Why do so many people hate journalists so much? I think part of the answer is journalism isn’t only what you think it is. Gimme a sec.
Spoiler: I’m a journalist but more properly I’m a guy who founded a local news organization 15 years ago. Still going! So my entire professional career has been spent on the sustainability of local journalism. Career choices!
Continue reading Why do so many people hate journalists so much?The so-called “moundbuilders” of the Eastern Woodlands in the present-day United States were among the most complex cultures of pre-European societies. Yet growing archeological evidence remains under-recognized in American life.
That’s from anthropologist George Milner’s 2005 book “The Moundbuilders: Ancient Peoples of Eastern North America.”
I’ve read about an array of Amerindian communities, but the moundbuilders, which appeared to be densely populated from Ohio down to Louisana, mostly west of the Appalachian mountains and east of the Mississippi River, especially interest me. This is the first book I read dedicated to this civilization, though they get referenced often in other places. Below I share some notes for my future reference.
Continue reading The Moundbuilders of the Eastern WoodlandsNewtonian physics works for most of our everyday experiences. But for the biggest systems we encounter, we need Einstein’s theories of relativity to make sense of spacetime.
Neither, nor does our own intuitive understanding of the world, work at the smallest scale we understand. This is the quantum level, where electrons can be at two places at the same time, transmit information faster than speed of light and instantly analyze infinite paths between two points.
As Danish physicist and Nobel laureate Neils Bohr (1885-1962) wrote: “Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory does not understand it.”
And much like we didn’t understand all the ramifications of the atomic age before we developed nuclear weapons, governments and companies are busy investing in the military and commercial implications of the potentially radical advancement in quantum computing.
That’s the timing from prominent physicist and science communicator Michio Kaku in his 2023 book “Quantum Supremacy: How the Quantum Computer Revolution Will Change Everything.”
By no means exhaustive, I picked up the book for a primer on the technology my work overlaps with. Below I share my notes for future reference.
Continue reading Quantum Supremacy by Michio KakuRetirement projects are completed as a final act. Better to let them linger.
And yet, last year, celebrated longform writer John McPhee, who has published dozens of books and hundreds of articles for New Yorker, published his retirement project: Tabula Rasa, a collection of essays that chronicle stories he never completed.
Contrary to most of my reading of late, I didn’t take many notes. The whole book reads as a light treatise on life, with his wit and wording. A few points that stood out to me now:
My bicycle commute from where in live in Philadelphia’s Fishtown neighborhood to my office in Old City runs down Kensington Second Street. Little sign remains of the violent riots that took place there 180 years ago between Irish immigrants and so-called nativists in 1844.
Fittingly, Philadelphia’s riots are quietly forgotten, while similarly-timed violence in New York City was turned into a book and then a 2002 movie called Gangs of New York. Sparked from a dispute around bibles in schools, a few dozen people died and perhaps hundreds were wounded in the most intense few days that May.
That’s the focus of the 2013 book The Philadelphia Nativist Riots: Irish Kensington Erupts, written by local historian Ken Milano. I’ve read Ken’s other books — and exchanged a few emails with him through the years. I appreciate his thorough and thoughtful approach, so I have most of his books in my collection, and have gifted them to friends. I only now read this one. Pick up a copy yourself.
The riots had a real impact. Milano argues that the riots contributed to the 1854 consolidation, in which Philadelphia city (and its law enforcement system) annexed surrounding counties, inspired the development of the parochial school system and was directly responsible for the founding of La Salle College, which was originally located across the street from where a church was burned.
Continue reading Philadelphia’s 1844 Nativist Riots: Ken MilanoGosh, that was a lot.
How? Well, a baby waking up at 5am ended up resulting in my reading way more than usual. Poor sleep all around, come to think of it, so in some sense I hope I don’t read this many books again. I also gave up most TV weeknights, though I already didn’t watch much. Find all my reading notes here, and see the list below.
Continue reading I read 56 books in 2023I’ve started 2024 to continue what I started last year.
Looking back at years of resolutions I’ve had both sorts of plans: when I wanted to make change, and when I wanted to continue the work of the year prior. This year I intend to be more of the latter — no big changes intended. My post pandemic life emerged in 2023. I hope for 2024 to be stronger because of it.
Continue reading 2024 ResolutionsI’ll now always consider 2020-2022 as three pandemic years, and 2023 as something resembling a return. Much of what I did this year felt like setting a new normal, which I hope to continue in 2024.
I felt more sure as a parent, got back on a plane and felt so much more was in place at work. There were challenges to be sure, but I’m heartened to look at back at something more like the open life I’ve been lucky to have. Below, I share some highlights and review progress on my resolutions.
Continue reading My 2023 in reviewThis answer Sam Altman gave TIME editor Sam Jacobs this month is pretty close to my stance too (clip here). That stance? With an over-supply of content, the differentiation will come from trust and high-quality relationships. That’s why I continue to bet on journalism, and local journalism at that.
Continue reading Will AI be good or bad for journalism?Any complex society requires a state, and so any society that doesn’t have a state must not be complex. This circular logic doesn’t hold against the archeological and anthropological record. Mesoamerica, Crete and certain Mongolian periods aren’t exceptions but examples of alternative ways to structure societies in which we ought to listen.
That’s the broadest thrust of The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, a sprawling and intellectually ambitious 2021 book by anthropologist and activist David Graeber and archaeologist David Wengrow. I took most of a month digging through it.
The authors finished the book in August 2020, and sadly Graeber, radical coiner of the slogan “We are the 99 percent” and author of Bullshit Jobs, died a month later due to complications between pancreatis and the covid-19 pandemic.
The 600-page book started as a project to answer where inequality comes from. In the end, the pair aimed to complicate any narrative we have about how societies got structured the way they are. For example, they argue the transition to agriculture was no revolution, but a transition that took thousands of years, and may have finished more because of ecological change than anything. The post Ice Age-thaw slowed and climates stabilized, resulting in less glacial melting and rivers shifting, some 7,000 years ago, after many urban centers had formed. As they conclude: “Extensive agriculture may thus have been an outcome, not a cause, of urbanization.”
Whatever the case, the pair want much more variety in how we all can choose to live. Get the book, it’s a thinker. Below I share my (excessive) notes for my future reference.
Continue reading Dawn of Everything: how to understand the origins of inequality
