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 new New York Times podcast explores these questions.

A small piece explaining the value of Samuel Johnson, to celebrate the completion of the Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson, begun in 1955 and only completed in 2019.   

Donna Tartt, on her dealings with the novelist Charles Portis, of True Grit fame.  A wonderful retelling.  

Albert Memmi has died.  An important but complicated voice in the anti-colonial movement of the mid-twentieth century, and the post-colonial world that followed it.  This is a nice assessment of the complications of his life and thought; in a refusal to appeal to an apocalyptic energy, he strikes me as more similar to Camus than Sartre or Fanon.  (His essay on Frantz Fanon is deeply untimely right now, but for that reason worth reading, as well.)

A pretty good brief overview of the changing shape of religion clause jurisprudence at the Supreme Court over the past decade or more: 

in the last decade, the reversal of power between religious and secular sides of American culture created a new self-perception among Christians as a distinct minority group. More importantly for legal proceedings, this led to a new strategy: They argue that they are now the minority group whose rights demand protection under the Constitution.

We’ve long wondered if asteroids brought life to the planet earth, or if not life, some of the building blocks of life.  New research suggests this is true.  And another study suggests “micrometeoroids” could have brought water to earth as well.  Worth your while to ponder.

Be well!  Good luck this week.