then sure. But not as a generic aimless path towards financial security.

Is that still the case? Have the numbers righted themselves at all? Anecdotally, I don't see many students from Heebie U considering law school, although I don't really teach the students who might be interested. From my personal local life, I only know two progressive activists who've gone through law school in the last five years or so.

Is law school becoming less of dependable cash cow for universities?

(Also we sing this extremely catchy jingle all the time, around the house. L-A-W-B-O-S-S, it's the boss!)

Inform your peoples.

Aiming today for social media supremacy in Business-Economics-History. Launch for "Slouching Towards Utopia" <https://t.co/2mdNZlOr8M>

If I have any social-network credit with you at all, I want to spend it; if I don't may I borrow some?: Please like, retweet, **and** reply

— Brad DeLong 🖖 (@delong) September 6, 2022

Mossy Character sent over this link:

It's hard to absorb the scale of the devastation. The flooding has affected 33 million people across the country, nearly half of them children. According to UNICEF, more than 1,100 people have died, including over 350 children. Women, children, and refugees have been especially hard hit.

According to MSF, over one-third of the country is under water. The immediate cause was intense monsoon rains, which were almost three times as heavy as the country's 30-year average... But of course the broader culprit is climate change, which has caused glacier melt and havoc with the precipitation cycle. A linked climate disaster is heatwaves, which began in March and accelerated glacier melt and river flow. Combined with the massive monsoon, flooding became catastrophic.

Pakistan's political instability and limited financial resources have made it challenging to apply consistent flood warning systems throughout the country. Geography is also a factor, as Pakistan has the most glaciers of any non-polar region. And as Muhammad explains, there is a lack of ground observatories in remote mountain valleys.

What nature doesn't do to us will be done by our fellow man.

This is intended to be our system for checking in on imaginary friends, so that we know whether or not to be concerned if you go offline for a while. There is no way it could function as that sentence implies, but it's still nice to have a thread.

Episode Kobe thirty four