Elena Reitman

✽ We're stuck at home, but we belong out there: The Nordic concept of friluftsliv (open-air-living) has me out in the rain. Else, the interior junk gains ground.

✽ Sounds of the forest from around the world

✽ Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith 🎵 set

✽ Martha Nussbaum's Powerlessness and the Politics of Blame Jefferson Lecture: "Anger is a poison to democratic politics, and it is all the worse when fueled by a lurking fear and a sense of helplessness. Taming anger is an antidote we'll have to take to reduce the risk of Trump 2.0 in 2024. And, to demand folks who represent us find common ground with opponents using rational faith and realistic negotiations. Nussbaum mentions how The Furies needed Athena's persuasion: to "Lull to repose the bitter force of your black wave of anger.” Athena gives them the incentives of honor and respect from Athen's citizens if they tone it down and learn to replace their feelings of retribution with kindness. It's what Dave Chappelle, who I count among the oracles, pushes us toward, too.

✽ Chekhov poet of loneliness: "Dramas misrepresent the world precisely because they are dramatic, but the really significant events are the small ones we barely notice, the kindnesses we forget to extend, the attention we do not pay, the opportunities we miss, and the inevitable waste that our omissions entail."

✽ Oxford Comma Doctrine inspired by Mary Norris

Choose to use it or not and don't make it a moral issue. Judge each series on its merits, applying the comma where it's needed and holding it back where it's not. For anything that needs to be read fast or text needs to be streamlined to save time and space (like in newspapers and in UI), don't use it.

✽ Made the switch to Shampoo bars

✽ I ♥️ Japanese mundane halloween costumes

✽ Everyone has views persuaded by identity over pure analysis and we’re all biased to our own personal history: "Your personal experiences make up maybe 0.00000001% of what’s happened in the world but maybe 80% of how you think the world works."

✽ Martha Nussbaum profile, an exceptionally smart person writing in an accessible style: "People are inclined to be selfish and narrow in their sympathies. To get them to endorse any political project involving sacrifices of personal self-interest (redistributive taxation, support for national defense) they need to be summoned outside themselves by some sort of sustaining emotion."

✽ Handmade Linen clothes worth the wait

✽ Annie Dillard “Total Eclipse" full essay in the Atlantic

✽ Women in Econ series, Christina Romer episode is a good one for our current economic state.

✽ New Covid strain may be more contagious: "While the jury's still out on whether this variant is more transmissible in the real world, it still can be neutralized by antibodies against all the vaccine candidates. It's not mutating into something more dangerous or pathogenic. It's behaving like a normal virus."

✽ Daily Stoic: I signed up for the daily emails. On days I start the day reading them, I'm ~20% more focused. It takes some work to put aside the occasional plug for super mushroom miracle coffee and Ryan Holiday’s books. And....that Holiday is the former marketing director of oversexed American Apparel and wealthy enough to turn passion projects into a full-time gig. 😬