Craigslist purchase of the year. $30!
Craigslist purchase of the year. $30!
In a remarkable essay for NYT Magazine, Ilya Kaminsky revisits Odessa, city of his birth.
Time & silence, Tolstoy’s ears, fathers & mothers & sons, WWII, the essay is about everything, & nothing. (“When I say the word nothing, I name something that is there.”)
Yesterday, the NYT published an interesting, and beautifully photographed, article on ND senator Heidi Heitkamp. The piece is framed in terms of the difficulty of her decision to approve or oppose Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination. But by the middle of article, it’s reasonably clear she’ll be one of the Democrats who will approve the nomination; the real issue is the impact of Trump’s misguided trade wars on Midwestern farmers.
The vast majority of electricity used in the world’s data centres comes from non-renewable sources, and as their numbers rapidly increase, there are no guarantees that this will change.
~ John Harris, “Our phones and gadgets are now endangering the planet”
Thoreau in Minnesota. I had no idea about this voyage of Thoreau’s; thanks, @rnv, for the link!
Today’s a good day to reflect on the demands of citizenship in our troubled nation. And there’s no better place to start than with this reflection on the centrality of citizenship in the philosophy of Stanley Cavell (R.I.P.): Cavell … thought that the success of democracy depended on making the enterprise of thinking attractive to people. He showed by example what it meant to think for oneself, and he encouraged his readers to discover and develop their own sensibilities — a prerequisite, as he saw it, to the growth of the kind of individuality necessary for flourishing democratic life.
A sobering look at how tech companies conquered America’s cities, by the excellent Farhad Manjoo. As if I needed any more reasons to move to the country…
Friends in Europe: there is some excellent jazz coming your way this summer. The Billy Hart Quartet (Hart, Ben Street, Mark Turner, and Ethan Iverson) is touring Europe with Joshua Redmon this summer. Make time for this group! 🎶
Trump’s description of his parallel reality unwittingly calls to mind his most reckless and destructive actions, and it shows how oblivious he is to their consequences.
~ Daniel Larison has patiently chronicled the foreign-policy implications of Trump’s reckless presidency.
I recently finished re-reading David Grene’s memoir, Of Farming & Classics. Grene balanced action and contemplation in his life in a truly remarkable way: he spent half the year teaching classics in the University of Chicago’s fascinating Committee on Social Thought, then the other half farming, first on a small farm in Illinois, then back on small farms in his native Ireland. His memoir is a charming little book. Just 160 pages, it’s focused and delightful, pushing against our assumptions regarding the nature of both farming and education.