Tips for surviving the now and seeing the big picture:

An article about “one of the oldest political frontiers in the world,” the foothills of the Zagros mountains.  For five thousand years the border separating present-day Iraq and present-day Iran has been here.  There’s even a new “discovery” of a wall there—the Gawri Chen wall—though presumably for the people living there, it was no...

The story of the “Florentine Codex,” one of the few documents saving a remembrance of pre-Columbian Aztec life; it was written in the midst of plague in Mexico City in the late 16th century.  An inspiration for people today, writing Coronavirus diaries, or Coronavirus...

Here's a just-so story: Liberalism emerged when bourgeois economics enabled (some) individuals to have enough material wealth, and thus power, to stand up to the state and its staff, which mostly meant in early modern Europe, a struggle between the nobility and the Bourgeoisie.  Liberalism was about securing "freedom," and the main danger was the state.  There was always subsidiary attention to other forms of consolidated institutional power, but the centrality of the state was always granted.  Perhaps now we have to reconceive the dangers, to see corporate power...

This is interesting:

any critic who wants to write something lasting—who believes that criticism can be a species of literature—must write partly out of aggression. Or perhaps a better word is animus, in the sense of a fixed intention, a partiality.

Must animus be mean, though?  That's another question.  What would it mean to have an edge, but not be mean?...

The coronavirus as a “global event.”  This seems intelligent to me, but a bit underbaked.  The author doesn’t really explore what it means to be a “global” event.  Here’s one feature I wish he had spoken about: the right context for this event is now the globe, not really anything smaller than that.  There are local differences, but the differences in national...

A set of things to take your mind off of the One Thing:

How can we protect the American prairie?  It's an amazing place, and deserves our protection.  This piece suggests some small steps...

Sunnyshine day, where I am today, but we cannot go outside, except on one walk.  It'll be a beautiful day...

Vladimir Putin seems to think the Coronavirus is good news for him.  I suspect...

At about 11 PM on election night in 2016, I got the first message from a Bernie fan that would stick with me until today:

"Bernie would have won."

It seemed, to say the least, a bit...

Pertinent for obvious reasons.

Do we have it within us to believe in a future that is inhabitable, let alone better than today?  Dystopianism today seems all-too prevalent. Yet if we do not find...

People have been "social distancing" me for most of my life.  I assume it's because I exude information like the below from my pores.  So I guess: be like me!  You'll be safe. ;) 

Using...