Interesting links, noteworthy journalism and other miscellanea from around the web.
"Writers are tearing their hair out. Bond didn't just vanish off a cliff or fake his death – he was blown to pieces on screen. Everyone agrees it was a massive mistake because Bond is supposed to be eternal. They are now stuck trying to find a believable way to resurrect him, and it is proving almost impossible."
-- an unnamed writer, speaking to RadarOnline, highlights a significant plot headache for the next installment of James Bond: He's dead.
"Unable to get a precise crowd estimate, I tried instead to count inflatable frog costumes. I gave up on this about twenty minutes later: there were simply too many frogs."
Aristotle taught that all human beings want to know. Our own experience teaches us that all human beings also want not to know, sometimes fiercely so. This has always been true, but there are certain historical periods when the denial of evident truths seems to be gaining the upper hand, as if some psychological virus were spreading by unknown means, the antidote suddenly powerless. This is one of those periods.
-- Columbia professor Mark Lilla in the New York Times: The Surprising Allure of Ignorance.
Over the course of the 2024 season, the White Sox have explored the full spectrum of losing the way a great actor uses every corner of the stage, the way a jazz saxophonist probes every note in a scale. They have lost nobly, tragically, cleverly, inspiringly and deflatingly. They have lost late at night and early in the afternoon, in soggy rain and on crisp sunny days. I have seen perfectly professional losses that could have gone either way — but of course didn’t — and games that should have been stopped, for cruelty, in the fourth inning. I have seen the White Sox lose in front of huge roaring crowds at Fenway Park and also, back home, in their own nearly empty stadium. (On a sunny Tuesday, just before game time, I once counted 199 people sitting in the vast sea of outfield seats — and when the announcer finally said “Play ball!” the applause sounded like someone had just done a magic trick at a church picnic.) I have seen the White Sox hit their catcher in the groin with the baseball three separate times in a single inning. I have seen the White Sox lose because three fielders ran into each other like clowns. I have watched a bloop single flutter and fall, like the first leaf of autumn, delicately onto the outfield grass, at the most devastating possible moment. I have seen games in which Chicago’s hitters looked like All-Stars but their pitchers looked like impostors, and games where it was vice versa, and games in which they all played great but the ball just bounced the wrong way.
What is it about baseball -- or more specifically, losing at baseball -- that provokes such wonderful writing?
FT's Henry Mance interviews former UK prime minister, Gordon Brown. It's a strong portrait of a hugely underappreciated leader:
Brown gives interviews in the same way an emperor penguin crosses Antarctica: sometimes gliding effortlessly, sometimes barely tolerating the headwinds. His joys and anxieties run through his entire frame.
Gordon Brown: ‘I really didn’t think we could go as far backwards as we’ve gone’ · ft.comThe former prime minister says Britain could have avoided austerity — but that politics has changed since the 1990sWe are barely two months into the republic’s year from hell. In 2024, US politics is hitting a perfect storm of partisan loathing in a society where algorithms become ever more skilled at generating outrage among the exhausted majority. Conditions are as good as they get for an outrage entrepreneur like Trump. The rest of this year promises to be nastier than anything we have seen.
Year from hell · ft.comEconomic growth is failing to heal a nation torn over identity disputes instead of addressing its long-term challengesWashington Post reader Ted Miller, of Alexandria, in a letter to the editor:
No sooner had the Senate passed a $95 billion aid package for Israel, Ukraine and other U.S. allies than House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) pronounced it a nonstarter on his side of the Capitol. Won't even debate it. Instead, his colleagues tilted at their latest windmill: the impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. According to Quorum, a data analytics firm, this keeps the 118th Congress on track to be the least productive legislature in decades. Here is Nero fiddling while Rome burns. As a taxpayer, I resent paying the salaries of legislators who refuse to legislate and prefer preening for the TV cameras to the hard work of governing their nation in an increasingly dangerous world. I don't get to elect the representatives from Louisiana, but I would respectfully suggest to the good citizens of that state that they aren't getting their money's worth.
Opinion | We’re not getting our money’s worth out of this Congress · washingtonpost.comI resent paying the salaries of legislators who refuse to legislate.[T]he truth is that living in V.R. makes no sense. Life within a construction is life without a frontier. It is closed, calculated, and pointless. Reality, real reality, the mysterious physical stuff, is open, unknown, and beyond us; we must not lose it.
Where Will Virtual Reality Take Us? · newyorker.comApple’s Vision Pro headset suggests one possible future—but there are others.An excellent take from "JOHNSON", The Economist's long-running column on language and its misuse. While words and turns of phrase can dip in and out of style, a writer should never give up on precision.
Here is a suggestion for writers. You cannot outshout the crowds. So distinguish yourselves by choosing accurate, vivid words between the evasions of euphemism and the temptations of exaggeration. Crimes against language, in the long run, make it harder to describe crimes against humanity.
Euphemism and exaggeration are both dangers to language · economist.comBut verbal extremism is now the bigger threatThe Guardian's Zach Vasquez on Amazon's highly compelling comedy, Jury Duty:
Charming everyman · theguardian.comGladden, who answered a Craigslist ad for what he thought was a real documentary about jury duty, proved a once-in-a-lifetime find: an aloof, but intelligent and charming everyman who not only tolerated all of the insanity the showrunners and actors threw at him, but, through his innate kindness and empathy, transformed what would probably have been an experiment in cringe comedy into one about the transformative power of makeshift family.
Eggshells · nytimes.comLike all elites, we use language and mores as tools to recognize one another and exclude others. Using words like problematic, cisgender, Latinx and intersectional is a sure sign that you’ve got cultural capital coming out of your ears. Meanwhile, members of the less-educated classes have to walk on eggshells, because they never know when we’ve changed the usage rules, so that something that was sayable five years ago now gets you fired.
For New York Magazine, Clio Chang investigates the dripping water on the subway:
Next, we move downstairs to the platform. Bostick tells me that the deeper you are, the nastier the water may be, since it has more time to pick up gross stuff as it travels through the bowels of the subway infrastructure. Here, we find a puddle on the ground. We decide to take a sample, even though it wasn’t technically part of our inquiry, and Bostick sucks it up with a syringe. We agree that this stale floor liquid, with its unsettlingly yellow hue, is much nastier than the drips. “Don’t drink this,” Bostick says, as if the thought had remotely crossed my mind.
Couples therapyI’ve been working as a psychologist seeing individuals and couples since the mid-1990s, and in the past eight years, I’ve witnessed a tremendous change in the kinds of conversations couples can have. Not long ago, if I would ask a couple about the ways class or race played out between them, I’d typically be met with an awkward shrug and a change of topic. But recent events have reshaped the national conversation on power, privilege, gender norms, whiteness and systemic racism. Together these ideas have pushed us to think, talk, argue and become aware of the many implicit biases we all carry about our identities, unconscious assumptions that privilege some and inflict harm on others. These insights have also made it easier for people to realize there may be plenty of other unconscious assumptions undergirding their positions. I’ve been surprised and excited by the impact of this new understanding, and it has all made my work as a couples therapist easier.