Subscriber Writing, February 2024!

Here’s our bimonthly roundup of subscriber writing! Please click around at anything that catches your fancy. People work hard on this stuff, and every single time we do this, I learn things and find entertaining pieces I wouldn’t have otherwise. The era of internet creativity is an era of overabundance - thanks to the constant deluge of everything, it’s next to impossible for creators to get their work in front of an audience and almost as hard for consumers to find the stuff they’ll really enjoy. This means that it’s inevitable that talented writers are plugging away, doing great work, unable to find the audience they deserve. I’m very good at my job, but I have also been very, very lucky. So cast your nets wide, as readers, and please check some of this stuff out. As always, the ~66% of you who followed the submission instructions made my life much easier.

Speaking of, good news! I am now going to be doing what I should have done from the beginning; starting next time, submissions will go through a Google Form, which will save me a lot of tedious work and limit the inevitable mistakes (like whoever I’ve inadvertently left off this time, sorry sorry).

As you can surmise from the image above, I will be participating in the Tucson Festival of Books, at the University of Arizona campus, on March 9th and 10th. I will (apparently) be participating in two panels and leading a workshop; click the link for info. And now on with the show.

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Nicky Shapiro, Grinding

The strange implications of a middle school pastime

Amod Sandhya Lele, The West is neither white nor European

The idea of "the West" has always been bigger than both Europe and racial whiteness.

Rob Moura, Passion Fucks You

I wrote a brief reflection on the pursuit of happiness

Adam Whybray, The Indelicates and Bogeyman (2018)

Digging into an album by The Indelicates that links Brexit to Jimmy Savile and the Enfield Haunting, as well as a piece of interactive fiction inspired by it.

Mari, the Happy Wanderer, This Year, Choose Abundance: Some Thoughts on New Year's Resolutions

Ideas for more meaningful and enjoyable New Year's resolutions, plus a video of a chatty beagle, an anecdote about a Tasmanian devil, and a photo of an Alpine thistle blooming above a glacier.

Kody Cava, I Am Asking You To Count the Costs With Me

I have never owned a smartphone. This is an examination of how the now ubiquitous technology is making it harder and harder for those who have never had one to go through life.

Joe Mayall, Hey Centrists — The Left Was Right

It's time for centrists to start acknowledging leftists were correct about Palestine, American militarism, inflation, and a lot more. 

Benjamin J. Smith, Picasso / Warhol: Whose Era?

An examination of two dominant strains of thinking about art, represented by Pablo Picasso and Andy Warhol; or, a defense of the ideal of genius.

Erica Etelson, “The Jordan Klepper Problem”

Why no good can come of mean-spirited, "gotcha" prol-on-the-street interviews

Robin Gaster, A Realist Approach to Hydrogen 

Clean hydrogen is heavily hyped, but it's  expensive to produce, difficult to transport, and the Swiss Army Knife of clean energy - a second or third best solution for every market.

Zack Morris the Elder, Notes on a Move

Observations on moving house while 35 and with four children. 

Hal Johnson, Profiles in "Courage" II: Peredeus the Lombard

A true account of Dark Ages regicide, framed somewhat as a film noir— but mostly just the comically grim history of one Lombard in the sixth century.

Rogers Brubaker, Hyperconnectivity and Its Discontents
Treating digital hyperconnectivity as the defining fact of our time, the book traces transformations of the self, social relations, culture, economics, and politics, giving special attention to underexplored themes of abundance, miniaturization, convenience, quantification, and discipline. 

Steven Aoun, Roles to Play: Games, Learning and Child Development in Bluey

An examination of the principles 'at play' within the animated series Bluey.

Liam Smith, 2024 Predictions

Twelve predictions on AI and culture.

Socratic Psychiatrist, What Psychiatry Has Taught Me

A Reflection On Loss

MustardClementine, Perhaps AI Will Prompt People To Be More Dynamic

Why I think AI could help break our stuck dynamic, by giving more value to those who question and push for progress - rather than just fighting about how we will divide and use what we already have.

Gabriel Kahane, Absolute Music Is Not A Luxury

On meaning, justice, and music's role in society.

Andrew Berg, What Critics Often Get Wrong About Christian Nationalism

Christian nationalism is not a solely white, American, or Protestant phenomenon. Criticisms of it must go deeper.

Michelle Teheux, Am I the Only One Making Low-Key Plans for Surviving World War III and the Apocalypse?

I encourage people to get real and cut out their toxic individual prepper fantasies and instead connect with their community.

Kyle Imes, Living Through a Self-Fulfilling Parody

A personal rant against our politically poisoned culture and how an encounter with CoComelon weirdly gave me hope for a path out of it

Graham Cunningham,  Imagine There's No Muzak

How can we filter out from the vast archive of recorded popular music the songs or albums that really do deserve to be called Great Art? 

Meghan Boilard, Unraveling the Reality behind Royal Caribbean's Ultimate World Cruise

A look at the world cruise turned social media phenomenon, Part 1 of ?

Adam Nathan, A Box of Rain

After the death of her father, an architect discovers evidence of forgotten siblings at the bottom of a tamatebako box. 

Anuradha Pandey, The Internet made me vain and melted my brain

An exposition of how I found my way out of the disempowering darkness of leftist internet culture along with a critique of fourth wave feminism.

Alexander Wallace, Broken Olive Branches

I have a story in this anthology whose proceeds go to Palestinian refugee relief.

Tony, Suffocated by Luxury: The Anger of Sofia Coppola

The often mannered and ethereal surfaces of Sofia Coppola's films mask deep undercurrents of stifled rage and emotional turmoil -- and critics and audiences alike continue to ignore this. 

Clifton Duncan, The Theatre Will Never Recover from COVID.

A scathing indictment of the American theatre industry's suicidal COVID response, which they refuse to acknowledge, and which may have scarred the institution permanently.

Con/Jur/d, gate(less)

Poetics of the everyday. Your life as the only mystery.

Joe Steakley, Non-canonical Bonus Letter: Dawson's Creek

Discussing the legal and technical obstacles to watching this surprisingly good teen drama in its original form, doing a character study of the principals, examining the unusual style of dialogue, and suggesting the show should be read as a tragedy about the failure of two young people to grow up.

Matt McFarlane, Why Does Everyone Want Me to Use AI to Do My Job?

A look at what we stand to lose as more mental work, like writing, turns into a series of automated tasks.

Julian Gough, I wrote a story for a friend

I'm the guy who wrote the ending to Minecraft (the End Poem); this has had a weird effect on my life. Here's the full story.

Joe Ballou, Teaching As Leadership

3 lessons I learned about leadership from teaching high school history in NYC. 

Tolly Moseley, The Bachelorette Capital of the World

An essay about bachelorette parties in Nashville, how they echo ever-increasing female spending power -- which I trace back to Eisenstadt v. Baird, the 1972 case that made it legal for unmarried women to get birth control -- and resulting female gaze, which turns willing Nashville men into wanton sex objects. 

Max Baker, Still Swimming: Why John Cheever Matters in 2024

A substack post exploring the social and economic precarity that looms large in John Cheever's work and why people should still read Cheever in 2024. 

David Roberts Wealth-Envy Has Become Part Of The Cultural Air We Breathe

I write about my own wealth-envy using the Tom Wolfe novel Bonfire of the Vanities as a jumping off point, and then consider how wealth-envy makes our dangerous economic inequality that much worse.

Yassine Meskhout, Follow-Up On That Jewish Conspiracy

A total newbie naively enters the Israel-Palestinian discourse and is shocked by what he finds.

Nigel Bowen, Will the political-realignment rubber hit the road in 2024?

An article about how the ‘year of elections’ may be the catalyst for a political shake-up

Dirk von der Horst, Jonathan's Loves/David's Laments: Gay Theology, Musical Desires, and Historical Difference

Uses music to critique and develop queer approaches to the Bible.

Bram E. Gieben, Are We In The Wicker Man? 

An essay on the contrasting sexual and revolutionary politics of Midsommar and Joker.

Lirpa Strike, Trailer Park Children, Teenage Love, and the Lifelong Pull of Tidewater

An essay about a Yankee falling in love, both in and with the South, and how it shaped my view of where I lived and where I am now. The first part of an ongoing series about my observations since moving from Minnesota to Northern Virginia.

George Menz, On Not Getting Into Berghain

What does it mean when a haven for freaks and weirdos doesn't want anything to do with you?

Matthew Corson-Finnerty, The Age of Disbelief, Chapter One

A young Israeli filmmaker defies the mob

The Memory Hole, Something of Importance Lying Hidden

A respected psychiatrist decides to use his patients as guinea pigs with devastating consequences

Christopher J Feola, Death by Dirty Data: 4 dead, hundreds imprisoned; How a postal system destroyed thousands of lives

Data is corrupt because institutions instinctively drive ahead toward long-term goals rather than admit things are so broken that they need to start over. When the British Post Office realized how bug-ridden its Horizon accounting system was, it didn’t stop to fix the broken system; it kept prosecuting subpostmasters for fraud and theft over those false accounting discrepancies…and offering reduced sentences in exchange for agreements to never, ever say there was something wrong with Horizon.

Alex Ilex, It's Much Easier to Fool People than to Open Their Eyes to the Con

An article on social psychology which analyzes why millions of people who were conned by Ponzi schemes, etc., are always unwilling to admit they were scammed, and keep believing scammers until the bitter end.

TRAVELS TO DISTANT CITIES by BLAKE NELSON   Portland, OR (1991) “Nirvana @ Satyricon” 

Travel writing

First Toil, then the Grave, "Prophet Song" and psycho-political projection

Using the recent Booker Prize-winning novel (which I haven't read) as a jumping-off point for a discussion of neoliberal authoritarianism.

Reed Schwartz, Henry George and Sun Yat-sen: A Global Legacy of Land Reform

An analysis of Henry George's influence on Sun Yat-sen and his successors in the Republic of China and Taiwan.

Brent Lucia Could the Breakfast Club Happen in 2024? 

A short essay exploring how the power of boredom, subtly captured in The Breakfast Club, is tragically lost through the abuse of cellphones.    

Kim Stiens, Kim's Top 20 Songs of 2023!

A writeup about the songs that came out during 2023 that I, a rando who does not know much about music, loved the most.

Factorial Zero, Why I Hate Mumble Rap

A disgruntled look at the popularity of mumble rap and its destruction of old school lyricism. 

Argo, Global Paradox 2023

A review of John Naisbitt's Global Paradox from 1994, and how the neverending all-to-all communication of our time aged his optimism like milk.

Mathieu Simon, The Challenge of Authority

A personal essay on challenging traditional authority figures through adolescence.

Spencer Brooks, Beware The Champagne Flute

A rant about the inadequacy of champagne flutes, and a call to embrace the (clearly superior) coupe glass. 

Jimmy Nicholls, Why Taylor Swift doesn't matter

Can anyone with a straight face tell you that Swift embodies anything beyond her own business empire?

Mark Newheiser, Resistance and Avalon Strategy: Analysis of an AI Tournament and Academic Research

A strategic analysis of the hidden identity tabletop game Resistance/Avalon, with results from an AI tournament.

T Scott,  Washington Avenue

Why I love reading physical print but am not worried about my granddaughter and her phone.

Daniel Situnayake, Cat-like intelligence

A piece about cats, humans, and artificial intelligence. Why do we think of intelligence as a continuum, and what does it mean for AI engineering?

Brian Leli, Infinite Jest

Thoughts on progress worship after a few years of working within "the progress community"

Amy Letter, Cringe and Creativity 
Reading Rick Rubin’, how “cringe” is the new “gay,” and the necessity of cultivating a “fuck you” attitude to live a creative life (with Very Scientific diagram).

Bob Seawright, Safety Not Guaranteed

We are a fear-laden society obsessed with safety and risk avoidance. That might not be such a great idea.

Thomas Parker, Murder as Comedy, Murder as Fantasy: Unfaithfully Yours

In his last great film, Preston Sturges turned the violence at the heart of male sexual jealousy and paranoia into an uproarious comedy; think Othello rewritten by Buster Keaton.

R.B Griggs, Our Neo-Romantic Rebellion

A very weird AI prediction

Eric McIntyre. A Century of Ugly Architecture.

A primal scream against the monstrous horror of modern architecture and an account of why its most effective evangelizer, Le Corbusier, was even more insidious than his ghastly aesthetic sense, concluding with a call to arms. 

Freya India, You Don't Need To Document Everything

A rant about the compulsion to document everything on social media and the truth that nobody really cares about your life. 

Matt Lutz, The Apparent Conflict Between Universal and Particular Language

Both "Black Lives Matter" (and similar particularist language) and "All Lives Matter" (and similar universalist language) say something unobjectionable, yet many find one or the other of these slogans to be offensive. I argue that these slogans can be offensive not because of what they say but because of what they imply, and offer some advice for navigating unintended and potentially offensive implications.

John Mandrola  Why I Changed My Mind About Preventing Heart Disease

I am a practicing cardiologist and I have changed to a less aggressive stance on prevention of cardiac events. 

Sara Eckel, The Amateurization of Everything

I turned my career into a hobby—and now I’m taking other professionals down with me.

Josh off the Press, Life really isn't linear

A post about ringing in the new year and how 2024 doesn't really start until your birthday (or any new year for that matter).

Brian Howard, The Decline of the New York City Skyline

Human Dildos Living in Steel Dildos

T.J. Elliott  HONOR: A One Act Play

Can three corporate execs in a one hour meeting agree on one meaning this word, Honor, carries in our present time, if any?  

Doctrix Periwinkle, Born blind

Reflections on the recent rise in syphilis and how we almost eliminated blindness in babies and small children in the past century

Mike Gioia, Is Hollywood going out with a whimper?

An article that examines how Hollywood lost its distribution monopoly to social media, then wonders if Hollywood will lose its monopoly on high production value to emerging technologies.

Teddy Duncan Jr., On Heaven, Hell, and Nothingness in Miami Beach

A dispatch from Art Basel fielding questions of protest, spectacle, and frivolity. 

Damian Penny, The Not-So-New Deniers

How conspiracy theorists keep recycling the same techniques over and over.

John McMillian, "Crime and History," ​City Journal

A short essay on the failures of academic historians to talk frankly about the late-twentieth century's urban crime problem, and the liberal intelligentsia's bias against the police today. 

ZK Hardy, Sword of Damocles

A brief description of what it feels like to live with chronic illness.

Luke T. Harrington, I watched BuzzFeed’s terrible new horror movie so you don’t have to

Back when BuzzFeed was at the height of their popularity, they recruited me as a writer, and then immediately ghosted me, so I’m extremely gratified these days to see them reduced to making terrible movies for streaming services

Luke Allen, A Culture that Encourages Isolation Must Be Fought to the Death

You gotta get out there. 

Thaddeus Haas, The Horrors of Parenting. . . 

No one really tells you what you're signing up for when you agree to become a parent. I hate to be the one to break the news, but it's far worse than you can imagine. 

Mazin Saleem, Genocide out of sight, out of mind

On Jonathan Glazer's new film The Zone of Interest and the contentious history of arthouse and Hollywood depictions of the Holocaust

Tree Langdon, Words In Motion

Expect a weekly dive into money, mindfulness, and meaning. Let's change each other through our interactions.

Trojan Centaur, The Bird Book in B-flat

A few whimsical songs.

SillySmartAtom  Book Review on Eleven Minutes by Paulo Coelho

Personal book review on Eleven Minutes

Greta Ode of Ramble, Bramble, "My Big Quit"

My personal example from "the great resignation" (and also a response to grief)

José Vieira, Neptune and Vulcan (Part 1)

What can an iconic triumph and a less well-known failure of 19^th-century astronomy teach us about epistemology?

Robert M. Rubin, What are the Odds?: Richard Prince, Bookmaker  

An essay about Richard Prince's artist's books.

Stella Tsantekidou (the Human Carbohydrate), Why I worry about the rise of neo-con women

A response to Freya India and other conservative feminists who blame lefties for the demise of the dating market and other modern ills. 

Thomas Reilly, A history of violence

Why the link with schizophrenia is enduring yet controversial

A.J. Archer, And Now I Know How Joan of Arc Felt

That night, he takes the dogs out, and sleep escapes you, and you turn the memories over and over in your mind. (Fiction)

VG, last gasp of the never-will-be?

Maybe I'm too old to keep following my dreams

Garrett Kamps, Go Your Own Way

Steve Jobs' embrace of alternative medicine may have cost him his life. Why thinking different when it comes to your health is so tempting, and often so wrong. 

Sam Carlen and Iain Carlos, U.S. Government Funds Anti-Iranian Regime News Outlet IranWire

An investigative piece revealing how IranWire, a popular regime-critical Persian news outlet, receives the vast majority of its funding from the U.S. State Department and has numerous ties to organizations promoting western foreign policy.

Michelle Federico, There is no such thing as community, and we're all lonely

About the "loneliness crisis" as a consequence of labour under capitalism and the futility of solutions proposed by neoliberal governments. Cheap symbolic fixes will not distract from the reality that the only truly useful political demand would be for more free time to be social and enjoy life.

Matt Wolfbridge, Why Typewriters?

An exploration of how I traded in digital word processors for typewriters, and why you may want to as well. 

Triangulation, Harvard's Plagiarism Scandal Reveals a Deeper Truth About the Educational System

Recent cases of plagiarism, academic misconduct, and sloppy science, accompanied by the declining trust in higher education, reveal the deteriorating state of contemporary academia. Academia increasingly selects for incompetence but it erroneously treats a "people problem" as if it was an “incentive problem”.

Ross Barkan, The Three Segments of American Culture. 

A sweeping essay about the divisions defining America today: the macroculture, the microculture, and the mesoculture. 

D. Agacki, Burned Beyond Recognition

A Substack dedicated to endlessly stalking the margins of the musical Underground.

Randolph Carter - Salsa, Sabats, and Stoner Metal

The Plenum is a daily newsletter about food, politics, and music. This edition dives into Salsa Macha, the origins of European persecution of witches, and the greatness of Green Lung.

Click Repellent, Why Elon Became a Troll

A brief hypothesis which departs from the standard assumption that it's all about anti-Semitism and white supremacy.

Zoomer Doomer, An Autopsy of the Left in Zombie-Land USA  

An analysis of our contemporary moment with the left missing in action, and a call to reimagine leftist thought.

Curtis Price, “How Capitalism  Undeveloped North Mississippi Hill Country”

“Progress” came to North Mississippi – and destroyed its vernacular culture and traditions, leaving Walmarts, Walgreens, and Popeyes in its wake.

Sasha Breger Bush, Late to Class

Farmer protests in Germany garner broad popular support, confuse media, stoke partisan anxiety

Alex Small, The Ugly Reality of Wartime Speech

To express support for a warring party is to express support for killing, whether you say "Victory to Ukraine!" or "Everyone in Hamas should die." The first is just a euphemism, while the second is honest.