qz.com

While presidential and congressional campaigns dominate the headlines and the fundraising hauls, many political investors systematically miss the critical way state legislatures affect national power in Congress, specifically by blocking the gerrymandering that makes key congressional races impossible to win in the first place. With the US Supreme Court failing to put a limit on partisan gerrymandering earlier this year, the states that have the most at stake in terms of Republican gerrymandering going forward are Texas, Florida, and North Carolina—states with sizable congressional delegations where the GOP today controls every lever of power in the redistricting process. More broadly, this cost across a portfolio of 60 or so competitive races, to compete aggressively and win a Democratic majority in state legislatures across Texas, Florida, and North Carolina, would be roughly $30 million—a tiny fraction of the $488 million spent in 2012, when Democrats won more than 1.4 million votes cast for congressional candidates nationwide. With the same dollars spent, investors can make marginal investments in funding the billion dollar congressional battlefield to successfully compete for a majority in the US House, or invest in a portfolio of under-valued state house races and affect Democrats’ ability to have a fair shot at winning a congressional majority for the next decade.

Liu enlisted the help of her husband, and got in the car: At least the event was within driving distance and, since it was a particularly important conference for her career development, Liu’s husband was able to drop everything to come with her. Liu said that it’s well known in academia and the wider science industry that women with very young children, and often men with multiple children, often miss out. Specialist event childcare services have proliferated in the last few years, and their expertise is valuable in dealing with how to keep kids safe in large semi-public spaces, including dealing with issues like food allergies, special needs, insurance, and the diverse requirements of different-age kids. But in its first year of 2019, the childcare service looked after between 30 and 40 kids at any one time, and 851 women attended, making up 28% of conference attendees, an increase from 23% the previous year.

There is tracking students toward certain careers, like arts of vocational training, and there’s tracking based on ability, which means putting weaker students in remedial classes and stronger students in advanced classes. There are arguments that earlier tracking is more efficient because students get the education best suited for their abilities and career goals and don’t waste time on classes they don’t need. There is also evidence that tracking exceptional students by putting them in gifted-and-talented programs means they don’t waste time with material too easy for them. Another study compared international test scores and estimated that countries that track earlier do worse on average while early tracking doesn’t produce more high achievers.

The Bauhaus, considered by many as the most influential design school in modern history, opened its doors 100 years ago this month. The small school in Weimar served as a beacon during the post-World War I malaise in Germany. Let us strive for, conceive and create the new building of the future that will unite every discipline,” he wrote in the school’s heart-thumping manifesto. In fact, students and masters spread the school’s ideas when they immigrated to the UK, Switzerland, the US, Israel, Russia, and other places around the world.