Reading archive 2025-03-27

What’s the Matter with Abundance?: The last thing society needs is more stuff - "Abundance is mostly hard to argue with, by design: Klein and Thompson have written a super-partisan sales pitch for a politics of new construction rather than a rigorous, methodical inquiry regarding the causes of national stagnation. The authors lament that America is “stuck between a progressive movement that is too afraid of growth and a conservative movement that is allergic to government intervention.” This third way is well trod, by everyone from Bill Clinton to Barack Obama to today’s Democratic Party insiders, and Klein and Thompson’s offering is among the most approachable attempts to map it of late. But their collation of columns is less than the sum of its parts, like a clip-show episode of a 1990s sitcom.

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"But though they promise they’re more curious about what we can build than what we can buy, Klein and Thompson suffer from the telltale symptoms of commodity fetishism. To maintain an interest in production means investigating the conditions and relations of production—not just the policy mechanics. A turn-of-the-century New Yorker might be thrilled with his new rubber goods and the innovation embodied therein. But we can’t forget the enslaved rubber workers of the Belgian Congo from whom the industry tortured its material. Life did not simply get better and easier with innovation, not even for white people: the violence of the imperial scramble rebounded on the European Metropole and the continent’s scientists turned their attention from fun new electronic doohickeys to killing machines." [ed. note: this whole thing is fire]

Why Everyone Thinks Their Government Has Failed: People all over the world—with all kinds of leaders—seem to think their incumbent is the problem. - "Or maybe the expectations of the global public have ceased to track with any realistic idea of government capacity. Contemplating the recent anti-incumbent turn, I have found myself returning to a conversation I had a while back with Ricardo Lagos, who was the president of Chile from 2000 to 2006. He told me that while in office, he had wooed a dissatisfied constituency by channeling substantial resources to a poor neighborhood in the outskirts of Santiago, Chile's capital. "We built a housing complex and made sure that public services like water, electricity, and health were available and reliable," he told me. And yet, when election time rolled around, the voters of that neighborhood turned away from Lagos and supported the opposition. 

"'I was flabbergasted,' he told me, 'and decided to find out for myself what had happened. I met with a group of community leaders and was expressing my surprise and singling out the hundreds of houses we built when one of the neighbors told me, 'Yes, Mr. President, we know what you did, but this is all about parking spaces. The houses are nice, but we don't have any parking.''"

A populist uprising stirs among Democrats furious at their leaders: In dozens of interviews at recent Democratic events, voters said their party leaders need to show a much greater sense of urgency — and develop a plan to stop Trump and Musk.

The 41-page blueprint that may help explain Trump’s painful trade wars: An economic treatise by a top Trump adviser is being read as a road map of his tariff policy. But even he says it’s not what Trump is implementing.

‘Something was wrong with my brain’: How covid leaves its mark on cognition: Five years after the pandemic began, the neurocognitive effects of long covid are numerous and troubling. And some of these cognitive losses may extend to people who quickly recovered.

Can police search your phone? Here are your legal rights.: Police generally need a warrant to search your phone. The details, though, are a legal and practical minefield.

Butterflies are in trouble. Your garden can help.: What you plant and what you avoid can make a difference to your local butterfly population.

Trump officials working to strip FEMA’s role in disaster recovery by Oct. 1: Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem and others are weighing whether to strip FEMA of some of its key functions

Craft distillers hit hard as tariffs mix with 1930s rules for alcohol: Some small U.S. producers of alcohol had found it easier to expand north rather than navigate the fragmented U.S. distribution system.

The beginning of the end of the Trump era Trump is squandering his moment. Here’s a path forward for Democrats. [ed. note: Shadi Hamid, oy]

RFK Jr. announces big cuts to Department of Health and Human Services: In all, the agency will cut 20,000 positions, half of them through layoffs.

Meet the College Kids Making ‘Positive Masculinity’ TikToks to Counter the Manosphere: A group from Colby College, posting as Sex Ed for Guys, champions enthusiastic consent and female pleasure — without getting preachy

Teen member of Musk’s Doge staff provided tech support to cybercrime ring, records show: Edward Coristine, who is 19, is among members of Doge effort that has been given access to official networks

D.C. police investigating vandalism to Teslas as possible hate crimes: Authorities have pledged swift action in response to a string of attacks on Tesla dealerships, charging stations and vandalism to vehicles around the country.

I’ve Seen How ‘America First’ Ends: When the United States withdraws from the world, the world’s problems come knocking on its door.

RFK Jr. and the Pepperoni-Pizza Paradox: The case for a Department of Food - "Democrats, too, should want a Department of FOOD. In fact, Democratic lawmakers in Congress have introduced legislation proposing a single food agency at several points over the past 20 years. America's discombobulated approach to food is the by-product of a century's worth of bureaucracy. In 1906, Congress passed two separate laws setting different food-safety standards for meat and nonmeat products. At the time, both sets of rules were enforced by the USDA, until the FDA was carved out of it in 1940. Since then, the question of who is in charge of what has gotten only more complex. When the EPA was created during the Nixon administration, for example, regulating how much pesticide can be present on the food you buy was transferred to the new agency."

Why Right-Wing Influencers Keep Saying the Jews Killed JFK: Social media supercharges conspiracy theories. Anti-Semitism is one of the oldest. - "Last Tuesday, following an executive order from President Donald Trump, the documents became publicly available. By Wednesday, anti-establishment influencers had figured out who did the deed. 'So who killed JFK?' asked one user on X. 'The jews,' retorted Stew Peters, a far-right extremist and Holocaust denier with 808,000 followers, who has claimed that Jews sank the Titanic and that 'the Constitution is being replaced with the Talmud.' (He has also hosted now FBI Director Kash Patel six times on his online show.)"