1/ Starting a thread for the week looking back at some of the best (and/or my favorite) @PacificStand stories from the past year. We'll be running round-ups -- and some other, new reporting and storytelling -- all week at psmag.com. What a year it's been.
2/ @AntoniaJuhasz's analysis confirmed that the oil and gas industry is among the latest tax bill's greatest financial beneficiaries. Just 17 American oil and gas companies reported a combined total of $25 billion in direct one-time benefits: psmag.com/economics/tax-…
3/ @DwyerGunn introduced our week of coverage on the past, present, and future of organized labor in America, State of the Unions Week, with a piece looking back at what caused their decline: psmag.com/economics/what…. The whole package is here: psmag.com/economics/stat….
4/ Always worth asking—maybe more so this week—what makes one religious tradition legitimate and another not. The Jedi church has earned IRS tax-exempt status. But, @ben_c_rowen wants to know, can it prove its spiritual legitimacy to a skeptical public? psmag.com/economics/the-…
5/ When 34 million YouTube views and 38 million Pandora streams net you only $218 and $278, respectively. @jackwdenton on the royalty structures for songwriters, and how they don't work in the digital age: psmag.com/economics/is-s…
6/ I sent @DwyerGunn to Hazard, Kentucky, the place Pruitt announced the Clean Power Plan's repeal, to visit the Kentucky Valley Educational Cooperative. They know that only by radically transforming education can you reimagine a region's economic future: psmag.com/magazine/how-t…
7/ And another piece from @DwyerGunn, who writes regularly about economics for @PacificStand, this time on how the labor market has changed over the last 40 years—& how labor laws and institutions need to catch up, quick, if we want fair wages for workers: psmag.com/economics/how-…
8/ @elliswonk is particularly good at keeping social science & new research light while still showing how it informs every aspect of our lives. Here's a piece for our site on why employers probably should just put all that snack money toward better wages: psmag.com/economics/why-…
9/ What's the economic benefit of hosting a major sporting event like the World Cup? One academic says to take the claimed figures and divide by 10. @ianhurley77 spoke to him and a few others: psmag.com/economics/is-t…
10/ @jackwdenton spoke to the Teamsters about the regulations they're pushing as autonomous vehicles start to become a reality: psmag.com/economics/truc…
11/ @alissaleewrites—w/ photos from @rosafurneaux—on the work of Sorell Raino-Tsui, who is helping to connect Oakland's muralists with customers who can pay them fairly for their work, and the role public art plays in the gentrification of neighborhoods: psmag.com/magazine/searc… 
12/ @the_pitchfork talked to Bryan Stevenson, of the @eji_org, about racial trauma, segregation, listening to marginalized voices—and how to stay hopeful: psmag.com/magazine/bryan…
13/ My absolute favorite @PacificStand story of the year was @ben_a_goldfarb's dispatch—with stunning photography from @coreyfishes—from the Gulf of California, where the vaquita faces its final days: psmag.com/magazine/watch…
14/ When his new book came out earlier this year, @KateWheeling spoke w/ @CharlesCMann about the roots of modern environmentalism and the fate of the human species. The question at the heart of their conversation: Can humans overcome the laws of biology? psmag.com/environment/sa…
15/ @KateWheeling talked to a lot of people about climate change this year. Here's her conversation from August w/ @algore: psmag.com/environment/al…. Gore: "We really have to deal with the dysfunction in American democracy in order to solve problems like the climate crisis."
16/ We got special access to Monarch, the bear you know from the California state flag, and his bones for @JeremyJ_Miller's big feature on the efforts to reintroduce grizzlies to California: psmag.com/magazine/how-t…
17/ @leahangstman's done a bunch of smart proofreading for @PacificStand this past year while also starting a series of Q&As about new books. Here's Leah w/ @PKhakpour on Sick, "an eye-opening narrative of living with late-stage Lyme disease": psmag.com/social-justice…
18/ @StarkKev and Winnie Bird investigated two dozen Superfund sites all across the U.S. for this damning report on the EPA and how it has ignored Clinton-era executive orders, leaving immigrants and minorities to fend for themselves at toxic waste sites: psmag.com/magazine/failu…
19/ False teeth. Diaries. A coin collection. A grandparent's blanket. @alissaleewrites with a touching story on some of the material things that were lost in California's Carr Fire: psmag.com/environment/th…
20/ "Climate change is a maneuver by very powerful interest groups to create global government." Ahead of the mid-terms, we ran an absolutely bonkers conversation between @RossUfberg and Dana Rohrabacher that speaks for itself: psmag.com/social-justice…
21/ We spent time w/ @Ocasio2018 this year, and included her in our March round-up of first-time female candidates running for office in the wake of the Trump presidency. @megankimble caught up with her a couple of months later: psmag.com/news/get-to-kn…
22/ Often in partnership w/ the @guardian, @JamesCTobias has spent the year flexing his FOIA muscles and really digging into what we've been calling Zinke's Department of Industry Influence. Lots of scoops along the way, leading up to this bigger piece: psmag.com/environment/ne…
23/ In California's Central Valley, the oil industry has been dumping wastewater into unlined—and under-regulated—ponds, threatening the state's limited groundwater and the humans who rely on it. @KateWheeling, in a follow-up to our reporting w/ @Publici: psmag.com/environment/ca…
24/ @emilym_moon spoke with Tom Emens, the sexual abuse survivor who is suing all of California's catholic bishops and pushing for "a complete house-cleaning of secret archives": psmag.com/social-justice…
25/ @JohnHMaher spoke to @jeffvandermeer about why his work involves so much natural science—and what we can do to protect a world we seem bent on destroying: psmag.com/environment/th…
26/ While I'm sharing some interviews, here's Arvind Dilarwar with Kevin Steele of @IWW_IWOC on some of the big prison strikes we've seen this year, and the relationship between incarceration and capitalism: psmag.com/social-justice…
27/ And @jackwdenton with the University of Massachusetts' Pamela Robinson, a philosopher who's working to code ethical algorithms into autonomous vehicles: psmag.com/economics/is-t…
28/ And @alissaleewrites with Juan Haines, the managing editor at one of the country's most widely read prison newspapers, on why *every* community needs local coverage: psmag.com/social-justice…
29/ Brenton Ladd's on a mission to re-engineer the nutrient-poor soils in the Amazon, and, in the process, save the world's trees. @KateWheeling went to Peru and came back with a story about environmental stewardship and overcoming cultural divides: psmag.com/magazine/the-g…
30/ @elainaplott pitched me the story of Tangier Island about a year and a half ago and it was such a thrill to work with her on this, a compassionate look at a place that's sure to disappear and the people who are still wrestling with that: psmag.com/magazine/the-c…
31/ Beware CRISPR. We are on the brink of being able to genetically engineer an extinction. But, @rowanjacobsen asks, should we? psmag.com/magazine/delet…
32/ Mexico's largest active volcano sits next to some major population hubs. With a major eruption expected within the next 100 years, will the public be ready? @mark_oprea on Popocatépetl: psmag.com/environment/wh…
33/ @loufreshwater grew up drinking and bathing in the toxic waters around a military base in North Carolina. Thirty years later, she went back to investigate: psmag.com/environment/wh…
34/ Want to unite folks from across the aisle? Try abusing eminent domain to build a pipeline through their property. Bill Gow speaks for many in southern Oregon: "I'm not as strong on this global warming thing. My big thing is private property rights." psmag.com/environment/pa…
35/ The wonderful @TereseMarieM, now a contributing writer, in her @PacificStand debut: "I know that I am discordant, but then, maybe all Indians existing after an attempted genocide feel like a disruption or an anomaly": psmag.com/magazine/silen…
36/ @emilym_moon profiled @BeaFihn, the Swedish anti-nuclear activist who led the United Nations to adopt the first legally binding global nuclear ban: psmag.com/social-justice…
37/ @NifMuhammad used @jtimberlake's "Man of the Woods" to talk about "how musicians can honor the history of the music they’re taking on, and the histories of the people who made a path to that music possible": psmag.com/social-justice…
38/ "I wanted to see what the election was like for people who live in this overlooked Brazil. So I boarded the Michael ... into the belly of the Amazon." @shannongsims joined rural Brazilians on an 18-hour riverboat ride to the polls: psmag.com/social-justice…
39/ @mhayoun did a bunch of reporting this year on voter suppression in North Dakota. Here's one piece, on the indigenous high schoolers who organized to let their families vote in an election they say was designed to block them from the polls: psmag.com/social-justice…
40/ "White liberalism is all about opposing racism in principle, but not about putting their time and money—or their bodies—where their mouth is." @BrianJBarth profiled @DesmondCole after the election of Doug Ford, the Canadian Donald Trump: psmag.com/social-justice…
41/ At the heart of our special package on borders and boundaries, a big, essential feature from @GingerStrand on gerrymandering, and how it's disenfranchising voters and amplifying the efforts of the right: psmag.com/magazine/among…
42/ @LynzyBilling visited Manila's cemetery slums, where the poorest victims of Rodrigo Duterte's War on Drugs find themselves caught in a cycle of extrajudicial killings: psmag.com/social-justice…
43/ When you turn on the TV and see your brother punch a woman in the face at an alt-right rally, then the clip goes viral, how do you make sense of the past, of the family you grew up in? @G_Thompson1's feature on white nationalism: psmag.com/magazine/the-r…
44/ What happens to taxpayer money when scientists are faced with accusations or findings of wrongdoing? @franciediep on the case of Francisco Ayala and the University of California: psmag.com/education/fran…
45/ @Lollardfish on how the demands for rote memorization, coupled with Western centrism, are failing our students, or, rethinking AP world history: psmag.com/education/can-…
46/ Happy to partner with the @hechingerreport this year, which is doing some great education reporting, including this piece on the seemingly impossible job of being a small-town principal: psmag.com/education/the-…
47/ And this piece, on the small town of Onalaska, Washington, and how it's battling "rural brain drain": psmag.com/education/how-…
48/ @the_pitchfork on student debt, rising tuition, and the decline of public confidence in higher education: psmag.com/education/of-c…
49/ @DwyerGunn on how states across the country are struggling to recruit and retain teachers: psmag.com/education/how-…
50/ Another @Lollardfish piece I'll add to this running list of @PacificStand favorites from 2018 -- there's a lot to choose from -- is on applied behavioral analysis and how it's overstayed its welcome: psmag.com/education/the-…
51/ @the_pitchfork on how, to understand the high—and constantly growing—cost of higher education, you need to think of universities in the U.S. as investment banks: psmag.com/education/to-u…
52/ @JohnJLennon1 from inside Sing Sing on an innovative music program that allows people in prison the opportunity to find catharsis through the arts: psmag.com/social-justice…
53/ A secret backroom deal helped Phil Knight hobble the anti-sweatshop movement and seal Nike's special influence over the University of Oregon. That and much more in this excerpt from @viajoshhunt's University of Nike: psmag.com/education/the-…
54/ 20 years after the racially motivated murder of James Byrd Jr. in Jasper, Texas, some residents are trying to scrub the crime—& the bigotry behind it—from the town's history. @JohnSavageTX on the shocking legacy of America's worst modern-day lynching: psmag.com/social-justice…
55/ Death on the Dakota Access: A years-long investigation into the deadly business of building oil and gas pipelines: psmag.com/magazine/death…
56/ Numerous authors and librarians allege a pattern of sexually humiliating comments at public events from one of YA literature's biggest stars, Lemony Snicket: psmag.com/social-justice…
57/ "Rainbows, sunsets, moonrise. That's what I miss a lot." From @cestmoiLanglois's dispatch from earlier this year on a woman seeking sanctuary from ICE in a Trump-voting county: psmag.com/magazine/field…
58/ This season, works by women composers are finally being featured more frequently by many American orchestras. Tom Jacobs on the slow silencing of sexism at the symphony: psmag.com/social-justice…
59/ When her brother is sentenced to death for a murder he didn't commit, one woman takes on the corrosive culture of capital punishment: psmag.com/magazine/one-w…
