Must Read

• Derrick Jensen, Beyond Hope

PEOPLE SOMETIMES ASK ME, “If things are so bad, why don’t you just kill yourself?” The answer is that life is really, really good. I am a complex enough being that I can hold in my heart the understanding that we are really, really fucked, and at the same time that life is really, really good. I am full of rage, sorrow, joy, love, hate, despair, happiness, satisfaction, dissatisfaction, and a thousand other feelings. We are really fucked. Life is still really good.

Related

• Sarah Kobos, Want Community? Build Walkability.
• Mass Energy, Switch to Clean Electricity Today  [Ed: Energy from renewables not ‘greenwashing’ of conventional sources.  For those of us who live in MA and are pro-environment/anti-global-warming it’s a good opportunity to put our money where our mouths are.  It will probably cost you an extra $20-40/month.]

Should Read

• Frederik Hewett, Dirty Water: Good And Bad News About The Future Of The Charles River
• Sam Richards, Drones: Law Enforcement’s Secret Eye In The Sky
• Samuel Oakford (NYT), Saudi Arabia Kills Civilians, U.S. Looks the Other Way [Ed.: Daniel Larison has been on this for months – see here, here, here, here and here – but it’s good to see a major news outlet paying attention. ]
• Andrea Germanos, Stiglitz Blasts ‘Outrageous’ TPP as Obama Campaigns for Corporate-Friendly Deal [Ed.:  More on the TPP here.]
• Chris Dillow, Capitalism, neoliberalism & excellence
• Aaron Carroll (NYT), The EpiPen, a Case Study in Health System Dysfunction
• Charlie Pierce, What I Learned from Watching a Week’s Worth of Olympic Ads [Ed.:  A must read if you live in MA.]

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Must Read

• James Kwak, The Difficult Math of American Health Care
• Strong Towns, Suburban Poverty
• Sean McFate, America’s Addiction to Mercenaries
• Matt Taibbi, The Summer of the Shill

Should Read

• Danielle Brian, Preventing the Next Watergate
• Justin Fox, Where Median Incomes Have Fallen the Most
• Margot Sanger-Katz (NYT), Think Your Obamacare Plan Will Be Like Employer Coverage? Think Again
• Robert Reich, Aetna Shows Why We Need a Single Payer
• Bill McKibben, A World at War [Ed.:  From a technical standpoint it’s winnable but I think we’ll lose for essentially the reasons McKibben cites. We should fight but we need to be prepared to adapt if we lose.  Observe.  Orient.  Decide.  Act.]
• Chris Dillow, Uber vs Co-ops
• Charlie Pierce, The Simplistic Reductionism That Sees Only Good or Evil

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Must Read

• Chris Dillow, My Socialism
• Rebecca Solnit, The Ideology of Isolation
• Tom Sullivan, Outwit. Outlast. Outplay. Outorganize.

Should Read

• James Surowiecki, The Perils of Executive Action
• Alex Green, A History Of Violence: Donald Trump’s Dangerous Innuendo
• Chris Arnade, What do Donald Trump voters really crave? Respect
• Mike the Mad Biologist, The Swing Voter That We Need To Get
• Bob Oakes,  Bedford Gold Star Mother: Trump ‘Doesn’t Understand’
• Paul Kingsnorth, What Is This?

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Must Read

• John Holbo, Pre and Post-Scarcity Ecotheonomics

Worth Reading

• Andrew Gelman, Fish cannot carry p-values
• Menno Schilthuizen (NYT), Evolution Is Happening Faster Than We Thought
• David Roberts, Utilities for dummies
• David Roberts, Why wind and solar power are such a challenge for energy grids
• Charlie Pierce, This Isn’t About a Revolution. It’s About Voting Rights and Clean Water.
• Harold Meyerson, The Sighted and The Blinkered

Summer break for The Weekly Digest.  It’ll be back in two weeks.

Must Read

• Matthew Stanley, Why should physicists study history?
• Corey Robin, Check Your Amnesia, Dude: On the Vox Generation of Punditry
• Samantha Page, New Gas Infrastructure Is Going To Completely Undermine U.S. Climate Goals

Should Read

• Robert Reich on Facebook:

Kaine is the perfect VP choice if you view this election as between traditional (mostly northern and urban) liberals and traditional (mostly southern) conservatives. But Kaine adds nothing to the ticket if you view this election as between anti-establishment outsiders who have been on the losing end of the economy, and establishment insiders who comprise the powerful and privileged. In fact, because Kaine is a big supporter of the Trans Pacific Partnership and of Wall Street, he’ll make it harder to lure Bernie supporters to Hillary.

[Ed.:  Three guesses as to how I view this election.   Dumpster Fire 2016:  Survive ‘Til 2024.  Unfortunately, 2020 won’t be any better because even if HRC boots it during her first term few within party will have the guts to back a primary challenge.  Sure, I’ve been on the winning end so far but it doesn’t take much imagination to see how I could end up on the losing end.]

[Ed.:  Late addition – more from Reich.]

• Dani Rodrik, The Abdication of the Left [Ed.:  Related]
• Cedric Johnson, Ending the Violence

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Must Read

• Kenneth Burke, Waste – The Future of Prosperity [Ed.:  From 1930]
• Chris Dillow, Cognitive biases, ideology & control
• Bernie Sanders (NYT), Democrats Need to Wake Up

Should Read

• Colin Dwyer, Pope Francis: Church Should Apologize To Gays And Other Marginalized Groups
• Neta Crawford,  Are We Safer? Measuring The Costs Of America’s Unending Wars
• Jared Bernstein, Getting straight about the costs of trade
• Chris Dillow, Control: beyond left and right
• Corey Robin, Why Clinton’s New Tuition-Free Higher Ed Plan Matters
• Karl Polanyi [Ed.:  I haven’t read any of Polanyi’s work.  I should.]
• Rev. John Gibbons and Chief Robert Bongiorno – an email exchange

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Taking the weekend off.  Check back tomorrow Tuesday night.  Digest will be back next week.

Happy 4th of July!

“Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.”

-Mark Twain

Must Read

• Justin Miller, The Subtle Force of Tom Perez [Ed.:  He’s being talked about as a potential VP nominee.  If you’re not familiar with him – I wasn’t – this is a good backgrounder.]
• Steve Randy Waldman, Attributions of Causality
• Charlie Pierce, Gutless Politicians Blocked a Bipartisan Gun Bill. But Who’s Surprised? (Out on the weekend, where we’ll be reading quite a lot of Michael Herr’s work.)

Should Read

• Daniel Costa, Supreme Court immigration decision means millions of workers will be deprived of crucial labor protections
• Chris Arnade, TARP:  A Love Story
• Mark Zdechlik, Minnesota’s Largest Health Insurer Will Drop Individual Plans [Ed.: An entirely foreseeable outcome given that the ACA is what it is.  Single-payer, anyone?  Single payer isn’t just about access to health care.  It’s also about cost control.]
• Daniel Larison, Endangered Hawks

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Must Read/Watch

• Elisabetta Povoledo (NYT), Christo’s Newest Project: Walking on Water
• Inspired by a Wheaties box we had out for breakfast last week:  People of a certain age may remember hurdler Edwin Moses. He was amazing – won 122 races in a row at one point.  (He was also a math and physics major in college who attended on an academic scholarship – a true student-athlete.)  YouTube won’t let me post the video here but you should watch him win gold and set a new world record in the 400 m hurdles at the 1976 Montreal Olympics.

Should Read

• Henry Farrell, The Sandworm Solution [Related reading:  Steve Randy Waldman, Your Theory of Politics is Wrong]
• Atul Gawande, The Mistrust of Science
• Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Corporate Capture of the Rulemaking Process

Continue reading →