POSTS

Article Highlights for 2022

Although I didn’t get around to developing a more intentional news diet, the list of my favorite articles is more coherent than this time last year.

Articles

  • Quit Your Job - an impassioned strong argument for a scary proposition

    There are investments you can’t make from a structured, nine-to-five, narrowly teleological environment. You have to let your life go fallow sometimes, like a crop rotation giving the land time to bring forth new fertility.

  • How Donald Trump Could Subvert the 2024 Election - The Atlantic -

    Only one meaningful correlation emerged. Other things being equal, insurgents were much more likely to come from a county where the white share of the population was in decline. For every one-point drop in a county’s percentage of non-Hispanic whites from 2015 to 2019, the likelihood of an insurgent hailing from that county increased by 25 percent. This was a strong link, and it held up in every state.

  • Tech was supposed to be a meritocracy. In India, it reinforces old caste divides in new ways - Rest of World - an eye-opening account of an industry I thought I knew and a cause to reflect on some of my privileges

    “This way I may have a smaller life, but at least I have my integrity. I know my teammates tolerate me, but I will never be one of them.”

  • A libertarian ‘startup city’ in Honduras faces its biggest hurdle: the locals - Rest of World - more great reporting from Rest Of World. This story has a “stranger than fiction” vibe.

    These cities are to be governed by private investors, who can write their own laws and regulations, design their own court systems, and operate their own police forces.

  • An anti-war protester in Moscow says the risk of arrest is worth it : NPR - a hopeful but clear-eyed interview with someone who had to be brave this year

    Because I don’t think the usual people, the usual protesters, can actually do anything in this case. When I go and protest, it’s not because I think Putin will look down at me and say, “Oh, there are too many people, I’ll stop.” Well, that’s nonsense. We won’t have enough people because everybody’s too afraid. So it’s more for the future generations like, “You see? I was out there. I was protesting. I was against this.”

  • What American Pundits Get Wrong About Ukraine | The New Republic - helping to counterbalance the West-centric perspective of so much of this year’s coverage on Ukraine

    There is, of course, plenty to criticize about NATO and American foreign policy, not least the bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999. As The New Yorker’s Masha Gessen points out, this has been used by Putin to justify his expansionism. But by focusing almost exclusively on the wrongs of NATO, critics ignore the broader question of Eastern European states’ right to self-determination, including the right to join military alliances. Westsplaining ignores Eastern European history and the perspective of the Eastern Europeans, and it selectively omits facts on the ground about NATO expansion.

  • Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid - The Atlantic - I was surprised by how well this perspective aligned with Timothy Snyder’s framework in The Road to Unfreedom. For more, check out this interview with the author which NPR member station WBUR conducted shortly after the article’s publication.

    Liberals in the late 20th century shared a belief that the sociologist Christian Smith called the “liberal progress” narrative, in which America used to be horrifically unjust and repressive, but, thanks to the struggles of activists and heroes, has made (and continues to make) progress toward realizing the noble promise of its founding.

  • Feeling around for something human Why do Russians support the war against Ukraine? Shura Burtin investigates. — Meduza - raw and relatable, written by a Russian, with enough context for an American to understand

    What all three of them had in common was that they were all “doing so well.” They had something to lose so they didn’t want to think about anything so unpleasant. Aligning oneself with power is a successful survival strategy – you get much more bang for your buck that way.

  • Janet Jackson had the power to crash laptop computers - The Old New Thing - the title says it all

  • America is on the ballot - by Timothy Snyder - pairs well with “Feeling around for something human” (above)

    I don’t mean this in some kind of rhetorical sense; I mean it in a very practical sense. When regimes break down–when countries fall apart–it’s very often some combination of a few enthusiastic people who are planning it, a larger number of people who in some sense want it but won’t admit that they want it, and a still larger number of people who look away while it’s happening.

    I want us not to look away.

Videos