Links for February 26th
Ukraine links and people to follow, City Hall weddings, David Leonhardt and the pandemic, fake Mets broadcasts, chess, Ja Morant
Hello, hope you had a smooth week yourself, even if this was another horrifying week on this earth with this very grim Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Apologies this newsletter went out so late last weekend; there was some kind of technical glitch. Next week, there should be a new piece from me, so there’s that.
Links
If you’re interested in knowledgeable people to follow who have real expertise (and each link here has an interesting piece of info) about Ukraine: My colleague Christopher Miller and NPR’s Tim Mak are both in Ukraine and sharing a lot on Twitter; I’d also recommend Max Seddon who covers Russia from Moscow for the FT, and the greatest, Miriam Elder. Chris wrote about what it was like when the invasion began overnight here. I also thought this piece on Russian protests was interesting, and of course, these dignified videos from Zelensky are compelling.
In mostly lighter news, and this is a good set of reads:
There’s a genre of story that, in particular, NYT and WSJ do on rare occasions where the stakes seem very low so you’re reading expecting some sad or worldly twist that never arrives, and instead the story really just is “these archaeologists have been married 40 years” or “this type of butterfly is back in the city!” — what I call the genre of “Nice Story alert!” Anyway, Nice Story alert: NYmag interviewed a bunch of couples who got married on 2/22/22 at City Hall.
This good profile of Anthony “Goose/Dr. Green” Edwards is a more complex story, but it has a Nice Story alert within it (that he and Mare Winningham eloped last year after being friends for decades).
This a very compelling story about a woman in Brazil who became a top world chess player, practicing on her phone after spending long days as a maid and taking care of her son.
Genuinely fascinating look at how certain sounds and background noise gets on TV, specifically about the (turns out) fake Mets broadcast in an episode of And Just Like That.
If you saw AnnaLynne McCord’s poem about Putin and Ukraine, she somehow upped the ante with the first quote in this interview with my colleague.
Sam Adler-Bell’s profile of David Leonhardt deals with A LOT about how different people can view, very differently, the same problems (in this case, the pandemic, personal risk, the government, the role of the media, and more).
In cool things to look at:
A seriously great dunk (of a basketball by Ja Morant, not on a tweet).
A perfect evening vibe.
Light book commentary
Extremely light.
A note on all this
Thanks for subscribing. Hope you enjoy. The goal here is just to offer up some links you may have missed, and maybe the occasional commentary on something in politics or a book I may have read that you, the reader, might enjoy. If you have thoughts on any of this, hit me up at katherinemillernyc@gmail.com or just tweet at me.