I'm way behind on sharing these.  I know you guys have been waiting.  Here they are!  

Writers have rituals.  But what exactly constitutes a ritual in this case?  

Pretty...

I am reading William Hazlitt’s Lectures on the English Comic Writers, in the old Oxford “World’s Classics” series—which I bought for £1.99 in a charity shop here in Oxford, which was quite a bargain for this amazing work—and I come across this:

Anything is sufficient to keep contempt upon an object; even the bare suggestion of a mischievous allusion to what is improper, dissolves the whole charm, and puts an end to our...

Fiona Hill—remember her from the Ukraine hearings?  Seems like a million years ago, doesn’t it?—on expertise.  She’s just as impressive here.   

How is the internet shaping us?  Why is outrage so common on-line?  A...

Presidents don’t just execute policy, or design plans, or haggle with legislators, and oversee and manage a large bureaucracy.  They also present, in a way, as the first human among us—the one who will register reality in their body, on their face, in the tone of their voice.  They incarnate the nation, in a way.  That is part of the magic of their charisma, and it can never be reduced to a bureaucratic algorithm.  It is foolish to imagine a candidate for president will not be judged as a person.  It’s part of why presidential elections can so easily feel...

It's a Friday.  I'm feeling generous!  Here, plebs, have some links.  (I sprinkle them to you, from my chariot, as I pass by.)

Helpful piece, for non-scientists, on how to read a scientific paper.

Basically, Gen X is still falling between the cracks here, but Millennials and Gen Z are doing...

This is framed as being about norms in the media, but in fact it applies to public life, and public debates, more broadly.  Everyone has things that are taken for granted; everyone has things that are plausibly contested, and everyone has things that they think are simply abhorrent, and the boundaries separating...

A moderately powerful argument for recommitting to the common aim of supporting public higher education in the United States.   

Thomas Piketty...

A small observation:

Why has Marc Bloch’s Strange Defeat—written in 1940-41 about the Fall of France before the Germans--become an object of especially charged interest, in thinking about the current status of France in Europe?  This article identifies this moment—it’s quite interesting; Bloch was a medievalist and one of the founders of...

I was reading around in the news today, I'm noticing the number of places where people are beginning to act as if everything is going back to normal, and so I wrote the below and shared it with people.

Just a thought:

I think we're seeing, around the world, people decide, "ok, that's it. this pandemic is over." And more and more people emerge out into ever-closer approximations of "before" behavior. Thus the structural efforts at opening restaurants, shops, etc., are inviting us to imagine the danger has passed, and we are...

Just some links today.  Don't get too excited. 

The artefact we studied, which comes from deposits dated to more than 60,000 years ago, closely resembles thousands of bone arrowheads used by the indigenous San hunter-gatherers from the 18th to the 20th centuries. It was excavated in the 1960s, but its importance was not recognised until recently, owing to confusion surrounding its age.