What We’re Reading: March 10, 2016

J.J. Abrams created a hiring system that considers women and minorities in proportion to the US population (Quartz)
by Adam Epstein
“Star Wars: The Force Awakens had a relatively diverse cast, and now director J.J. Abrams has enacted a new hiring system that will ensure all of his future films will be equally, if not more, diverse.”

The most racist places in America, According to Google (Washington Post)
by Christopher Ingraham
“So some people are sitting at home by themselves, Googling a bunch of racist stuff. What does it matter? As it turns out, it matters quite a bit. The researchers on the PLOS ONE paper found that racist searches were correlated with higher mortality rates for blacks, even after controlling for a variety of racial and socio-economic variables.”

‘Battlefield Hardline’ Is Still a Political Game Even When It Tries Not to Be (Vice)
by Ed Smith
“March 2015’s Battlefield Hardline is a great example of a game trying hard to say nothing and be irrelevant, but in the process becoming not just highly political but politically dubious.”

Everything Is Crumbling (Slate)
by Daniel Engber
“This isn’t the first time that an idea in psychology has been challenged—not by a long shot. A “reproducibility crisis” in psychology, and in many other fields, has now been well-established. A study out last summer tried to replicate 100 psychology experiments one-for-one and found that just 40 percent of those replications were successful.”

Can a 3-year old represent herself in immigration court? This judge thinks so. (Washington Post)
by Jerry Markon
“Legal and child-psychology experts ridiculed Weil’s assertions, noting that key milestones for 3- and 4-year-olds include cooperating with other children, saying simple sentences and building towers of blocks.”

As millennials, we’re all in dire straits. But I worry most about our men (Guardian)
by Rose Hackman
“Millennial men are coming of age in a world that has left them little space to fulfill what they have been taught are positive ideals of masculinity: to work hard, find a decent job and earn a decent wage, to provide for themselves and then hopefully contribute towards providing for a family; to demonstrate value by being strong, stable, reliable and present to people around them, including women.”