What I highlighted the week of March 1, 2021
Articles
Matt Yglesias on the Washington Post about the uses and abuses of anti-racist approaches.
Nothing is gained if the different parties in this debate call each other racists or invoke the specter of “white supremacy” to discredit their opponents. The affordable-housing question requires dispassionate analysis, not the censoriousness and scolding that might be appropriate for combating expressions of traditional prejudice, such as redlining.
A long interview with Saikat Chakrabarti, AOC's former Chief of Staff and one of the architects of the Green New Deal.
A short, good, essay about political words being far too abstract and removed from the lived experience of everyday people
But if politics feels distant from people’s everyday preoccupations, it is because its language so often fails to connect. Both Left and Right talk of “equality”, “responsibility” and “aspiration”: vague, abstract words with no relevance to people’s lived experience. Even when politicians try to resolve these problems, their language fails to bring ordinary people onside. “Social mobility” and “levelling up” are phrases almost unheard outside the corridors of Westminster.
This 2008 profile of Katie Couric has many great lines, especially this one which captures my feelings about true change and progress
That Katie has bombed at CBS is a testament, not to the existence of a glass ceiling, but to the fact that real revolutions are so thoroughgoing that they don’t just provide a new answer, they change the very questions being asked.
Jill Lepore's review of Nicole Perlroth's new book on cyberhacking is, well, scary. But it strikes familiar notes.
The arrogant recklessness of the people who have been buying and selling the vulnerability of the rest of us is not just part of an intelligence-agency game; it has been the ethos of Wall Street and Silicon Valley for decades.
I loved this Stella Bugbee piece about "Zizmorecore" NYC fashion trends
Jay Caspian Kang on Asian and Black relations in America, especially in the wake of Anti-Asian violence
This essay by Tressie McMillan Cottom about Dolly Parton, even after consuming endless amounts of Dolly Parton content and theories, was a barn burner.
Parul Sehgal reviewing the NYT Book Review is a self-recommending.
Movies
I watched and sort of liked:
TV Shows
- We continued our rewatch of Mad Men.
Podcasts
I made it through the whole archive of "Working it out with Mike Birbiglia" and enjoyed most of it. It was similar to "How To Be Amazing with Micheal Ian Black," which I listened to a few months ago and also enjoyed.
I really liked Lee Isaac Cheung's Fresh Air interview about Minari
