The many nostalgias of Harry Potter
I had pre-ordered the illustrated version of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, which arrived this week (more on that later!) and made me think about the layers of feelings related to this … w…
Commentary
64 posts
(Untitled)
TIL (thanks to Ed West) Alexander Kerensky, the leader of the Provisional Government in 1917, was born in 1881 and lived until 1970, having escaped Russia following the Bolshevik takeover. He died in…
Obsolescence
My Powerbeats headphones broke apart today. I wanted to get a replacement, but I found it isn't made any more. I looked for the closest equivalent and didn't find one 1. I found this compar…
What's in a name
Three years ago, the New York Times published this article. It was about "the fourth spy" at Los Alamos (in addition to the previously known ones, Klaus Fuchs, Theodore Hall, and David Gree…
Long 90s
While I was browsing the selection of streaming movies recently, and looking at the year each was made, I realized that in some subjective sense the kind of movies changed around 2011-13. For example…
On Citizenship, and the Republic
I was reflecting on a process which began fifteen odd years ago and recently came to a conclusion. There is a mixture of feelings about what constitutes “America”. On one hand, I feel a broad agreem…
Hyper-tapping
There is a bewildering variety of niches in the world. Competitive Tetris play is one of them. Reading through an article like this one makes me giddy. Almost all players at the time maneuvered piec…
Egregore
I've been "on the internet" for about two-and-a-half decades now, and ... I like to think that I've seen it all. Still, these are strange times. Neologisms abound. Confusion reigns.…
Costs of war
Amid the recent spate of numbers being thrown around (a few hundred million dollars for these weapons, forty billion dollars for some more stuff), I was casting around for "how to put these numbe…
Resisting the virtual life
A book from the 1990s on "resisting the virtual life". An endorsement of sorts: "At last, a defiant radical critique of the information millenium. . .. A burning barricade across the…
On catastrophe
From the blurb of a book by John David Ebert Disasters, both natural and man-made, are on the rise. Indeed, a catastrophe of one sort or another seems always to be unfolding somewhere on the planet.…
The solid world
Interview with Bertrand Russell, from 1952 Interesting perspective on the changes felt in the world, speaking a century ago, about the century before that. The contrast, or irony, or whatever the fe…