Links for July 9th
Elon, the Supreme Court, Shohei Ohtani, Martin Scorcese, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin, some other news
Hello, hope you’ve had a smooth week!
So, I’ve actually now been doing this for two years (as we celebrate America, we celebrate sending four to 10 links and a capsule book review the first weekend of July); wasn’t the plan, but, as I’ve mentioned, I enjoy it! Thank you for subscribing!
This is an unusually long intro/newsletter because I have to mention the other news, which you might have seen: I am joining the New York Times opinion section on Monday. Earlier this year, BuzzFeed News announced some editorial changes and buyouts, which I took (after eight great years there). I’ll be writing and editing outside pieces about elections, democracy, and this rough period of time that seems to get ever realer. I said this on Twitter, but I’m hoping to bring the same goals as before (serious, thoughtful, compelling), and while I don’t always achieve that 1.000, I’m very mindful of the size of the platform, and will be working very hard to make it worthwhile for readers, hopefully such as yourselves.
Just because I need to get things sorted a bit, going to take a little summer break here. (If this newsletter goes on a more enduring hiatus, then I’ll say something to that effect, with gratitude.)
Links
I have not read this yet, but Matt Levine sent a Saturday newsletter about Elon Musk trying to pull out of the Twitter deal!!!
Here’s the rare kind of piece that is both funny and moving by Alexandra Petri about her new baby.
Here’s a seriously great letter to the editor Martin Scorcese sent after Fellini’s death about culture, work, and consideration.
Carlos Lozada did an interesting thing, which is read back the full Roe, Casey, and Dobbs opinions and dissents, and put them side-by-side to basically find that any level of shared sense of history and rationale is pretty frayed (including a pretty jarring bit about the way Alito uses part of the original Roe decision).
This gets into, in a sharp way, pregnancy complications people don’t talk about (and why, basically), but that this has a relevant component for policy now.
Great, short interview with the king Elif Batuman, author of The Idiot and Either/Or, on the state of the novel.
This (fun essay) is basically me playing tennis, talking about softball:
“You should’ve seen me at 21. I was really something.” I actually said that to a 21-year-old three weeks ago, while I was too enchanted with nostalgia to notice he was wearing AirPods.
Cool things to look at:
a. These chairs here in isolation, idk, but in this room, what a great looking room.
b. This is a LUDICROUS overlay of Shohei Ohtani pitches.
Lastly,
Light book commentary
Haven’t finished this yet, but since I must leave you with a good one, I am seriously loving Tomorrow And Tomorrow And Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin — a book about creativity, partnership, friendship, disability, art vs. popularity vs. fun vs. where they meet, being Korean in America, video games, and time. The basic premise is two childhood friends, who had an unusual and complicated experience as kids, run into each other in Boston in 1995, and decide to build a video game, which makes them famous (and then they keep making them). It’s very sharp about creativity. It also has one of the best book covers I’ve seen in a really long time. Click that link!
Lastly (and I suppose topically), since I kept mentioning those Benjamin Franklin and George Washington biographies, one narrowly useful thing about reading those books was thinking about American Revolution as a time period lasting years that people lived through, rather than a starting point with beginning and end.
Obviously, we all know that, we all had to read some of the Federalist Papers and hear about the Constitutional Convention junior or senior year of high school. But I had not recently considered that period as being fluid and not determined, where events took place over time, and individual personalities (like John Adams and his bottomless reserves of jealousy, or George Washington’s increasing frustration with the haters, so to speak) and their interpersonal failings interacted, with ongoing live debates. There’s a lot of chaos and uncertainty in that, actually. Anyway: It’s an interesting thought experiment, sometimes, to consider events like this as periods of time and consider living through them. One thing true of Washington is that he was a little slower to come around on independence than some, but really committed once decided.
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.