Volunteering, Urban Farms, and Grocery Stores
We’ve now posted the FPR conference schedule. Based on feedback from recent conferences, we've built a bit more elbow room into the schedule to...
Contrary U, New Verse Review, and Vinyl Records
“Captive Users.” Alexander Stern pens a thoughtful review essay that puts Cory Doctorow’s The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation in...
Nisbet, Fact-Checking, and Leopold
“Robert Nisbet for the Present Age.” Kirstin Birkhaug describes the experience of teaching Robert Nisbet’s The Present Age and watching her students respond to...
Wendell Berry, the Pioneer Fire, and Idols
“‘Your Friend, Wendell’: A 90th Birthday Tribute to Wendell Berry.” To mark Wendell Berry’s 90th birthday, The Library of America published a set of...
Motherhood, Rural Decline, and Phoenix
I’ll be logging off the internet for a few weeks and thus pausing these Water Dippers. I aim to resume them in early August....
Maurin, Partisanship, and Myth
"Ideas and Historical Consequences." Mars Hill Audio released the full version of an old interview with John Lukacs. FPR readers can up for a...
Math, Antitrust, and Work
“Computers Can’t Do Math.” David Schaengold has a clear and provocative essay on the differences between computer “thinking” and human thinking: “we can be...
COVID, ChatGPT, and PFAS
“The Cultural Roots of Our Demographic Ennui.” Patrick Brown argues that affluence—what regular FPR contributor John de Graaf labeled “affluenza”—lies behind many of our...
Lobsters, Resilience, and Scouting
“DIY.” Bud Smith details the joys of fixing anything that’s broken with the help of the Internet: “YouTube has all the right answers and...
Patriotism, Realtors, and Men
“The Big AI Risk Not Enough People Are Seeing.” Tyler Austin Harper draws on Ivan Illich to distinguish between technologies that empower us and...