In the New Yorker...

[Jeff Wrangler]

I'd have to plead guilty to a few of those! 

As for the midterms, they went amazingly well. The most despicable candidates lost, with the possible exception of Herschel Walker, but my guess (and it's only a guess) is that voters in GA, not wanting to appear the stupidest voters in the country, will reject him.

On the other hand, maybe they'll feel that at least one Trump-backed candidate has to have a big victory! That's not entirely bad either if, as seems possible, the Republican party gets hopelessly divided between the pro- and anti-Trumps. I think a lot of intelligent politicians are backing away from Trump, but there'll still be a "base" full of people who won't want to admit they've been wrong for the past six years.

Not really from the magazine, but I read yesterday online that so are some of his former conservative Christian backers. Others are reserving judgment. They say they will support him if he's the candidate, but for now they're more or less staying on the sidelines and not backing him to become the candidate. This despite the fact that he did, indeed, give them what they wanted (appointed a huge number of conservative judges--not just to SCOTUS--got Roe overturned, and so forth).

One conservative actually called him an awful person.

Ron DeSantis is an awful person, too, but I'd still love to see him beat Trump for the Republican nomination, just for the satisfaction of the seeing the repudiation of Trump personally.

[serious crayons]

I'm not so sure. DeSantis is certainly less of an idiot and loose cannon, but he's sinister in his own way.

[serious crayons]

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.


 

[Jeff Wrangler]

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.

I haven't read that one yet. I skipped ahead to Dec. 5 to read Jill Lepore, only to find myself very disappointed for the first time in anything of hers that I've read. I'm just not interested in a British author of spy novels. I've never heard of him and will no doubt never read his books. She should stick to history.

Take it from a Jill Lepore fan: Skip this one.

[serious crayons]

I haven't read that one yet. I skipped ahead to Dec. 5 to read Jill Lepore, only to find myself very disappointed for the first time in anything of hers that I've read. I'm just not interested in a British author of spy novels. I've never heard of him and will no doubt never read his books. She should stick to history.

Take it from a Jill Lepore fan: Skip this one.

That doesn't sound good! I'll skip it. I don't have my Dec. 5 issue yet, but I haven't been to my mailbox for a day or two.
 

[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]

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.

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.

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.

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]

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.

That's new to me, too, and I really question it.

[serious crayons]

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.

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.