The World Beyond BetterMost > The Culture Tent
In the New Yorker...
Front-Ranger:
My first thought was that it beats reading about NFTs or hospice profiteering.
I'm a writer and a fan of British sleuths so I enjoyed it. Maybe one of the reasons she wanted to step outside her history beat was so she could include more quotes and conversation, which are liberally sprinkled through the article.
Jeff Wrangler:
--- Quote from: serious crayons on December 03, 2022, 01:31:22 pm ---Has anyone read the Elizabeth Kolbert's climate change A-Z story in the November 28 issue? Interesting structure and I'm sure well researched and informative. But each letter comes with somewhere around half a page of text and overall the article looks very, uh, dutiful. Maybe it's one you can just get in and get out of, though.
--- End quote ---
I'm working on that one now. I'm only through "J." So far it seems so good, but maybe it will start to peter out. I really liked "F," the section about the electric planes. Cape Air wants to buy 75 of them. I think it would be way cool to fly between Boston and Provincetown in one of those planes.
Section "J," which mentions the number of jobs that would be eliminated from the fossil fuel industry vs. the number of jobs that would be created in construction, in the solar industry, and in upgrading the grid, suddenly made me think of something. Those numbers are fine, but if you get down to the level of individual human beings, if you are a coal miner in West Virginia or an off-shore oil rig worker in Louisiana, and you lose your job because of "high electrification," what good does it do you, or your family, if a new job is created in, say, Oregon? I'm not arguing against anything here, only saying that it suddenly occurred to me that necessary changes will also come at a cost of a lot of disruption, dislocation, and even, I think, suffering at the level of the individual.
serious crayons:
Well, I just learned something new. I was stumped by this paragraph in a Nov. 28 Talk of the Town piece.
--- Quote ---The Set is the Related Companies? newest Hudson Yards project, a self-contained bubble within a self-contained bubble. The apartments are tiny (four hundred square feet or so for a studio; six hundred for a one-bedroom), but the amenities are lavish: communal desks, Zoom rooms, concierges, housekeeping, I.V. drips, after-work drinks, fridge stocking, dry cleaning. You can rent a unit for as short as six months. Sarage likes to think of the Set as a five-star hotel crossed with a luxury rental crossed with a techy workplace.
--- End quote ---
I.V. drips?? I thought those were for delivering medicine. But apparently you can also get drips with nutrients as a casual wellness practice, like flotation tanks or reiki or salt rooms. Am I the last to know this? There are a handful in the Minneapolis area.
Jeff Wrangler:
--- Quote from: serious crayons on December 05, 2022, 12:31:08 pm ---Well, I just learned something new. I was stumped by this paragraph in a Nov. 28 Talk of the Town piece.
I.V. drips?? I thought those were for delivering medicine. But apparently you can also get drips with nutrients as a casual wellness practice, like flotation tanks or reiki or salt rooms. Am I the last to know this? There are a handful in the Minneapolis area.
--- End quote ---
That's new to me, too, and I really question it.
serious crayons:
--- Quote from: Jeff Wrangler on December 04, 2022, 03:38:32 pm ---I'm working on that one now. I'm only through "J." So far it seems so good, but maybe it will start to peter out. I really liked "F," the section about the electric planes. Cape Air wants to buy 75 of them. I think it would be way cool to fly between Boston and Provincetown in one of those planes.
--- End quote ---
I'm only at D or so and I see the article isn't just kind of boring factual reporting, but contains more voice and attitude. I hate to say this because I totally understand that climate change is really important, but almost anything on the subject is going to be purely dutiful for me. That said, this piece is engaging so far.
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