Christopher Wink

What if We’re Wrong: by Chuck Klosterman

Beliefs today, both objective and subjective, won’t necessarily be true in the future.

Discoveries upend scientific truths. Culture shifts in surprising ways. Art is used to interpret today and it’s repurposed later to interpret history of that future time, and these don’t need the same things. That’s why artists popular in one era aren’t necessarily remembered in the future, and so we might predict that the artists remembered from this era won’t be the ones celebrated in the future.

That’s among the big themes from But What If We’re Wrong?: Thinking About the Present As If It Were the Past, a quirky and charming 2016 book by media critic Chuck Klosterman.

Below I share my notes for future reference.

How poverty in America works

Poor Americans seem so perplexing to rich Americans because they live in different worlds.

We have two housing and two banking systems. We ask why don’t poor people make different choices but the whole point is they don’t have other choices.

“The system isn’t broken. It’s bifurcated,” writes journalist Matthew Desmond in his 2023 book Poverty, By America. Below I share my notes for future reference.

Gradual: The Case for Incremental Change in a Radical Age

Too often we seek big, dramatic and comprehensive change when the far more common and effective way to make change in a democratic system is through a grinding and collaborative approach.

One way that’s the case is because making real change requires three stages (the politics, the policy and implementing the practice) but we commonly forget that third step. All told, incrementalism gets a bad rap. Nearly all lasting change has happened gradually, not boldly. The world is complex, no coalition is ideologically cohesive and those implementing change are flawed.

That’s the case made in the 2023 book “Gradual: The Case for Incremental Change in a Radical Age,” written by two longtime advocates in criminal justice reform, Aubrey Fox and Greg Berman. Below I share my notes for future reference.

Wine making with Patrick

I’ve joined and toured distilling processes going back years, and taken an interest in commercial and homebound beer brewing. Yet outside a few winery tours over the years, I haven’t been as close to wine-making. That’s silly because one of my closest friends in the world has taken up his grandfather’s tradition.

What should your city be in 150 years?

Spinning out of the THRIVING reporting project I’ve led at Technical.ly, I’ve hosted a pair of sessions imagining Philadelphia in 150 years. I hope to do similar longterm future-thinking here and elsewhere.

I’ve found helpful several books on longtermism and other community engagement experience of my past. This week, the Philadelphia Inquirer published an op-ed I wrote with my friend and collaborator Mike O’Bryan on the topic. I wrote this summer on the concept after our first session. (photos below)

Humanity is on ‘The Precipice’: How can we think about lasting a million years more?

Humanity is at a crucial moment in which our technologies are advanced enough to have created our own existential risks and secure enough to consider a longterm enough future in which natural risks pose true threats. This moment can be called the Precipice, the name of a 2020 book by Toby Ord.

I enjoyed it, came to it around organizing I’ve done toward longtermism, and another buzzy book on the topic.

Below I share my notes for future reference.

Inciting Joy

Late in his fall 2022 book Inciting Joy, essayist and poet Ross Gay confronts criticism he’s received for the writing he’s done on Joy. Most of it amounts to, the author says: how can a black man write about flowers in a time like this?

Earlier on, he gives his answer: Sorrow doesn’t need any help; “I think sorrow’s gonna be just fine.”

It’s an energizing and beautiful collection. I strongly recommend it. I share my notes for future reference below.

Advice on ‘the creative act’ from Rick Rubin

One of the most celebrated music producers alive can’t play an instrument.

Instead he follows and teachers creators to create. Rick Rubin published back in January a charming book called The Creative Act: A Way of Being. It reads like a book that any creator could pick up and source inspiration. I strongly recommend it.

My notes for future reference are below.

Kindnesses high school teachers extended to me

A treasured middle school teacher of mine retired into substituting for my small-town high school. I spent years with him, so when he passed this summer, I had a burst of nostalgia — going as far as making sure I visited his viewing.

That reminded of an old post I had here to remind myself of a few other particular kindnesses that teachers extended me back in high school. Looking back I was a challenging kid — one of those students who could be disruptive and disengaged. I needed quite a bit of help, so my academic performance ranged quite a bit depending on the teacher I had.

How Private Equity Runs—and Wrecks—America

The debate about whether private equity provides any real value to the economy comes down to whether they force worthwhile business efficiencies. Or are instead, as it was memorably put in 2010 “a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.”

Little question the stance from the 2023 book “These Are the Plunderers: How Private Equity Runs—and Wrecks—America” by Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Gretchen Morgenson and financial policy analyst Joshua Rosner. It’s thorough and puts into context the people effected by private equity, a murky financial industry that owns businesses that employ something like 12% of all American jobs.

Below I share my notes for future reference.