Here are links to writing by subscribers for the month of July, presented in the order in which I received them. If I’ve missed someone entirely, please let me know and I’ll be sure to include you next month; if I’ve misformatted something, comment and I will fix it on the website. Those of you who formatted your submissions in the way I asked are the real MVPs. Please note that while I tried to remember every email sent to the wrong address, I disavow any responsibility if I missed yours!
This has quickly become one of my favorite things we do around here. Please explore the synopses and see if there’s anything that interests you; there’s a lot of talent out there and many writers who deserve a bigger audience.
Kody Cava, "The Self-Immolations of Climate Activists Exposes The Need For An American Reckoning."
Why do people choose to set themselves on fire? This is an in-depth examination of political self-immolations carried out by climate activists and antiwar protestors which seeks to determine what factors contribute to people electing this form of death and what we can expect in the future as the climate crisis worsens.
Erin Etheridge
This is the obituary for Randy Townsley, a remarkable man who died at age 65 from complications of lifelong cerebral palsy.
Arturo Desimone, “Reform the UN Before It's Too Late” in Counterpunch
A plea for movements to mobilise towards radical UN Reform beyond language-games and bureaucracy. I give different examples of present-day corruption.
Brad Neaton
On the incalculable cost of lockdowns and the stratospheric rise in deaths of despair.
Erik Hoel, From AI to abortion, the scientific failure to understand consciousness harms the nation.
The neuroscience of consciousness lags so much that we cannot answer basic questions about AI sentience, nor fetal consciousness, and this has spilled over into public debate.
Sally Thurer
On NFTs.
Stephen Burrows, Connect - by Stephen Burrows - Death-Devoted Heartbar (substack.com)
A serial novel about a guided MMO
Arnold Kling, Questions About Human Ecology
Are there niches for certain psychological traits, such as psychopathy?
Andrew Bisharat, “Who Killed the Climbing Magazines”
Reflections on how the pandemic changed the outdoor industry and killed the two biggest rock climbing publications in the U.S.
Mindy Greenstein, Maybe the Survivor's Daughter Could Survive This
Gambling, the Holocaust, cancer, and resilience, but sometimes funnier than it sounds.
Chris Boutté, Our major problem with educationism
How we view education is creating a larger wealth inequality gap in a variety of ways, and it’s also an extremely unfair metric we use to showcase an individual’s value to society.
Infovores, Why Hell beats Heaven
Explains our revealed preference for conflict, from religion to high school movies.
Josh off the Press
About my early writing success on Substack, and working through the current growing pains, as I remain steadfastly committed to consistently writing.
Sarah Shermyen, In Defense of Vanity
Why body positivity and body neutrality don't ultimately serve us: an attempt to exit the beauty system without discarding pleasure.
Pete Pratt
A tale of an innocent man railroaded by the legal system.
Erica Etelson, The Seven Deadly Sins of Politi-Speak
Progressive activists shoot themselves in the foot when they use insular jargon and Debbie Doomsday hyperbole to get their point across to normies.
Christopher J Feola
If Web3 succeeds in making “Can’t be evil > don’t be evil" true for tech, can it also prevent some of the evils inherent in capitalism?
Thomas Parker, The Woman Who Was a Man Who Was a Woman
An appreciation of the greatest American science fiction writer, a man who turned out to be (surprise!) a woman.
James Eastman, The Blackpowder Deliverance (gaslamp fantasy)
Fen, a reluctant thug for a small-time criminal boss—a volatile, hard-drinking woman named Harlow—must discover who’s framing the two of them for a vicious murder meant to start a street war in a run-down riverfront district controlled by a corrupt and powerful union.
Nick Russo, The Life of a Clear Cut
A reflection on forests and people and destruction and time, apropos of Buffalo and Uvalde.
David Berreby, The Unbearable Indifference of Others
This piece is about how people just hate feeling that others don't care about them - and experiments suggesting this is true even when the "others" are robots.
Patricia, Overbelly
Nick, a young film student, embarks upon a summer abroad – in Wisconsin
Justin Charity, Why We Love Hideo Kojima
A meditation on a Japanese video game guru and the trouble of politics, criticism, and games.
Joseph Arpaia, www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2019.00379/full
A scientific article for the lay audience on a new model of stress that explains a lot about anxiety/depression/addiction as well as the impact of socioeconomic conditions on stress and health.
Klaus Kinski, Data Analytics in the World of Bullshit Jobs
A discussion of how and why companies waste their data teams.
McCaffrey Blauner, Cryptile Dysfunction
The Finance industry doesn't want you to understand the cryptocurrency meltdown, but it's quite simple.
Joe Mayall, Blue Lives Matter More Than Yours
The cowardly inaction of the Uvalde Police is another data point showing American cops don’t view themselves as protectors, but rather enforcers of a social hierarchy, of which they are atop.
Jake Seliger, "'Homelessness is a Housing Problem': When cities build more housing, homelessness goes down.” https://seliger.com/2022/06/29/homelessness-is-a-housing-problem-when-cities-build-housing-homelessness-goes-down/
A lot of people have inaccurate ideas regarding what’s causing homelessness to rise; the simple, correct answer dominates all other issues, and it’s “housing shortages artificially imposed by local governments.”
Mikala Jamison
Establishing junk food as an underdog that needs defense from a dominant "wellness" culture occludes the fact that junk food is no less a product of a dominant food-producing industry - you're not choosing the less oppressive option when you select Cheeze-Its over kale chips.
Courtney Cook: Topologies, in "Survival by Book"
On traveling as travel as shapeshifting, mapmaking, border crossings, and being a lil bit dangerously in love.
Stuart Buck, The Good Science Project
David Roberts
One of my recent (1,000 word) posts on my free Substack: a story about my father saving me from adolescent humiliation
Andrew Thompson (with Kyle Paoletta and Jules Becker), The Gamer and the Nihilist
A deep data analysis of Product Hunt — the most important clearinghouse of software built in the 2010s — that examines Silicon Valley's relationship to time and fun.
J.M. Elliott, We can never go back
An essay on our doomed efforts to resurrect the things of the past.
Tom Corddry, https://www.postalley.org/2022/07/14/we-hear-much-about-abortion-the-politics-but-what-about-abortion-the-science/
What we’ve learned about fetal consciousness suggests that Roe’s standard for when abortion could be regulated—viability—is crumbling with or without Roe, and consciousness might be a better standard for abortion decisions, whether personal or legislative.
Cam Tierney
A rather sardonic inside account of a particularly instructive (and hilarious) woke spat in the early days of the Clubhouse audio-based social media app.
Mari the Happy Wanderer, Sympathy for the Devil, or, Karens Are a Problem of Systems Through stories and a brief digression into the motte and bailey fallacy, this essay argues that we will be happier and better off if, instead of castigating Karens, we work for systemic change.
Nick Johnston, https://vanyaland.com/2022/06/22/elvis-review-baz-lurhmann-resurrects-the-king/
On the movie Elvis.
Daniel Kraft, Di Freyd Fun Yidishn Vort/The Joy of the Yiddish Word
Every week or two I send out a new translation of a Yiddish poem, along with some brief contextual or critical essays.
Sarah, A Guide to Reading State Legislative News: A Case Against Despair. A lobbyist's explanation of how to evaluate a bill's odds of success from the bad headlines about it, and an argument for the bad, ambiguous truth as a weapon against fear.
If you want to understand where politics in the US (and UK) are headed, look at Israel, where a multi-ethnic coalition of working and lower-middle class voters sustain right-wing hegemony, while the Left is supported almost exclusively by white people with postgraduate degrees
McJunker; Listen
A reflection on a formative experience of mine from the War in Afghanistan, self-consciously written in imitation of O’Brien’s The Things They Carried.
Tyler Goldman, "The Imperfect Enjoyment" of Translating the Scandalous
A conversation with the German novelist and translator Christine Wunnicke on the pleasures and challenges of translating the two "dirtiest poets in the pantheon:" Martial (ca. 40-104 CE) and John Wilmot, Second Earl of Rochester (1647-1680).
Mouse and Bear, College Essay Noir: My Quest for a High-Stakes Summer Internship that Sparkes Sufficient Personal Growth to get into My Safety School
A hard-boiled look at college admission’s credentialing with a hopeful twist;)
Brian Morton, Tasha: A Son's Memoir, a story about caring for an elderly parent in a country whose unofficial motto is “you're on your own.”
Andrew Rosa, One Step Further And They Will Banish Us
The Dimes Square in my mind
Kelly Owens
Over the course of eight essays in the 'manifesto,' I cover not only the science of bioelectronic medicine, but also the mindset that stands in the way of its progress — and what I think we can do about that.
Pablo Antonio, "Ok, Let's Try Something Different"
My thoughts surrounding my experience with Alcoholics Anonymous.
itsnotmyfault, A review of Ruha Benjamin's "Race After Technology"
A STEM person reviews a "structural racism in the digital age" book that made big waves among academics.
Luke T. Harrington, I Took a Break from Social Media, and It Turns Out I Don’t Want to Go Back
I’ve reached a threshold where the benefits of staying off social media outweigh the benefits of being on it, and I’m not sure what to think about that.
Elizabeth Held, You’ve Gotten Really into the Tour de France
I have a book for every kind of reader in this newsletter — mystery set at the Tour de France, a literary work on Florida and romance featuring a tennis star.
Ryan Bloom, "I'll Get Back to You."
A science-fiction story about love and second chances—and whether they are possible.
Alex Olshonsky, The Great Millennial Predicament
In our secular modern world, there's nothing obvious to worship, so we end up worshipping ourselves — an essay about Lena Dunham, avoiding Messiah complexes, and being of service to others.
T. Scott, https://tscott.typepad.com/tsp/2022/07/age-appropriate.html
For the Christianist, it is never age-appropriate to talk to children about sex.
edward rathke, The Neapolitan Novels by Elena Ferrante
Synopsis: A book review about the best and worst friend you'll ever have in which I explain what eggs have to do with writing.
Karl Straub
This essay is me recommending the Nicholas Ray film "On Dangerous Ground," following some palaver about the hipsters who clutter up the nation's cafes, in the manner of macaws infesting an arboretum.
Dan T, Binge & Purge
A look at how Netflix screwed up by not understanding how people think
George Alliger
A consideration of the virtues of testing for ability, drawing on an ancient source for support
J.R. Leonard, Dispatches: Ethiopia
Thoughts on a country never colonized, not even by its own government.
Hugo Davis, Lazarus Stinks
Here's a short humor piece based on the premise that maybe Lazarus did not want to be resurrected
Sam Corey/That Guy from the Internet, "Pro-Birth"
a flash fiction piece that satirizes the "pro-life" movement and takes it to its logical conclusions
Education Realist, The Real Reason for School Closures - School districts deferred to the majority wishes of parents
Uh oh. Am I the only subscriber who is not writing???
There's a LOT of good stuff here (plus mine which y'all should read and subscribe). I'm not sure any of it is Erin E level good, but it's quite good nevertheless!