For your edification, is a compilation of all the non-political things I liked this past year.
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My pandemic-borne competency
Looking at my fridge, you’ll see a weekly menu divided in a grid, organized by days and four boxes. The pandemic brought a small change that changed everything.
Are animals people?
What if other creatures aren’t less than us, but just different? What if they are people?
Thoughts on Dubai
The outsides and the tops of the buildings are glamorous, but get down to the ground level, where the humans are, it gets dusty.
The Power of Sayings
The poetry of sayings make you believe the words have more wisdom than ordinary speech, and so they stay with you.
What I’ve learned researching climate negotiations
I think the way news organizations approach Dubai’s climate discussions is broken – primarily that politics needs to be covered more, because we’re now talking about money, not morality. I’m heading to Dubai to learn as much as I can about the negotiations.
The Lemonade Habit
A fresh squeezed pitcher, in my backyard, ready for consumption. Do you like lemonade? Not everyone does. Unfortunately, the kind of lemonade most of us drink is the powdered stuff...
The Many Times Bill Richardson Fired Me
Run, run, run. Working for Bill Richardson was exhausting. It made me irritable sometimes, and with that came too much truth telling for a boss.
My CDMX love letter
This is my third trip to La Capital since 2019. The pandemic slowed things down, but everytime I’ve gone it’s been packed with magic.
An unexpected family discovery
Wondering what we were all about and why we had this funny last name, growing up I constantly plied my grandfather for family history. He had a lot of it.
The archipelago of Los Angeles
Roads and the cars that drive on them have a mystical power in Los Angeles. The way you build roads changes everything about the built environment and how you choose to interact with people.
Thoughts on American rail travel after a few rides
When it comes to travel, we’re generally more interested in the destination rather than the conveyance, which is exactly why airlines are able to squeeze us into tiny seats.
The Dark Possibilities for AI Chatbots
While ChatGPT and Bing’s Chat seem like essentially two flavors of the same thing, both developed by the OpenAI Foundation, they are really two different technologies with vastly different potential impacts.
Sometimes, knowing how and why doesn’t do jack for anyone
I couldn’t finish a very good book because it got me thinking about Max Weber, economic theory, and Donny, a boy I used to play with when I was little.
A quick trip to New Orleans by train
Tonight, we’re on our way back to Chicago from the Big Easy, riding on Amtrak’s City of New Orleans. The trip – and traveling on Amtrak – has been a tremendous success.
My 2022 Media Diet
I consume media. This year I decided to make an annual list and try to reflect on it.
A requiem for Twitter
As we watch Elon Musk slowly dismember Twitter through sheer incompetence, I’m terribly sad for what’s likely to be lost.
Has my city’s brawniness become a liability?
This was not the full, bustling downtown I’d come to love. It was something lesser.
I was a terrible carpenter, but I suppose it didn’t matter
Measure twice, cut once – and when you cut, cut carefully. But seventeen year old me had trouble doing those things.
We’re ready to leave charming, dense Paris
After two week here, my wife and I have turned to our regular traveler’s conversation: Could we live in Paris happily?
The French Way of Open Space
This is all possible because France strives for a monoculture. Yes, there are lots of immigrants, and they have different ideas about what a proper society should be like, but the mere fact that this is a struggle – are you allowed to wear a hijab to school? – is an indication of how France views itself.
The grinding realities of Parisian life
Now that we’re about to kick off week two of our French residency, the shine is coming off. We’re beginning to understand some of the realities of French life.
I’m visiting Paris for two weeks and I’m trying not to gloat.
The big headline: Paris is a pretty easy place to be as a human. The streets are clean, the public transit is ubiquitous, car traffic is limited to 18 miles an hour, there are lots of little shops for just about everything you can imagine – everything is at a human scale.
Struggling with the boundaries and inadequacies of journalism and politics in our time
Is the institution of news headed in the right direction as our nation slides further and further away from democracy to kakistocracy, anocracy, and a dominion of conformity so that “different” people no longer have a place to be.
What’s the point?
I’m fine, and everyone I know is fine. COVID, climate change, insurrection, it’s all someone else’s problem because my family and I are just trying to figure out how to make it where we are, you know? I mean, things are hard enough as it is, I don’t need to start getting all bummed out by the stuff going on in other places with other people.
After a shooting, I want to know: What is safety?
With fifteen years into our house, we’re the old-timers now. It’s us that are now bedrock of a community.
When will Chance make Chicagoist happen?
Chance buying Chicagoist was an opportunity to do something big. But we’ve seen bupkis.
What to think about Ukraine?
Kyiv emergency workers responding to a Russian missile strike on an apartment building, Feb. 24, 2022. Credit: Anton Geraschenko A couple months ago it seemed like if we got through...
My Montréal love note
It’s a big, diverse, cosmopolitan city with amazing public transport and bike lanes everywhere, and its Frederick Olmstead-designed Parc du Mont-Royal in the middle of the city is an incredible treasure.
My Favorite Newsletters of 2021
I bestow on you my annual list of favorite newsletters. From the five dozen I read regularly, here’s the good stuff.