Boys, Suburbia, and Repair

“Larry Ellison’s Half-Billion-Dollar Quest to Change Farming Has Been a Bust.” Tom Dotan reports on one tech titan’s efforts to remake agriculture from his base on an Hawaiian island: “Little of the revolutionary tech the company has extolled—sensors to monitor development, artificial intelligence to breed crop varieties and robots to harvest plants—is being used, according to people familiar with Sensei. The company has been beset by problems typical to tech startups, including executive changeovers, shifting goals and bad Wi-Fi. It has also stumbled from farming inexperience. . . . One person familiar with the operations described the output as like being promised a Bugatti—and ending up with a Yugo.” (Recommended by Tony Woodlief.)

“Building the Sow Shed.” Brian Miller offers some life advice in this essay for Plough: “Forget taking the magazine quiz ‘Are you and your mate a good match?’ I suggest instead that you and your beloved go outside and build a sow shed together in the freezing rain, as it coats the tools, the wood, the metal roofing, and both of you in a thin layer of ice. That should determine pretty quickly your compatibility and the mettle of your relationship. Trust me, I know.”

“Passing On the Farm to My Daughter.” James Rebanks describes his efforts to release his control over the farm and give his daughter room to take the lead: “I no longer want to be the kind of patriarch my grandfather was. I don’t need, or want, to rule my world like that. I have finally come to see such authority as limiting and more than a little selfish. It is retained only by being clutched tight and denied to others, and it makes everyone around the patriarch smaller and less fulfilled. A little late I’ve learned that the wise empower those around them, giving away their knowledge and authority to make the next generation more effective.”

“Lost Boys.” The Centre for Social Justice released a grim report on the state of young men in Britain: “Boys are struggling in education, more likely to take their own lives, less likely to get into stable work, and far more likely to be caught up in crime. The numbers don’t lie—something has shifted, and we cannot ignore it any longer. It’s not just about Andrew Tate or online influencers; they are the symptoms, not the cause. The deeper truth is that too many boys are growing up without the guidance, discipline, and purpose they need to thrive.”

“Make Suburbia Weird.” Clare Coffey imagines what suburbia could be if it were a site for independent production rather than private consumption: “I’d plant cherries and apples and mulberries and persimmons behind the shed and along the driveway. I’d put a still in the basement. No one’s doing small batch applejack the way I’d do it. And mulberry brandy — you’d have to work on it, couldn’t expect it to be like the one in Armenia right off the bat. I’d experiment with building the perfect rabbitry. The rabbitry problem has not yet been solved. Rabbit burgers — Americans could eat rabbit burgers if you went at it the right way. I’d set up a butchering station in the garage. I’d put up some fencing. How many chickens could I run on half an acre?”

“Go Slow and Repair Things.” Elizabeth Stice finds a vision of good work and cooperation in a Balzac novel: “Though fiction, The Wrong Side of Paris offers some guidelines for what ‘go slow and repair things’ might look like. The members of this ‘order’ live very simply. They do not indulge in luxuries or personal ambition. Their lives are governed by religious rhythms and animated by a Christian understanding of charity. They live by the motto ‘transire benefaciendo,’ which means ‘to travel along while doing good.’”

“I Used to Teach Students. Now I Catch ChatGPT Cheats.” Troy Jollimore voices his frustrations with teaching ethics in a context where his students want to offload thinking to a computer: “That moment, when you start to understand the power of clear thinking, is crucial. The trouble with generative AI is that it short-circuits that process entirely. One begins to suspect that a great many students wanted this all along: to make it through college unaltered, unscathed. To be precisely the same person at graduation, and after, as they were on the first day they arrived on campus. As if the whole experience had never really happened at all.”