Kind of a bummer week here for a bunch of reasons, which is somewhat reflected in the downbeat tone of the stuff I wrote. I’ll try to be a little more positive in weeks to come…
Me on Substack:
— On Overthinking Genre Fiction: Some thoughts on what kinds of stories lend themselves to peopleinventing elaborate justifications for gaps in logic.
— The Vision Thing: When people say they want a bold leader with vision, they mean someone who will boldly do only things that they agree with.
— The Optimism Deficit: There’s a constant current of negativity these days that makes it hard to take on problems that fundamentally require optimism.
Me Elsewhere:
Nothing this week, though I spent some time on setting up possible things that will appear elsewhere in the future…
Links Dump:
— Tommy Edman Is The Latest Unlikely Star In St. Louis by Brian Menéndez: This week in “Children of My College Classmates Doing Well For Themselves”
— Misleading graphs in context: Less misleading than expected by Jannetje E. P. Driessen, Daniël A. C. Vos, Ionica Smeets, and Casper J. Albers: This week in “Results I Would Not Have Expected.” (Usual caveats about the reliability of social-science results apply…)
— Republicans Are Willing to Pay a Political Price to Ban Abortion. It's Up to Democrats to Make Them Pay It. by Josh Barro and Some practical advice for making a difference in the new abortion fight by Matt Yglesias: This week in indoor elephants.
— Status Over Money, Money Over Status by Rob Henderson: An interesting analysis of why particular people are under- or overpaid, which also earwormed me with a Hold Steady song.
— In ‘Downtown Stories,’ Theater That Uses New York as Its Stage by Rachel Sherman: I don’t think any of these will fit in with our limited plans to visit NYC this summer, but it’s an interesting concept.
— Are You Taking Advantage of the New Freedoms? by Jeff Maurer: Singing the praises of working from home.
Pseudo-Random Photo of the Week:
We’re coming up on a time when I’m once again going to need a place to do work that is neither Chateau Steelypips nor my office on campus. I used to use the Starbucks in Niskayuna for this, but during the pandemic they converted the bar area that was my regular seat into the pick-up area for mobile orders, so I need a new option. Accordingly, I spent a few mornings this week testing out one of the rooms in the faculty house (seen in the photo), which I think will serve the purpose I need it to.
Pseudo-Random Song of the Week:
I heard this on KEXP way back in the early days of digital music, and was mildly offended that I had to order the album as a physical CD to get it. I know nothing else about this guy or his career, but it’s a sneaky great record.
And that’s the week in a nutshell. If any of this is of interest to you, here’s a button you can click to get more of it via email:
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