Brazil Has A Billionaire Problem And Other Facts
Welcome to What We Learned This Week, a digest of the most curiously important facts from the past few days. This week: Brazil's extreme inequality, seven circles of roundabout hell and the one mall that refuses to die.
MAKE SOUTH AMERICA GREAT AGAIN
Brazil's Billionaire Problem Is The World's Billionaire Problem
Today, the Olympic Flame will be lit at the Maracanã and the 2016 Olympic Games will commence in Rio. And while there's plenty to be said about the specific issues plaguing the Games of The XXXI Olympiad — the doping, the sewage-tinged waters the massive debts incurred — Brazil's gaping inequality is something that won't fade when the flame is extinguished on August 21.
In Patrick Iber's review of Alex Cuadros's "Brazillionaires" for the New Republic, there are two salient points to be drawn about the Brazilian economy. First is that inequality in Brazil is one of the most extreme cases on the planet. Brazil's rich are some of the richest in the world, while the poor are, by global standards, some of the poorest. Second, while the image of luxury highrises overlooking favelas might be specific to Brazil, the factors that led to it — namely capitalism and government corruption — could be found in any nation on the globe. Iber argues that it's easy to look at Brazil — a nation undergoing a massive recession, political turmoil and arguably botching an Olympic games — and assume that this is a Brazil problem; when in fact, the real problems lie within the very same institutions that power the last true global superpower: The United States.
LIKE A FLOATING MALL
Photos Of The World's Largest Cruise Ship Don't Look Like A Cruise Ship
As more and more humans populate this earth, it only makes sense that the cruise ships — those lumbering behemoths we construct to escape increasingly crowded lands — would grow to compensate. And so we have Royal Caribbean's Harmony of the Seas, now the largest cruise ship ever — a 1,188 foot-long, 215.5 foot-wide floating skyscraper turned on its side. In Alberto Bernasconi's photos for Bloomberg, though, Harmony of the Seas does not look very, well, of the seas. Those maritime hallmarks — the bare bulkheads, portholes, thick braided lines — are absent, replaced with glass and steel and neon lights reminiscent of your local shopping mall. Which makes you wonder, when you elect to go on a cruise that holds more people than ever, what exactly are you escaping?
THE MULTI-CRICLE APPROACH WORKS FOR HELL
A Seven-Circle Roundabout Actually Works
Because there is no stopping, only yielding, the argument goes, roundabouts are safer and more efficient than traffic lights. Taken to it's most extreme is the 7-circle nested roundabout in Swindon, England. Outside of a car, it looks like utter chaos, with circles within circles of cars, some traveling counter-clockwise, others clockwise. But inside of a car, all one must do is just drive towards their intended exit, yielding to those already within whatever circle they're about to enter. It's almost if traffic designs demand that drivers pay attention and react to their surroundings instead of blindly following arbitrary signals, then you'll see safer driving.
[Digg]
AS TRADITION, IT STARTED AS A PORN THING
The New Insult Of The Angry White Man On The Internet Is 'Cuck'
As you may have noticed over the past several months, Donald Trump and his merry band of alt-right funboys love being white, love being in power and would love if that never changes. To mock those that suggest that perhaps it might be good if our representative government represented those other than white men, these folks began calling them "cucks" — a reference to a certain genre of porn where a hapless husband watches his wife have sex with someone else (in most cases a black man.) The notion here is that it's a shame to cede your institutional power (in porn, the notion that the husband holds ownership over a wife, in politics the notion that white men belong in the highest echelons of government) whether you deserve it or not.
In Dana Schwartz's excellent ontological exploration of the insult for GQ, she finds that there is some positive to be found in such ugly behavior. That the alt-right is resorting to "cuck" shows how insecure, how threatened they are by once-institutionally repressed groups finally seizing the power they deserve. They're the high school bully shouting at their former goons, "What? You're friends with THEM now?" By November, those shouting "cuck" will soon find themselves on the other end.
[GQ]
THE MALLRAT IS DEAD, THOUGH
The American Mall Isn't Dying, It's Just Downsized
The American Mall, that staple of Reagan-era suburbanism, will not rise again. That said, there are a few survivors of the mallocalypse. One of them is Orange County's South Coast Plaza. In Stephie Grob Plante's examination of the last few holdouts on turn-of-the-millennium consumerism for Racked, South Coast Plaza — and the few remaining malls like it — have found success by adopting a time-tested business practice: Target those who have money by offering them the luxury goods they so crave.
The old mall, where bored teens munch Auntie Ann's while messing up the t-shirt displays at Hot Topic, is dead. But the new mall, where the wealthy blow off steam by dropping thousands of dollars in a single trip, is alive an well. It's just a better business model.
[Racked]
IT'S GOOD SLAPSTICK HUMOR THOUGH
Don't Try To Marry Cans Of Contact Cement
Why this old, excitable man has multiple cans of contact cement is beyond anyone's guess. But we know exactly why he wanted to film himself trying to combine the two. This man, who has clearly seen life's ups and downs, knows how few and far between simple joy can be. And upon seeing two used cans of contact cement, he knew what had to be done. He grabbed his camera, turned it on, and then tried to do the impossible. Contact Cement Grandpa knew that an hour's sacrifice would yield untold laughs on the internet. And laugh we did.
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Previously on What We Learned This Week
Paying With A Credit Card Is Harder Than It Needs To Be
The Best Time The Navy Detonated A Nuke Underwater
NASA Is, For Sure, Covering Up UFO Activity
For more Internet distillations like this, check out our back catalog of Digg Roundups. And for more stuff from Digg, check out our Originals archive.
