The Equalizer & Seniors’ Minigolf

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The Equalizer

Washington Post • 8 Oct 2024 • ~7400 words • Archive Link

In a journey through the National Archives, Sarah Vowell explores the vital role of archivist Pamela Wright in making federal records accessible to all Americans. With an emphasis on digital innovation and community engagement, Wright’s efforts reveal how personal histories are intertwined with the nation’s narrative. This piece also delves into the significance of the National Archives in preserving and democratizing access to the country's historical records, and the potential impact of this work on citizens' connection to their government and national narrative.

The Archives’ preservation and presentation of the nation’s paper trail is impersonal, nonpartisan, and full of delights and dismay. There’s a photo of Jesse Owens at the Berlin Olympics, both feet in the air. There’s Alexander Graham Bell’s patent for the telephone. There’s Frank Sinatra’s worst recording, singing “America the Beautiful” with Nancy Reagan on the White House lawn. There’s Bay Area sculptor Ruth Asawa twice: in records about Japanese internment camps (where she was incarcerated as a teenager) and, after she had moved past that to become the stubborn genius who conjured beauty out of wire and air, as an adviser to the National Endowment for the Arts in the 1970s. And there are the 2020 electoral college results, in which NARA’s Office of the Federal Register flagged what was supposed to be the most newsworthy development of certifying that year’s general election: For the first time, both Maine and Nebraska split their votes.

‘Not here to come third’: the world’s senior minigolfers get serious

Financial Times • 5 Oct 2024 • ~4600 words

At the Seniors’ Minigolf World Championships, competitors over 45 gather to showcase their skills and dedication to a sport often overlooked. This piece captures the unique culture of senior minigolfers, highlighting their intense training, camaraderie, and the quirks that come with this niche competition. Through vivid descriptions and personal anecdotes, the article reveals the passion that drives these competitors, making you reconsider the seriousness of a game that many see as just a pastime. It’s also beautifully written, with the humor and lightheartedness it deserves.

These calls could also be a plea to the ball. “Ah ah ah ah . . . ” or “Kommmmm!” begging the little thing to just find the hole, for God’s sake, as it makes its second, third rebound across the basin. “The mind moves the mass,” said the ancient poet Virgil, himself thought to have been from around these parts.

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Thousands of shipping containers have been lost at sea. What happens when they burst open?

AP News • 3 Oct 2024 • ~2400 words • Archive Link

Every year, millions of shipping containers traverse the oceans, but many never reach their destination. This article explores the environmental and logistical fallout of the thousands of containers lost at sea, including the hidden dangers they pose to marine and human life. With insights from marine biologists and industry experts, it sheds light on a largely overlooked aspect of global trade.

More than 20,000 shipping containers have tumbled overboard in the last decade and a half. Their varied contents have washed onto shorelines, poisoned fisheries and animal habitats, and added to swirling ocean trash vortexes. Most containers eventually sink to the sea floor and are never retrieved.

Has Bitcoin’s Elusive Creator Finally Been Unmasked?

The New Yorker • 9 Oct 2024 • ~5550 words • Archive Link

The mystery of Bitcoin's creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, continues to intrigue and baffle enthusiasts and skeptics alike. This piece explored how filmmaker Alex Hoback delved into the circumstantial evidence that points to a possible connection between Satoshi and Bitcoin developer Peter Todd, while also acknowledging the challenges and limitations in definitively unmasking Satoshi's true identity. The article raises intriguing questions about the potential implications if Satoshi's identity were to be revealed, and the complex dynamics within the Bitcoin community surrounding this long-standing enigma.

I reached out to Todd with the expectation that his replies would be slippery. For the most part, however, his tone was sober. He wrote, “For the record, I am not Satoshi. It’s a useless question, because Satoshi would simply deny it. Which has led to myself and others making fun of this attribution nonsense on multiple occasions.” He continued, more brightly, with a historical analogy: “Asking this question would be like someone in 1895 going around asking people ‘Did you write the Federalist papers?’ ”

The Modern Monetary Trick

redsails.org • 8 Oct 2024 • ~7950 words

This piece (originally published elsewhere in 2021) provides a critical analysis of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), a popular economic framework among some leftist circles. It examines the theoretical foundations of MMT, its practical implications, and the underlying motivations behind it. The article raises three key questions: What is the basis of MMT? Can governments run permanent budget deficits without consequences? Finally, what is the ultimate aim of MMT?

It seems that MMT eventually just boils down to offering a theory to justify unrestricted government spending to sustain and/or restore full employment. That’s its task, and no other. This is why it attracts support in the reformist left of the labour movement. But this apparent virtue of MMT hides its much greater vice as an obstacle for real change. MMT says nothing about why there are convulsions in capitalist accumulation. It has no policy for radical change in the social structure.

Palpable Knowledge Of Things: A Meditation

3 Quarks Daily • 8 Oct 2024 • ~2350 words

This piece explores the embodied, tactile knowledge that comes from physical work and the use of tools. It examines how hands shape our understanding of the world and how the resistance of physical things teaches us lessons beyond what can be learned otherwise. The article ponders the nature of mastery and the relationship between the body, mind, and the material world.

For the experienced hand, it isn’t just a matter of perceiving success or finding fault. These are experiences felt and conducted bodily. Sociologist and photographer Douglas A. Harper observed how a car mechanic with “detailed working knowledge of materials . . . develops precisely the kind of tactile, empirical connection that leads to smoothly working rhythms, appropriate power and torque, and the interpretation of sounds and subtle physical sensations.”

Do U.S. Ports Need More Automation?

Construction Physics • 8 Oct 2024 • ~2850 words

As discussions around port efficiency heat up after recent strikes in the U.S., this article dives into the complexities of automation in U.S. ports. While many assume that increased automation is the key to solving productivity issues, the reality is more nuanced. The author explores how various factors, from operational practices to global competition, play a significant role in port performance. This piece challenges the conventional narrative and invites readers to reconsider the true impact of automation.

The ports that have adopted automation aren’t necessarily particularly efficient. Rotterdam was one of the first ports to automate (its first automated terminal opened in 1993), and today it’s one of the most heavily automated ports in the world, but its port performance ranking is just #91, one point above the comparatively less automated New York, and far below the un-automated ports of Charleston and Philadelphia (#53 and #55 respectively). Likewise, the U.S.’s most automated port, Los Angeles, comes in very close to the bottom of the worldwide rankings, while the top two ports on the list (Yangshan in China and Salalah in Oman) have just one and zero automated terminals, respectively.

On the Environmental and Philosophical Factors Behind Literary Creation

Literary Hub • 7 Oct 2024 • ~2050 words

What does it mean to inhabit a writer’s space? This piece explores whether it is a physical place, a mental space, or something more metaphysical. It delves into the historical and cultural significance of the spaces where writers create, and the mystique and reverence often associated with these spaces. The article also asks questions about the factors that shape a writer's creative environment and influence their work.

Somehow it was thought that by entering these spaces, the key to unlocking the secret of literary creation could be had, and that by inhaling the very atmosphere that celebrated authors once breathed, one could, by a strange alchemy or osmosis, absorb the essence that animated the writer’s imagination and made possible the realization of native talent.

De-Extinction and the Resurrection of the Woolly Mammoth

The Garden of Forking Paths • 7 Oct 2024 • ~3950 words

This piece explores the emerging field of de-extinction - the revival of extinct species. It delves into the scientific, ethical, and ecological implications of potentially resurrecting the woolly mammoth, highlighting both the potential benefits and significant risks involved. The article grapples with the fundamental question of whether humans should pursue such ambitious technological feats, given the complex and unpredictable consequences that could arise from tampering with natural systems.

But the most serious problems aren’t technical, nor are they about our attitudes toward living species. Instead, the worries that give me pause, the ones that make me tempted to side with 2015 Shapiro over 2024 Shapiro, aren’t about the science. They’re about the ethics—and the vast, impossible thickets of unknowns that emerge when humanity begins to tamper with unimaginably complex natural systems that we only partly understand.

The K-Pop King

The New Yorker • 5 Oct 2024 • ~6650 words • Archive Link

In an interesting look at the evolution of K-pop, The New Yorker explores how Bang Si-hyuk, the mastermind behind BTS, is now setting his sights on the American music scene. The article delves into his unique approach to idol creation and fan engagement, highlighting the cultural exchanges and challenges he faces along the way. With a new girl group, Katseye, on the horizon, Bang's strategies aspire to reshape the landscape of pop music in the West.

Before Braun joined hybe, Bang barely interacted with American music executives. “He’d come to the U.S. and then not meet with anybody,” Braun said. He traced this reluctance to a formative failure: when Bang was in his late twenties, he and a collaborator, J. Y. Park, rented a room outside L.A., where they’d been told they could become what Bang called “star producers.” In Korea, they were certified hitmakers; in the States, they couldn’t even get a meeting. Bang retreated to Seoul within months.

New Mexico Is Where the Outlaw Artists Live

New York Times • 2 Oct 2024 • ~4150 words • Archive Link

New Mexico has long attracted iconoclastic artists seeking refuge from the pressures of urban art centers. This piece examines how the state's vast, remote landscapes have provided a space for artists like Judy Chicago and Agnes Martin to reinvent themselves and their work, away from the noise and competition of places like New York and Los Angeles. The article also considers how the influx of new residents and development is changing the character of New Mexico, and whether it can still offer the solitude and freedom that drew these artists there in the first place.

. . . for artists like Hammond, who infuse their work with a layered sense of history, New Mexico makes sense. Every day there confronts you with the sheer immensity of time. In the ribbons of color in the cliffs, the stratigraphic bands of ocher, ash and rust, “you literally see eons,” said Meredith Monk, an experimental singer, composer and multifaceted artist who has been coming to New Mexico since the 1970s and spends three months a year at her home in Cañones. “You feel like a dinosaur could come walking across the land.” Traces of slow erosion riddle the earth, from the ragged canyons and arroyos to the rocks whittled into hoodoos by untold centuries of rain and wind.

How Everyone Got Lost in Netflix’s Endless Library

New York Times • 7 Oct 2024 • ~5100 words • Archive Link

In a world where choice seems infinite, Netflix's vast library has reshaped our viewing habits and cultural landscape in surprising ways. This article explores the implications of having access to an overwhelming number of titles, from financial strategies when producing them, to the changing nature of television itself. As Netflix shifts from expansion to sustainability, questions arise about the future of entertainment and the creative talent behind it.

. . . by 2019, [Netflix] had about $15 billion in long-term debt. It earned the nickname Debtflix in the business press, which wondered if all this borrowing was sustainable. If you applied the logic of the media business to Netflix, it looked uncertain, but Netflix was operating by tech-sector rules — spending boatloads of cash to acquire customers, changing their habits and overwhelming competitors until, at the other end, an entire industry was transformed.

Russian Missiles, American Chips

Bloomberg.com • 2 Oct 2024 • ~5800 words • Archive Link

The article examines how Western semiconductor technology, particularly from US companies, has been found in Russian missiles used to attack Ukraine. It investigates the challenges in enforcing export controls to prevent these components from reaching Russia, and the efforts by the US government and technology companies to address this issue. The article raises questions about the responsibility of semiconductor manufacturers to ensure their products are not diverted for military use.

“If you open up any of these missiles or drones, you’ll see for yourself that they are full of Western components,” says Budanov, whose agency manages the database of foreign components found in Russian weapons. “Companies can say that they’re not selling anything to Russia, that they’re just selling to some intermediaries. But it doesn’t change the fact that those parts are getting into Russia in huge volumes.”