May and June in Review
A lot of work and not enough play
A bunch of work factors came together to make the entire month of May and much of June a miserable grind, in ways not conducive to writing here. To the point where I didn’t even do a monthly wrap-up for May.
The work situation is still not great, despite moving into summer, but now that it’s July I can at least do a recap…
Me on Substack:
— Quick Hits: Expertise, Academic Politics, Media, and Sports: To the extent that there’s a common theme here, it’s a bunch of items about people answering questions that may or may not be worth it.
— Quick Hits: Grades, Quantum Nonsense, and Wholesome Americana: Not a lot of theme here: what a “D” means, an offer to Joe Rogan, and thoughts on how kids of The Pip’s generation are just nicer than mine were.
— The Fantasization of Sports: A grumble about the branch of sports media and fandom that’s more interested in financial transactions than game action.
— On Graduation: A tribute to the Class of 2023.
— Quick Hits: Parenthood, Nostalgia, Academic Summer, and Spiders: Two items on getting old, one grumble about people not understanding my job, and a thought on comic-book movies.
— The Sadness of Debate: The way we have arguments about whether to have arguments just kind of bums me out.
— Consensus by Attrition: On a particular kind of toxic behavior in governance.
— The Kids Are… All Right?: Some end-of-the-year reflections on where we are with the current crop of college students.
Links Dump:
I had a computer crash that wiped out a shitload of things I had open in tabs, so this is less expansive than it might’s been. Which is probably to the good.
— The Scrutiny Gap by Charlie Becker: this kind of goes back to a theme that I’ve hit a bunch on here, namely that our biggest problems aren’t people lacking the ability to think critically, but rather how they choose to apply that skill.
—Like It or Not, Indie Rock Is Getting Old, by Jesse Hassenger: A look at my favorite band as an exemplar of a broader transition to Dad Rock.
— We Rarely Lose Technology, by Etienne Fortier-Dubois: A nice look at the trope of technological wonders of the past.
—What the Sports Culture War Is About, by Ethan Strauss: I don’t agree with a lot of the conclusions he draw, but he’s right that there’s been a weird shift in some of the messaging and marketing around sports, in ways that aren’t necessarily to the good.
—Unfuckable Hate Nerds by William Deresiewicz: A plea for sympathy for the least sympathetic of people.
— Thoughts on This Week’s Supreme Court Decisions, by Josh Barro: A less apocalyptic take than many, which is not a surprise.
Pseudo-Random Photo of the Months:
I mean, it’s got to be a baseball pic:
This is The Pip in a game last weekend, coming up to bat for his travel team. I have a bunch of action shots of him actually getting hits, but really liked the look of concentration here as he digs in before the pitch. He’s using a wood bat in this because they’re playing in a tournament in Cooperstown next weekend that requires them; he went 0-1 in this specific game (but walked twice), but has hit well with the wood bat in practices. On the season he’s got a batting average of 0.500 and an on-base percentage of 0.600, so all the focus is paying off.
Pseudo-Random Song of the Week:
The Pip and I spend a lot of time driving to and from baseball stuff, and have mostly been reliant on local radio for music during these drives, which is often pretty disappointing. After joking about it for a long time, I finally put a “Hype Music” playlist on the thumb drive I keep in the car. I don’t have a ton of music he likes, though, so I had to dig through my collection a bit for “old man rap,” and threw this in, because it’s a banger and I’m always happy to hear it come up on shuffle play.
(He gave me a list of more recent tracks to add, which I did; we’ll see how those play for me…)
And that’s a whole bunch of stuff. Here’s a button if you’d like more of this kind of thing:
And if you feel so moved, the comments will be open:
A bit unfair to comment here on Barro, but since I can't do it there w/o paying, here goes:
I basically agree witheverytning except that student debt forgiveness is inflationary. Ceteris paribus it increases the deficit and that sucks a few more resources from investment into consumption and THAT is a reason to oppose forgiveness. But if the Fed has an inflation target as it apparently does, the deficit implications of forgiveness or non-forgiveness is just one more or less thing it need to consider in setting the values of its policy instruments to achieve its inflation objectives. In other words it is NOT inflationary, it means higher interest rates.