I’ve been resisting anxiety shopping. I could easily waste hundreds of dollars if I’m not careful. Here’s what I’ve been eyeing: The reMarkable tablet. Such a sweet piece of technology! Super thin, it can be used for PDF reading, note taking and drawing. You can also use it as an ePub reader, but I’m told […]
I’m a native New Yorker. My wife isn’t, but lived all her young adulthood there and is as committed to the idea of New York as any convert. She and I were both in theater there, often at the same theaters but at different times, so we didn’t meet until the 90s, when I moved […]
The new issue of Charlie Hebdo is featuring the same Muhammad cartoons that provoked the terrorist killers five years ago to attack and kill CH staff members and cartoonists. The trial is starting now, so the magazine republished the cartoons. I subscribe to CH (digitally), and I’m trying to download the issue now, but the […]
There’s an interesting piece on Lifehacker about defunding the police. In brief — there’s nothing the police do that can’t be done better by social workers and EMTs. The writer, Rachel Fairbank, says, what if your car is stolen, and when the thief is caught, turns out they’re a drug addict? Treatment! Well, yes, I […]
Everyone has had the flu and knows that while it’s unpleasant they got over it. (The people who died don’t have an opinion.) It’s hard if you don’t respect math to understand that the big difference is that if you have the flu (see the vox.com explainer at https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2020/3/18/21184992/coronavirus-covid-19-flu-comparison-chart) you’ll maybe infect one person. With […]
Who Will Defend the American Family? was the title in print. Online it is, Where Are the Socially Conservative Women in This Fight? I am not an editor… well, not a newspaper editor. I am a technical editor. One of my jobs is to read articles intended for academic journals and tell the authors how […]
Sam, I’m having a problem with your otherwise wonderful and excellent app, Waking Up. It’s that when I’m on Twitter and I see these frankly rather silly arguments between you and various Muslims, the animosity and playground jabs stay in my mind and make it hard to focus on the contents of my consciousness. So, […]
There is a national conversation about racism – what it is, is it different from prejudice, or personal animus against a group. The whole “some of my best friends” trope is based on the rejection of the accusation of personal animus, when the problem might not be that at all. You might – well, not […]
Oh, boy. I have to take a pill. Just sat through The Land of Steady Habits and Mary Poppins Returns. Two terrible movies about upper middle-class white men who can’t keep their paperwork straight and can’t pay their mortgages but whose real estate is rescued at the last minute by a deus ex machina. No, […]