Another two-week compilation post, because I had a lot of offline stuff going on. The Pip’s baseball season started last weekend, which means a lot of games and practices, and I did an in-person talk at Wesleyan, then had to write and record an entirely new talk for an event next week. And then there was the explosive leak of the Supreme Court opinion that just consumed everything on social media this week, in a way that made it feel extremely unappealing to write anything.
Me on Substack:
— Last Week in Airplane Reads: Quick reviews of the three books I read on flights to and from our California vacation: a science fiction novel from James Breakwell, the new Rivers of London novel from Ben Aaronovitch, and an old Jack Reacher book from Lee Child.
— To Summarize the Summary of the Summary, People Are the Problem: Thoughts on the Elon Musk purchase of Twitter, which won’t actually make much difference because the problems with social media have less to do with the tech and management and more to do with the users wanting bad things.
— On Simple Tastes: Some thoughts about embracing my Uncool Dad side, after listening to Josh Barro and Peter Suderman talk about cocktails.
— Walking in Modesto: Pictures and some explanation from a two-hour photo hike while visiting my sister in the agricultural part of California.
Me Elsewhere:
— Online Event Series: A Brief History of Timekeeping: This is not a thing that actually happened in the last two weeks, but rather an event that will be happening next week. It’s an online talk for New Scientist’s Big Thinkers series, and is a very different set of topics than previous versions of this talk.
Links Dump:
— IMBW Debate: New York is the Greatest City in the World! vs. New York is One of the Places You Can Live. by Jeff Maurer: A good take on the “Leaving NYC” genre of personal essay.
— Trying to Un-Muddle the Twitter/Free Speech Debate by Jeff Maurer: Re-frames the questions around social media in a way that I found interesting.
— Get Ready for the New, Improved Second by Alanna Mitchell: Highly relevant to my interests.
— Pop Culture Has Become an Oligopoly by Adam Mastroianni: Some stats and figures about the decreasing variety of modern pop culture. Not sure I 100% agree with the analysis, but it’s interesting.
— If I’d Written the Prequels by Robert Jackson Bennett: An old post but I hadn’t seen it before; offers a really dark version of what the Star Wars prequel trilogy might’ve been.
— Queer Numbers: Tracing the Origins of a Misleading Statistic, by Jason Colavito: A fairly typical trip through the history of a frequently quoted number that turns out to be less well-founded than it’s often presented.
— Random Paths to Frequency Hopping by Tony Rothman: A look at the many people who invented spread-spectrum techniques who were not Hedy Lamarr.
— What the DLC Got Wrong by Matt Yglesias: Re-ligitating lefty disputes from, sigh, almost twenty years ago. God, I’m old…
Pseudo-Random Photo of the Week:
This really isn’t random at all— gotta be a baseball photo of The Pip getting a single in his first game of the rec season.
Pseudo-Random Song of the Week:
High-quality mid-90’s alt-rock ephemera.
That’s a little thin, but, you know, such is life. This week is likely to be kind of scanty, too, because I have a shitload of meetings and events to attend in my role as a faculty trustee. And also a bunch more kid baseball… Here’s the traditional button:
And if you have fond memories of Belly or other alt-rock ephemera from a quarter-century ago, the comments will be open: