Daily Bafflements

• In a baffling piece this week, The Economist informed us that gentrification in London is “cool,” and also that it is “real,” because of charts.

• The latest advice column by Heather Havrilesky over at The Awl is a very insightful, thoughtful take on the difficulties of navigating class differences in a long-term relationship.

• “A South Carolina lawmaker proposed a legislative amendment acknowledging God as creator of the woolly mammoth,” Harper’s informs us. The quotes in this Reuters article about the amendment are priceless.

• From a letter from Abigail Adams to John Adams, in March 1776: “I long to hear that you have declared an independency. And, by the way, in the new code of laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make, I desire you would remember the ladies and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the husbands. Remember, all men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation.” (via Lapham’s Quarterly.)