Austin Kelley Considers the Evolving Role of Fact-Checkers in an Era of Endless Lies at Lithub.
If I didn’t realize, back when I bought that “Magic Carpet” funboard, that surfing would become a difficult, often times brutal addiction, I certainly didn’t realize that used surfboards would become an addiction too. Read the essay on The Modern Spectator.
Austin Kelley considers the idea of the “Unresolved Mystery/ Perhaps the the real mystery might be: What are other people?
The soccer handball rule uses a peculiar definition of “deliberation.” But intention and guilt are concepts that have been vexed in our culture for a long time, long before Freud seized on the tale of Oedipus, who accidentally-on-purpose killed his father, to explain the accidental-on-purpose human condition. Read the essay.
Buying Books-by-the-foot for Indiana Jones. In The New Yorker.
…Whenever I’d see a fire alarm, my mind would set it off. It was like I was temporarily living an alternate life out of my control. Then in a snap, I’d return to normal. Only a second had passed, and the alarm was still there, untouched. But the feeling stuck with me, like a memory… Read the short story, “Statler and Waldorf” at Failbetter.
“Farewell to the Working Class”
Two new books on indolence, How To Be Idle and Bonjour Laziness, issue low-energy cries for political apathy, a shorter work week and the fine art of slacking off. The Nation.
Every four years I am drawn, like a moth to a dull flame, to biathlon. I’m not sure why. I suppose, in part, it’s the raw, hunter-gatherer image of it. You ski and shoot. You are trekking across the tundra. It’s probably Siberia or Alaska. Or both! You have to hunt down a bear and kill it, and then you have to live inside that bear for three weeks, slowly eating your way out. Biathlon is a fundamental sport.