The last recap was actually two months, but this was a busier month. Busy enough that it’s not worth waiting the two more days until the month is actually technically finished to write it.
Me on Substack:
— Affirmative Action Links Dump: A bunch of links to other people’s responses to the Supreme Court’s decision on racial preferences in admissions, with minimal commentary from me. This topic will almost certainly return.
— On Understanding and Explaining: How well do you need to understand something to explain it to someone else? Depends on how well you want them to understand it.
— On College Novels: Thoughts on some books about the experience of being a student.
— The Joy of Talking Dumb Shit with Smart People: Heavy intellectual conversation is overrated.
— On Writing to Length: Thoughts on always exceeding my target word count by 20%.
— The Case for Accelerated Math: A defense of enriched instruction against plans to remove it in a misguided push for “equity.”
— Talent Is Decisive in Fields We’re Not Good At: An observation about when people are willing to say that innate ability plays a role in success.
— Oppenheimer: First reactions to Christopher Nolan’s epic biopic.
— The Foundation Trilogy by Isaac Asimov: A middle-aged dude re-reads very old SF.
— Self-Sustaining Oppenheimer Reaction: Responses to various Internet Takes about Christopher Nolan’s epic biopic.
— To Review or Not to Review?: Threading the needle when a book might be doing a good job but the thing it’s doing well is not a thing I want.
Me Elsewhere:
There’s been a general lack of material in this category for a while now, but there will be a bunch of new stuff in the near-ish future. For now, here are a couple of pieces that quote me (which might be aggressively paywalled, sorry):
— The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, by Robert Lea: An explainer about what quantum uncertainty really means. (This actually ran in May, but I forgot to put it in the last recap…)
— The Upcoming Superhero Movie The Marvels Plays On the Theory of Quantum Entanglement. Here’s How It Works, by Robert Lea: It’s not actually spooky action-at-a-distance, but that phrase is obligatory.
Links Dump:
— The Kennedys Were Always Bad, by Josh Barro: I bet that was cathartic.
— Where be your jibes now? by Patricia Lockwood: A piece about David Foster Wallace that got a decent amount of traction for some reason, but I’m not sure why, or why it was written.
—On Not Believing in One’s Work, by Liam Bright: An academic cri de coeur.
— The Real Mystery of Bud Light, by Joshua Bernstein: Yes, it’s “How did it become so popular?”
— People Just Want to Lose Weight by Olga Khazan: On the rise and fall of weight loss as a goal, and what the new drugs may mean.
— No One Deserves to Go to Harvard by Jerusalem Demsas: Knowing a bunch of people who went there, I’m inclined to agree that it’s a dire fate…
— The Sheer Scale of “Oppenheimer” by Adama Nayman: An actual movie critic’s take on the film.
—We Are all Evangelicals Now: A Nuclear Take, by Adam Kotsko: On the tendency to evaluate art in terms of its political content.
— You Can't Understand Physics Without Understanding Its Math and I'm Certainly Too Dumb to Understand the Math by Freddie de Boer: Probably overstated, but interesting; I might come back to the comment that seeded this, if I have time, because I think it needs unpacking, but I’ll link it here in case I don’t find time.
— Americans are falling out of love with the idea of college by Noah Smith: Also probably overstated, but concerning. Again, I might come back to some stuff in this, but in case I don’t have time, here it is.
— Walking Across Japan Part 1 and Walking Across Japan Part 2, by Chris Arnade: My experience living there a quarter-century ago was way more positive than his, but a lot of the stuff he talks about rings true.
Pseudo-Random Photo of the Week:
The spring/summer baseball season wrapped up this month, so here’s a shot of The Pip pitching in a tournament in Cooperstown (actually probably just him warming up to pitch…). This was shot from the outfield of the next field over with a very long lens to try to make that cornfield in the background look closer than it was.
Pseudo-Random Song of the Week:
One of the parents on The Pip’s 11U travel team started volunteering to work the PA during home games, and would play some walk-up and between-inning music. This was one of the songs on his list, and always made me think “Nooooo! We’ve got two more years before they’re teenagers…”
An undeniable banger of a song, though.
So, yeah, that’s a bunch of stuff. If you like it (or want to hate-read more like it) here’s a button:
And if you feel moved to respond, the comments will be open:
JFK had a very good speechwriter and probably the only person who could have inspired the Apollo program and the Peace Corps.