"I'm In A Bubble But I Can See You Out There" Edition

Hello,

As a useless millennial, I've spent most of the weekend trying to teach myself DIY. Fortunately, YouTube has a lot of good tutorials. A vaguely embarrassed man or woman will start telling you that all you need for this job is an invisible spanner, an adaptable wrench, a bolt nut, a monkey nut, a macadamia nut and something called a “flange”. I suppose it's like a normal person tuning into a discussion of politics online and hearing about “critical theory” and “classical liberalism” - the only difference being that a flange is useful.

Obligatory shilling. I wrote for IM-1776 about “vicariotica” - the ways in which we seek pleasure through the pleasure of others.

For UnHerd I wrote about simplistic mental health messaging and my experiences with eating disorders.

Finally, for my paying Substack subscribers, I wrote an epic analysis of the half-forgotten Elevatorgate scandal and what it said about online disputes.

Global attention. When I saw a BBC report claiming that hundreds of schoolgirls have been abducted in Nigeria I thought, “Why the hell isn't anyone talking about this?” Then I reached this part:

...global attention generated by the #BringBackOurGirls campaign showed armed groups that the mass abduction of children was a sure way of applying pressure on authorities, including asking for ransom, although the authorities always deny paying.

Damn. Well, I still hope that there is a way to help. But there is no necessary value in talking about things.

In praise of kwas chlebowy. A sobering part of getting older is realising that you can't live forever. An even more sobering part of getting older is realising that you can't drink a few cans and wake up feeling good forever. Fortunately, there is kwas chlebowy. This dark, smooth, slightly sweet drink is made of fermented bread, which sounds a bit gross until you realise that beer is made through the fermentation of a starch-derived syrup called “wort”. In Russia it is called “kvass” but in Poland “kwas” means “acid” so “chlebowy”, which means “bread”, is tacked onto the end. I once told my fiancée that I had drunk “kwas” and she looked at me as if I had admitted to drinking out of batteries. Anyway, it is a wonderfully refreshing drink. I recommend it.

A religious objection? Ryan Anderson reflects on Amazon removing his book about transgenderism:

Amazon never informed me or my publisher that it was removing my book. And Amazon’s representatives haven’t responded to our inquiries about it. Perhaps they’re citing a religious objection to selling my book? Or maybe they only sell books with which they agree? (If so, they have a lot of explaining to do about why they carry Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf.)

Intellectual iconoclasm. A.W.F Edwards writes a fine piece for The Critic about his mentor Ronald Fisher and the attack on his memory:

...now the college Fisher loved has turned its back on him. It has removed from the Hall a stained-glass window commemorating him, one of a set of six installed to celebrate him, Crick, Venn, Chadwick and two other distinguished college figures, Sir Charles Sherrington and George Green.

Two deaths. Two famous Poles died this week. The politician and Solidarity activist Jan Litynski drowned while trying to rescue his dog from a frozen lake. Setting out across a sheet of ice for the sake of a pet is clearly irrational - and yet one has to admire it.

Meanwhile, the 74-year-old adventurer Aleksander Doba died on Kilimanjaro after reaching its peak. He sat down and “simply fell asleep”. What a man. Death is always sad but there can be more important things than its avoidance.

The black ball. Nick Bostrom and Matthew van der Merwe discuss existential risk:

What we haven’t pulled out yet is a black ball: a technology that invariably destroys the civilisation that invents it. That’s not because we’ve been particularly careful or wise when it comes to innovation. We’ve just been lucky.

I reviewed a book about the subject here.

Wages of sin. Justin E.H. Smith writes about music and ageing:

Real rock and roll is never far from a glossolalic Pentecostal revival or a backwoods snake-charming ecstasy, and it is not at all surprising to learn that Jerry Lee’s cousin, with whom he grew up playing church music, is none other than the televangelist Jimmy Swaggart, or that his own father had been a preacher, crawling up and down the chapel’s center aisle on his knees, shrieking and flapping about the wages of sin. 

You will want to have a cup of coffee - or perhaps kwas chlebowy - in your hand when you read one of Smith's essays. If you smoke, you might want to have a spare pack - or whatever the e-cigarette equivalent is. But it is always worthwhile for the sake of the prose as well as the insight.

Have a lovely week,

Ben