Recently updated blogs

In How and why to write letters to voters I discussed Vote Forward, my favorite way for those of us who aren’t in swing states to reach out to voters in swing states. The site works really well for adopting batches of voters, and downloading packets of form letters. As I close in on 1000 letters, though, I’m finding it isn’t great for tracking progress at scale. Here’s how my …

During the Great Patriotic War, it was a tragic reality that many Soviet families lost sons, fathers, and brothers on the battlefield. Entire households often found themselves without a single male survivor after the brutal conflict. Amid this harsh reality, the story of Evdokia Danilovna Lysenko and her ten sons remains a striking exception. Hailing […]

A24’s trailer for Jane (WE’RE ALL GOING TO THE WORLD’S FAIR) Schoenbrun’s I SAW THE TV GLOW had me all prepared for an IT FOLLOWS-esque suburban curse flick crammed into a Candle Cove repressed memory nineties nostalgia taco shell. While there certainly are sharp slivers of horror spiking this poetic, fluorescent fish aquarium-toned ode to outsiders and their dependence on media for a social life, it’s more of a coming …

Last week, I hesitantly soft-launched a new paid section on my email blog. That same day, six people signed up to become paid subscribers to my blog, and I almost fell out of my chair. This morning, I woke up to two more paid subscribers(!!!). I'm simultaneously ecstatic and terrified that people are supporting my blog financially, and I hope I don't disappoint you! I put so much thought, effort, …

Just prior to the pandemic I bought a new car. During the process of dealing with reams of forms—and the classic “Give me a minute and let me see what I can do for you by talking to my boss”—at some point or ten I had to provide my email address. (You sometimes hear people say, “I thought we were promised flying cars by now.” I’ll be considerably more realistic …

George Saunders, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: “What does an artist do, mostly? She tweaks that which she’s already done. There are those moments when we sit before a blank page, but mostly we’re adjusting what’s already there. The writer revises, the painter touches up, the director edits, the musician overdubs.” I’m filing this one away for future reference when I’m feeling less-productive. Even if the day’s …

As the distressingly knowledgeable 20th century history-savvy gang here inhabits what appears to be a permanent state of worry, tension and fear these days, we note that autumn shall soon end and winter will be upon us soon. The month of September is ending shortly, so today, we pay tribute to "Fall."We'll start celebrating the season change with a Warner Bros. cartoon, the first but not the last on the …

Unless you’ve recently become a fan of Kim Stanley Robinson, it’s unlikely you’ll be thinking about reading The Wild Shore. It was Robinson’s first published book back in 1984. The Wild Shore was impressive enough to be the first volume in Terry Carr’s third series of Ace Science Fiction Specials. But still, why would you choose to read a 1984 paperback original in 2024? I can’t claim it’s become a …

Ernst Levy? Apocryphal? A Young Woman Composing Music by Gabriël Metsu circa 1662 Question for Quote Investigator: A prominent musicologist once said that humankind should take art as seriously as physics, chemistry, and money. If this happens then humankind will begin the road to recovery. I do not recall the precise phrasing. Would you please help me to locate this quotation and the name of its creator? Reply from Quote …

It’s good at times, to stumble upon a book that strikes a real chord with one, especially as it doesn’t seem to happen that often. “Back to the Local” is such a book, even though I can’t recall which news source or information service it was that first brought this excellent publication to my attention. Published in 1949, just four years after the end of the Second World War, this …

Each fall and spring, the Brookings Institutions holds a conference with a set of papers from prominent economists on leading policy topics, with comments and discussion. The Fall 2024 conference happened last Thursday and Friday. You can go to the website and spend hours watching the whole thing, or you can pick and choose through the topics, and read over some of the conference discussion papers and comments. If you …

Le Lys Sous L'erable from St. Malo. Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/lelyssouslerable

This post is about how organic chemistry and biochemistry got their names. The Swedish chemist Jöns Berzelius (1807-1882) appears to have introduced the name “organic chemistry” for the study of molecules derived from living things. This appears to imply that living stuff is different to non-living stuff. In post 16.18, I explain my reasons for believing that this apparent implication isn’t true. Even in Berzelius’ lifetime, many scientists appear not …

Sometimes the Economist’s book reviews are (probably) a just-as-good reading of the book’s primary thesis and subsequent chapters. And while I’m curious about the topic, I get the idea behind Infantalised: You may say that 1+1=2, but “my truth” is that it makes three. Post-modernists deem this way of thinking sophisticated. Keith Hayward calls it childish. He is right.