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- Easy Like Sunday Morning 2.18.24 - In our NeoMedieval Era
Easy Like Sunday Morning 2.18.24 - In our NeoMedieval Era
Texan Theocracy, a Baluchistan Imbroglio, and Gotta Go Fast
Another Sunday, another taste of what the paid subscribers will luxuriate in once I flip the switch and only send these to them! Get subscribed for these, a separate music post, and the warm & fuzzy feeling that you’re funding ad-free attempts at journalism. And now, back to our show!
Welcome to the “neomedieval” era (Vox) & America Is Not a Democracy (American Prospect) We need to stop pretending our society is what we argued it was in college, and start understanding the world that has been built around us & by us.
The Billionaire Bully Who Wants to Turn Texas Into a Christian Theocracy (Texas Monthly) Can’t say I’d ever heard of Tim Dunn before, but screw that guy. It’s nice to put a face to the awfulness that comes out TX, as there are a stunning number of awesome Texans who don’t deserve to be bucketed in with Christian Nationalists.
The Overlooked Crisis in Congo ‘We Live in War’ (New York Times) A slow moving disaster is occurring in Congo, with over six million dead in the last few years. We get essentially no news about it, but it looks to be
The Baluchistan Imbroglio (New Left Review) Repression of Baluchistan & the Baluch people has been brutal, spanned multiple decades, and has come from the Pakistani, Iranian, and Afghani areas of the region. The region is bisected between Pakistan & Afghanistan, with thirty years of hopes for independence or even coexistence, obliterated by any/all of the regional conflicts we’ve had our fingers in.
New York Times, get out of my school (Harvard Crimson) The Times expense department only approves trips to diners in Iowa and the freshman dorms at Harvard. I cannot imagine going to college under a microscope like this:
Freshmen used to fret about tourists snapping pictures through their dorm room windows; now, students of all years must beware the photographers furtively snapping candids for a long-form exposé on the death of American meritocracy. Lori S. Bacow ’25 shared that she puts on extra makeup and curls her hair every time she walks to class because “a girl’s got to look her best if she’s going to be in the Wall Street Journal.”
Of course, the constant coverage has its benefits: One Mathematics concentrator, Abe Lowell ’24, learned about his upcoming midterm from a New York Post article.
America’s Lost Boys and Me (Rob Henderson) & Does This System Work (Anti-Matter) Some wayward young American men hit their stride in the military, or find their solace in punk music, or even blossom in business. Many others don’t. And even some who “succeeded” in the traditional sense, are unable to care for themselves in old age. This problem is going to get worse until we acknowledge we are beginning to leave men, especially poorly educated men, behind.
(Ignore the Deepfake/hyperventilating thumbnail. There was a massive explosion from a chemical plant in Ningdong, large enough to produce a non-nuclear mushroom cloud.)
‘I dreamed of blocky pixels’: the strange, sweaty, sociable early days of gaming (The Guardian) You can smell these pictures. It smells like Bawls, hairy man ass, CRT monitor degaussing and CounterStrike. Truly a charmed era.
First passages of rolled-up Herculaneum scroll revealed (Nature) AI use that isn’t terrible! We’re scanning ancient scrolls that are too delicate to unwrap and making progress translating them. An unabashed good that we can feel good about.
The Rooftop Solar Industry Could Be on the Verge of Collapse (Time) Fantastic review of an infuriating, yet somehow unexpected development. The rooftop solar industry has transformed into another front in the “financial magic to rip off grandma” war.
In Oaxaca, an Unlikely Union Between Hackers and Indigenous Peoples (MIT Press Reader) Any story that showcases indigenous innovation AND cuts out big media or telco monopoly bullshit is a heartwarming one that you should feel good reading and telling others about.
Because if you can imagine it, it probably exists.
Break on through, to the other side,tn