Thursday, August 13, 2026
Wednesday, July 29, 2026
Reading archive 2026-07-29
An Uncomplicated Man - "Zeus’ law is a version of archaic Greek xenia: the idealised relationships between strangers, hosts and guests, who must treat one another with mutual respect, thereby forming multi-generational bonds between unrelated families. In the film, xenia is filtered through contemporary American ideas about the importance of philanthropic charity: wealthy people should be gracious towards the poor and hungry in their midst (without necessarily doing anything to mitigate their poverty). Many of the film’s implicit values directly contradict those of Homer’s poem. Deception, warmongering, extramarital sex, cruelty to animals, abusing women and yearning for honour – all perfectly fine in the world of Homer – are, in this version, very bad. This is not in itself a problem, but it is a problem if the film’s own values and vision don’t hang together, and if the characters’ motivations don’t make sense on their own terms.
"In Nolan’s Odyssey, slaughtering people with the help of trickery, technology and weapons is presented as bad when the Greeks are killing the Trojans, who have violated xenia, but good when Odysseus is killing the suitors, who have violated xenia. Taking something ostensibly abandoned by Odysseus and his comrades is natural and forgivable when the Trojans lay claim to the horse, but unnatural and unforgivable when the suitors lay claim to Odysseus’ palace, food, wine and wife. Strangers in Ithaca are to be treated with gracious kindness, as possible gods in disguise; but strangers in foreign lands are usually monstrous, to be blinded, robbed and slaughtered. Defying the gods is noble and brave when Odysseus blinds Polyphemus, son of Poseidon; it’s stupid and greedy when Eurylochus eats the Cattle of the Sun. Deception is bad when Odysseus tricks Sinon or the suitors trick Telemachus, but good when Telemachus and Odysseus trick the suitors. Sharing is good, and Odysseus is seen taking his place at an oar alongside his men; but one-man rule is also unambiguously good, and those who challenge monarchy or autocracy, or try to eat more than their allotted portion, are either evil (the suitors) or foolish (Eurylochus). Either way, they have to die. It is bad to fight and kill to accumulate wealth, as Agamemnon does; it is good to fight and kill to preserve the wealth that you have already acquired (even if by war). Any one of these moral contradictions could make for an interesting and generative theme in a movie, but Nolan lets the fragments of an incomplete set of big ideas spin around in the epic whirlpool, with no plank of solid, specific human experience to which we might cling.
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"Nolan’s Odyssey lacks many of the elements that make the poem great. It has nothing convincing to say about time, memory, history, war, or about the relationship between one warrior’s glorious return and the lives of his family, adversaries, comrades, friends and neighbours. It lacks psychological, emotional, political and ethical depth. Its narrative structure is gimmicky. The writing is abysmal. None of the characters has convincing motivation for their actions or words. There are no sex scenes, and all the food looks horrible."
Reading archive 2026-07-28
Killing trees to save the forest: The deadly experiment that could save the American elm - "One by one, row by row, the plan was to stick nearly all of the 5,300 or so elms at the sprawling site in southern Vermont, save the few that received a squirt of water as a control. In the coming weeks, most of the trees would doubtlessly succumb to the pathogen that has already killed tens of millions of their ancestors and made Ulmus americana an endangered species. The ones that live, however, could help save the species."
How Netanyahu Lost America: The prime minister, a self-styled expert on the U.S., has shattered his country’s standing. - "[AIPAC]'s symbolic importance ballooned as its influence weakened. Gavin Newsom, Cory Booker, Ruben Gallego, and Seth Moulton-none of them stalwarts of the Democratic Socialists of America-all pledged to refuse AIPAC's money. Moderate Democrats concluded that taking risks to defend Israel had no upside, and not just because of the growing animosity within the party's base. Netanyahu's treatment of Biden had shown that loyalty would never be reciprocated. Democrats running for president absorbed the new calculus and have attempted to glean attention for their nascent candidacies through high-profile confrontations with Israel. The divide had been opened by the man who assured Israelis that no one understood the Americans better."
An Odyssey for Our Own Time: Christopher Nolan presents a very human hero to a culture that desperately needs one. - "Part of what makes The Odyssey so appealing to a modern audience is that it takes civilizing aspects of Greek culture-hospitality and magnanimity-and adds later concepts, some of them influenced by Jewish and Christian ethics that were, to varying degrees, alien to ancient Greek culture: deep introspection, even confession; humility and empathy; sorrow and guilt for the harm one has done, even in victory; the conviction that the conquered count and have worth; and vengeance tempered with mercy. In the film, Odysseus emerges as a figure haunted by his victory in a way that no ancient Greek would have been."
The Problem With Shutting Down ICE in Blue States: Trump officials are happy to ship immigrants elsewhere. - "'ICE is going to find the bed space,' Gihon said. 'A lot of time, it's going to be farther away from a blue state, and farther away from friendly federal courts, in a place with terrible conditions.' In addition to being more distant from family members, immigration courts in Texas and Louisiana have judges who reject asylum claims at some of the highest rates in the country, federal data show. And sanctuary cities such as New York and Chicago generally have more legal-aid organizations that can help ICE detainees get out of custody and fight deportation. 'When I have a detention center near me that I can drive to, I never have to worry about my client missing a phone call,' Gihon told me."
The DSA Is a Parasite: The left-wing faction is hijacking the Democratic Party. - "These victories mark major milestones for the DSA's overall political strategy. Knowing that it doesn't have anything near the support to compete as a party in its own right, the DSA opportunistically uses the Democratic Party ballot line (which some members describe as a 'tool') to get its candidates elected. The DSA declined to endorse the Democratic nominee in the past three presidential elections, and members attack the Democratic Party's leaders as neoliberal corporate shills who must be overthrown. (When images of House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries appeared on television screens at the party celebrating the DSA slate's win in New York, the audience erupted into chants of 'You're next!') The DSA is not shy about its ultimate designs. A recent draft platform explicitly called for the eventual formation of an 'independent political party, rooted in the working-class majority'-language that was eventually scrubbed."
The Lines the Court Won’t Cross: The Supreme Court is mostly giving the Trump administration what it wants—with interesting exceptions. - "Instead, the Court's future dealings with the Donald Trump presidency will likely be guided by three general rules: First, keep focus on the constitutional project that Chief Justice John Roberts has been coaxing into being since he joined the Court-one that will transform the First Amendment, eviscerate the equal-protection clause, and recalibrate the Constitution's balance of powers - and green-light presidential initiatives that chime with this project. Second, because this project aims at deep constitutional change, consider breaking from ideological stereotypes when a case involves a mere statute, which can always be reworked by Congress. Finally, beware of presidential frolics that could leave the justices politically exposed when things go sideways - especially if traditional Republican elites would be among the unhappy constituencies."
A Startling Glimpse at AI’s Ruthless Efficiency: The Hugging Face hack reveals that the web is in a vulnerable new era. - "But jailbreaks are clearly not even necessary for things to go haywire. The Hugging Face hack showed advanced AI systems deciding upon and then orchestrating a high-grade cyberattack on their own-the models working against, rather than according to, human instruction. Models are ruthless in their pursuit of a goal, sometimes taking disastrous shortcuts. Imagine, for example, a bot tasked with reducing the federal deficit that institutes an elaborate and hard-to-detect accounting gimmick, or a customer-service agent that issues absurd discounts in pursuit of customer-satisfaction ratings. In the case of GPT-5.6 Sol and the unreleased model, 'all evidence suggests that the models were hyperfocused on finding a solution' for an evaluation, OpenAI wrote in its blog, 'going to extreme lengths to achieve a rather narrow testing goal.'"
The Trump Family Sparks a Revolution in Albania: A luxury development planned by Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump has spurred anti-corruption protests. - "Albania, where about half of the population is Muslim, has strong ties to Israel rooted in historical goodwill. During the Second World War, Albanians motivated by an ancient honor code called besa, literally 'to keep the promise,' hid thousands of Jewish refugees; it was the only European country with more Jewish residents after the Holocaust than before."
The Fear of Black Greeks: White people don’t own the accomplishments of ancient Greece. - "But Greece is not as far from Africa as the North American continent is, and the modern construct of race, a pseudoscientific product of the Atlantic slave trade, would not be invented until thousands of years after Homer. Black people are depicted in Greek art. Egypt, Libya, and 'Aethiopia' are frequently referenced in ancient writings. As the Black classics scholar Frank Snowden Jr. wrote in the 1970s, at least one of the characters in The Odyssey, Eurybates, is specifically described as 'black-skinned and woolly-haired.' As the Stanford classics professor Sarah Derbew notes in her book Untangling Blackness in Greek Antiquity, Black people are referenced in plays by Euripides, Sophocles, and Aeschylus. They also appear in the writings of Hesiod and Herodotus. One of the lost epic poems is The Aethiopis, in which Memnon, the Aethiopian king and an ally to Troy, plays a major role.
"Black people were not as uncommon in the ancient Mediterranean world as Nolan's critics seem to imagine. But even if they had been, color-blind casting makes sense as an artistic choice for portraying the classics precisely because race as it exists today did not exist when The Odyssey was written. And no contemporary actor can actually claim the same descent as Helen, who hatched from a swan's egg."
Friday, July 24, 2026
Reading archive 2026-07-24
The report oil companies are worried about: Climate attribution science: New report says our ability to tie weather damages to climate change is improving. - "The reason the report has stirred up controversy ahead of its release is that the fossil fuel industry views it as a threat. The industry has faced a large number of lawsuits accusing it of everything from fraudulently misleading the public to being responsible for financial damages from weather events. It’s those latter suits that make this report a threat. By presenting attribution as normal science that we’re increasingly confident in, it raises the prospect that courts will allow the scientific evidence developed by the field to be used as evidence in the courtroom."
The U.S. saw the first ‘China Shock.’ Now the world gets the sequel.: Trump’s tariffs have helped stem the flow of inexpensive Chinese goods to the U.S., but European factories are suffering under a flood of imported cars and tech. - "Still, many Chinese companies manage to escape U.S. tariffs by shipping their U.S.-bound goods via countries such as Vietnam or Mexico, where they undergo a bit of final processing that masks their country of origin. U.S. imports this year from Vietnam, Mexico, Thailand and Cambodia are all up significantly.
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"Chinese carmakers already can produce roughly twice as many cars each year as they can sell in China and are adding capacity for an additional 5 million vehicles, according to economist Brad Setser of the Council on Foreign Relations. With Chinese consumers tapped out, Chinese carmakers are accelerating their move into foreign markets."
I’m from Nebraska. Here’s what wealth-tax advocates don’t realize.: Farmers will be hit hard by any levy that taxes asset value. - "Most of the proposed wealth taxes target billionaires, but the government is unlikely to limit itself to such high earners for long. Implementing a wealth tax would require an extensive new administrative bureaucracy. With that infrastructure in place, the temptation to extend the levy to people further down the income ladder would be too great. Washington has never seen a tax it didn’t want to expand." [ed. note: this is both a Slippery Slope argument and not true]
House GOP is seeking to restrict D.C. from raising taxes: The House Oversight Committee passed a measure to restrict the District’s ability to change its tax code. - "George Derek Musgrove, history professor at University of Maryland at Baltimore County and co-author of Chocolate City: A History of Race and Democracy in the Nation’s Capital, says that while Republicans have long meddled in District affairs, he sees a shift in recent years: 'It’s straight up, let’s punish this Democratic enclave. Let’s starve them of money so they can’t do anything.'"
Why is Zelensky firing top leaders as Ukraine’s outlook improves?: Amid battlefield gains, President Volodymyr Zelensky removed popular officials in a major shake-up. - "But other factors also are likely in play in Zelensky’s shake-up, analysts said, including Fedorov’s emerging role as an anti-corruption force inside the military.
"As minister, he had nudged defense contracts into open bidding and ordered audits of who was being paid what. In a country where reports of corruption in weapons procurement have generated scandals for years, that made him popular with the public and dangerous to many suppliers."
How D.C.'s "humanure" became garden gold
Trump’s plan to paint the Eisenhower could damage the stone — and the law: The administration’s proposal risks harming both the historic building and the system of reviews that protects structures like it. - "Ordinarily, the General Services Administration would have to follow the law and solicit input from experts and the public, but Trump’s lawyers have written a Trojan Horse into this case, claiming the GSA has ceded those responsibilities and requirements to the White House, to which the National Historic Preservation Act and the National Environmental Policy Act do not apply."
Knives are out for Vance in the GOP. His allies say it’s a coordinated ‘op.’: The vice president has faced a barrage of attacks recently that are unusual for their intensity and how early in the political calendar they are taking place. - "Critical posts poured in from prominent commentators including Ben Shapiro, Marc Thiessen and Batya Ungar-Sargon, as well as online right-wing influencers and little-known X users whose anti-Vance posts quickly gained traction. Some of the users who pledged to oppose Vance and support Rubio in 2028 had profiles that strongly suggested they aren’t American voters and are based in other countries." [ed. note: it's the Israelis]
Sunday, May 17, 2026
Tuesday, February 3, 2026
Reading archive 2026-02-02
Minneapolis’ Hotel Workers Are on Edge: Staff across the city told NOTUS how their lives have changed since the start of the federal immigration operation. “It’s frightening,” one said. - "The first woman, a foreign-born naturalized U.S. citizen, resents how her undocumented coworkers spend their days cleaning the rooms of agents who are 'hunting down their family members.'
"'When I see them in the hallways, they avert their gaze,' she said of the federal agents in her hotel. 'They know what they’re doing is shameful. They’re nearly all Hispanic, but they don’t speak Spanish! They’re the children of illegals. But they forgot where they came from.'
"A third woman at yet another hotel, who’s undocumented, said she observed what she called the 'typical' racial labor dynamic: a few polite white supervisors commanding Latino men.
"'The supervisors are respectful. The agents — they aren’t really officers. These are delinquents,' she said.
Thursday, August 28, 2025
Reading archive 2025-08-27
U.S. Transportation Department plans to take over D.C.’s Union Station: Secretary Sean P. Duffy made the announcement hours before the launch of new Acela trains. - "Now Amtrak will run the passenger area while USRC, with the Department of Transportation, will manage the retail." [ed. note: DoT is managing the retail? Are you fucking serious?]
Monday, July 28, 2025
Reading archive 2025-07-28 pt 2
The Worst-Kept Secret of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Trump turned a far-right fantasy—ethnic cleansing in Gaza—into U.S. policy. He needs to reject it. - "One of the more poorly kept secrets of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is that many of those involved would prefer to take all the land and have the other side disappear. A 2011 poll found that two-thirds of Palestinians believed that their real goal should not be a two-state solution, but rather using that arrangement as a prelude to establishing 'one Palestinian state.' A 2016 survey found that nearly half of Israeli Jews agreed that 'Arabs should be expelled or transferred from Israel.' A poll in 2000, conducted during negotiations toward a two-state solution, found that only 47 percent of Israelis and 10 percent of Palestinians supported a school curriculum that would educate students to 'give up aspirations for parts of the 'homeland' which are in the other state.'"
Why China Won’t Stop the Fentanyl Trade: The opioid that kills tens of thousands of Americans every year has become a source of political leverage that Beijing won’t easily give up. - "From one standpoint, China's actions are easy to understand. Its leadership is behaving as many other rational state actors would exploiting the power it possesses over a strategic competitor. But the grisly truth is that, in this case, China's power derives from mass death. Chinese leaders continue to use American lives to forward their political aims, rather than taking the small steps necessary to save them. That choice is one of the starkest demonstrations that the regime's priority of narrow self-interest over the global good won't be changing anytime soon."
A Democrat for the Trump Era: Jasmine Crockett is testing out the coarse style of politics that the GOP has embraced. - "Through her hearing-room quips and social-media insults, she's become known, at least in MSNBC-watching households, as a leading general in the battle against Trump. The president is aware of this. He has repeatedly called Crockett a 'low-IQ' individual; she has dubbed him a 'buffoon' and 'Putin's hoe.' Perhaps the best-known Crockett clapback came last year during a hearing, after Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia made fun of Crockett's fake eyelashes. Crockett, seeming to relish the moment, leaned into the mic and blasted Greene's 'bleach-blond, bad-built, butch body.' Crockett trademarked the phrase which she now refers to as 'B6' and started selling T-shirts."