Month: September 2018
He Saw Our Darkness
This piece on Johnny Cash is fantastic: The tragic, doleful Cash had returned. On his own compositions and covers, he sang of a cold-blooded killer haunted by his deeds, a convict known only by the number tattooed on his neck,...
Consent and Trust
From the NYT: For our first date, he took an Uber to my apartment through a winter storm. As the snow fell outside, we sat close on my couch while he talked touchingly about poetry. Two hours in, I was hoping...
Rosaria Butterfield and Evading the Issues
Jeremy Erickson: Rosaria Butterfield has not to my knowledge spoken recently about whether or not she continues to experience sexual temptation towards other women. People talk about her as a “former lesbian,” and as long as everything is defined in...
Football and the Political Act of Prayer
Paul Putz: Before the whistle blows for the first time this year and the football goes tumbling through the air, there will be an act dripping with political significance. It will come even before the singer takes the field and...
The Hedonism of Reading Good Books
E. J. Hutchinson at TAC: “I hate to read new books.” So begins William Hazlitt’s essay “On Reading Old Books.” The title will remind readers of C.S. Lewis’s similarly named but much more well known essay “On the Reading of...
Dealing with Burnout Like a Christian
Chris Krycho: For the last several months, I’ve been experiencing what I initially described as mild burnout. I’m not sure how mild it is at this point, but I’m definitely still experiencing it. As a result, I’m still thinking about how to mitigate...
How Air Conditioning Created the Modern City
From The Guardian: Once, when I was staying in Houston, Texas, my host was showing me round her house. It included a mighty fireplace. “How often does it get cold enough to light a fire?” I asked, as what little I...
The New Reading Environment
n+1: All this is on your mind as you wait for your piece to go up. You’ve just written 1,200 words on Trump, norms, Twitter, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and the future of the Democratic Party. Will you downplay its importance (“So...
In Praise of Owning Stuff
Cowen: Each of these changes is beneficial, yet I worry that Americans are, slowly but surely, losing their connection to the idea of private ownership. The nation was based on the notion that property ownership gives individuals a stake in...
The Ever-Present Audience
L. M. Sacasas: It is not just that our attention is fractured by the constant barrage of information, it is also that our desire for attention has deformed our intellectual and emotional lives. The ever-present audience has proven too powerful a temptation,...