“In Defiance of All Powers.” Peter Mommsen introduces Plough’s new issue on Freedom. It looks quite promising, but my physical copy hasn’t arrived yet, so I’m exercising restraint: “as my teenage son is now tired of hearing because he just wants to go fishing, freedom to play the violin comes from commitment. It is won through submitting oneself to what may initially seem like freedom’s opposite: lessons, practice, discipline. The renowned conductor Serge Koussevitzky, though he was remembered by his protégé Leonard Bernstein as ‘a very kind, gentle man,’ used to tell players, ‘You must suffer. Why don’t you suffer more? Only then will the music be beautiful.’”
“Productivity Is a Drag. Work Is Divine.” Sara Tillinger Wolkenfeld distinguishes among different types of work and explains why we shouldn’t cede all work to machines: “Jewish tradition says nothing of ChatGPT, but it is adamant about work. According to the ancient rabbis, meaningful, creative labor is how humans channel the divine. It’s an idea that can help us all, regardless of our faith, be discerning adopters of new applications and devices in a time of great technological change.”
“The People Who Rage Against the Machine.” Suzy Weiss hangs out with the Doomer Optimists at the Wagon Box. What’s doomer optimism? “It appeared to be many things, all at once. There were homesteaders; there were doomsday preppers. A long-haul trucker, a radiologist, law students, veterans, activists, ecologists, minor Twitter celebs, and a self-described ‘would-be professional cell tower toppler.’ A digital artist couple and a venture capitalist couple and a traditionalist Catholic couple.”
“A Vision for Repair.” Bonnie Kristian speaks in favor of repair: “Mending may be visible—an embroidery of flowers over moth-eaten holes instead of a seamless weave. To oppose the tendency against repair is not to reject everything new, prescribe a universal solution, or deny the reality of brokenness. It is rather to have a bias toward the restoration of good things. It is a tendency toward repair over replacement, resolve over resignation, conservation over chaos, staying over leaving, and building up over tearing down.”
“Words for Conviviality.” I sketch part of the argument in my new book for Current: “Using powerful verbal tools in a convivial manner requires shifting away from the industrial mode or the device paradigm and taking up verbal work in the more disciplined manner of those who engage in focal practices. . . . While the device paradigm situates persons as passive consumers who simply have to master a technique or purchase a machine to achieve their desired outcome, convivial modes of engagement require disciplined, skillful persons and, in turn, enable these people to exercise freedom and responsibility as they deepen their relationships with one another and the world.”
“Impossible Burger Maker Drives Rival out of Business with “incredibly bitter” Lawsuit.” Jonathan Matthews describes the dangers of manufactured proteins: “new evidence has emerged confirming that ‘precision fermentation’ as a means of mass food production would also be disastrous for efforts to break free from fossil energy. Factory-scale data show that the real figure for how much electricity is needed to generate the precision-fermented food Monbiot champions is nearly four times greater than Monbiot claimed in Regenesis, making it a complete non-starter for feeding the world. But even if that weren’t the case, the anti-competitive behaviour of Impossible Foods in shutting down an emerging rival bears witness to the kind of corporate padlock on our food chain that Monbiot’s ‘Counter Agricultural Revolution’ would lock into place.”
“College Students Not Reading Is an Issue, So Teachers Are Adjusting How Classes Look.” Marie-Rose Sheinerman talks with teachers who are trying out different approaches to the problem of students not reading long or difficult texts assigned for class: “[Jennifer] Frey feels that the core ingredient in fostering a commitment to reading in her classes is creating a culture around the practice. That starts with professors actively helping students “understand what’s at stake,” she says. ‘The biggest problem that students have is a problem of imagination. They’re just not sure how they can do this. You have to help them imagine themselves getting it done.’”
“You Can Turn Off the News and Still Be a Good Citizen.” In this story for Christianity Today, Harvest Prude talked to some people, including yours truly, about how to handle the influx of news during an election cycle: “Ultimately, Christians interested in news should proceed with discernment, while others should not feel guilty for taking several steps back.”
“The Author’s Corner with Jeremy Beer.” Jeremy Beer’s new book is out, and it looks fascinating. His conversation with John Fea gives a taste: “Although he is utterly obscure outside the specialized field of Borderlands Studies, Francisco Garcés was one of the most courageous—and likeable—pathfinders in the history of the American continent. His unparalleled journeys played a key role in the Spanish settlement of California, provided us with precious ethnological data, and anticipated a more humane and effective missionary methodology.”
“Roads, Dead Ends, and Endings.” Nadya Williams goes to Maine and reflects on the brilliant Sarah Orne Jewett: “As she sits in the schoolhouse watching the town’s life pass by her, she gradually realizes that the distractions of friendships are the point of life; words composed apart from the love of people and places are sterile. A stranger to the region, she finds herself slowly falling in love with these strange and wild people and writing portraits of their lives. It is the people of this place, inseparable from each other, who ultimately inspire her to break through the writer’s block that brought her here.”
“The Supreme Contradictions of Simone Weil.” This isn’t the most sympathetic treatment of Weil, but Judith Thurman’s consideration of a new edition of Weil’s letters for the New Yorker is still worth reading: “The ability to see what others couldn’t was a gift of Weil’s supreme intelligence, and also probably of what Elizabeth Hardwick calls her ‘spectacular and in many ways exemplary abnormality.’”
“New App Lets You Interact With Millions of AI Bot Profiles.” Andrew Hutchinson reports on a new social media platform that embeds you in a virtual world of AI bots. Sounds like the panacea to all our woes: “Are you sick of posting updates to social media platforms only to get zero response? This could be the answer, with a new platform entirely populated by AI bots, which will each reply to your updates with relevant, contextual replies and info.”
