Author: Chad
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Every day is helmet day!
It always blows my mind when I see people of all ages biking around with no helmets on. Teenagers, I get it—they’re too cool for school and have undeveloped prefrontal cortexes, so they’re dumb by design. And motorcyclists without helmets? They clearly have a death wish. Good luck to them. But grownups? Especially parents riding…
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Science doesn’t teach
Derek Thompson on why science is a special kind of faith: We owe our electric age to scientists who were crazy, ignorant, or both. In his book The Pleasure of Finding Things Out, Richard Feynman writes that “Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.” I used to hate this quote for its entreaty…
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Recent Views
More photography here. Life finding a way through a tennis court: Exploring the ice rink at our local sports complex: Angles at my parents’ house: Summiting the little hill at my childhood park: More angles and shadows at the library: The six year old just kickin’ a brick wall while we waited for the splash…
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I found religion in ‘Palm Springs’
What do you do when you encounter the impossible? Something that doesn’t compute with your understanding of reality and drastically challenges your worldview? You can ignore or deny it, confident the existing story you tell yourself can render any mystery or inconsistency meaningless to your everyday life. You can resent it and lash out in…
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Happy Fourth Eorlingas
That’s me at our local No Kings rally back in June. It’s the energy I’m bringing to Fourth of July this year, what with the United States government having been taken over by orcs, goblins, and all manner of Mordor-worthy villainy. May we the people soon topple their treachery and an Aragorn-esque leader one day…
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Cool is cringe
Fellow millennial Chloé Hamilton on how millennials became uncool: In recent years, millennials, the former hip young things that once seemed so cutting edge when cast side-by-side with the out-of-touch baby boomers and the rather nondescript generation X, have become, well, a bit cringe. … But, I’ll confess, being part of a generation that felt…
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Mundane is magic
Gracy Olmstead is back with another excellent issue of her Granola newsletter, this time on mundanity, the mind, and AI: While doing the mundane, we lose ourselves in process and place. The mundane roots us in the present, stubbornly refusing the demands of clock or calendar. It will take as much time as it requires.…
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What AI is and isn’t
Mandy Brown with a barnburning breakdown of what “AI” is and isn’t: “Artificial intelligence” is not a technology. A chef’s knife is a technology, as are the practices around its use in the kitchen. A tank is a technology, as are the ways a tank is deployed in war. Both can kill, but one cannot…
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On lawns
Oliver Milman writing for Noema on the cult of the American lawn: “The American lawn is a thing, and it is American, deeply American,” Paul Robbins, an expert in environmental studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the author of the book “Lawn People,” told me. “There becomes a kind of local social pressure to…
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I got a problem with ‘little kids, little problems’
Continuing my unofficial series on problematic parenting clichés, there’s one I’ve heard a few times recently and must address: “Little kids, little problems. Big kids, big problems.” Setting the condescension aside, the idea is that all the challenging aspects of parenting babies and young children—e.g. diaper changes, loss of sleep, tantrums, potting training, keeping them…
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A creative childhood? It’s about time
Ross Barkin ponders what kids of today lack compared to their 20th century predecessors: When I consider the geniuses of that era—or any, really, before the last ten years or so—I think of time. Talented children, until the incursion of the smartphone and immersive videos games, had much of it. One big reason for this:…
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Links of the moment
An ongoing series Tia Keobounpheng’s really cool and colorful weavings inspired by geometry and Finnish/Sami heritage. I want this 1961 National Library Week poster. Want to de-junkify your Google search results? Just add &udm14 to the URL. A handy tool to compare the true size of countries.
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Glad we lived it
We underwent several significant home improvement projects recently. I say “underwent” because we didn’t do the actual work but instead paid contractors who knew what they were doing. One of those contractors was a local handyman who brought in his wife to help with the multi-day project. Their kids are grown but they enjoyed interacting…
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Jazz for home
We have one of those all-in-one turntables that plays vinyl, CDs, Bluetooth, and the radio. One day my wife started putting on our local jazz station, WDCB 90.9 FM (“Chicago’s Home for Jazz”) and it’s been a nice burst of smooth vibes when we want a change from our usual rotation of kids music. I…
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Recent Views
More photography here. We did a gymnastics party for our now 6 year old’s birthday, which his little brother definitely also enjoyed: 2025 America in one star-spangled shot at our local library — gloomy and fractured, with stark contrasts and a cloudy forecast: Happened to catch this sunsetting light casting shadows from two different windows…
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Media of the moment
An ongoing series Black Bag. Felt great to see an honest-to-god movie in the theater with a delightfully twisty plot and inspired casting that made me feel as warm and fuzzy as the film’s lighting. Wouldn’t be surprised to find this on my best-of-2025 list. The Demon of Unrest by Erik Larson. Turns out there was…
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Tyrannies and typewriters
Richard Polt typecasting about why we need typewriters in our age of AI and authoritarianism: When you choose to write with a typewriter, you are quixotically, nobly flying in the face of the assumption that good = fast, efficient, perfect, and productive. Type your gloriously imperfect, expending ineffiencient time and energy — and declare that…
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The Demon of Unrest
I just finished reading Erik Larson’s latest book The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War. It’s about the military and diplomatic machinations surrounding the Fort Sumter crisis, including South Carolina’s role in fomenting secession and Lincoln’s journey to Washington D.C. and the presidency. I…