Here are some interesting things I read this year on the internet. It’s harder to make these lists as more of the stuff I read ends up being paywalled, so I can’t necessarily easily check back whether I still find what I read interesting, and the readers have to decide whether a click is worth the one thing per month they get to read for free. I’m not saying paywalling is unjustified or anything, I think it’s the least bad of the models possible. All I am saying is that it makes an exercise like this less useful and less fun. That said, here are some highlights, organized by topic. Please note that inclusion here does not imply my agreement with the article, just that I thought it was interesting and worth reading. But there are things I agree with here, too. If you’re curious about my opinion, feel free to ask me! In this first part, we tackle the important issues
Coronavirus
5 Pandemic Mistakes We Keep Repeating [partially paywalled] Zeynep Tufekci in the Atlantic writes on lessons in communication to learn from the pandemic
The 60-Year-Old Scientific Screwup that Helped Covid Kill and continuing along the same theme, Megan Molteni in WIRED writes about how the CDC and WHO failed to communicate information about covid spread correctly
The Origin of Covid I don’t know if linking this is useful or not, since I’m assuming most everyone has read it already and has their own opinion, but here is Nicholas Wade in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists suggesting covid may have originated in gain-of-function experiments in a Wuhan lab.
Fraud is no Fun without Friends [partially paywalled] Matt Levine in Bloomberg has a theory that explains how the pandemic has caused a big increase in whistleblowers: morale is down in all sorts of group projects, and that includes group projects that include fraud.
This is what it’s supposed to be like [partially paywalled] by David Roth in Defector is ostensibly an essay about sports, or, more specifically, sports fandom, but it doesn’t make sense to classify it as anything except a coronavirus essay.
The City
Henry Grabar in Slate is very good at explaining how city politics and urban planning intersect in often bizarre and depressing ways. Two of the highlights this year were where he explained the prevalence of parking minimums, even though no one likes them, and the looming disaster of condo collapses.
The Look of Gentrification Darrell Owens, who is an expert on what’s actually going on when gentrification happens, writes on his substack about one of those things which bothers me a lot about modern discourse — masking aesthetic concerns as social ones.
Climate Change
We’re Heading Straight for Demi-Armageddon [partially paywalled] Emma Marris in the Atlantic asks around to survey what experts think about how bad climate change will get, and finds everyone not knowing how to feel about something that will be neither apocalyptic nor benign
Good News on Climate Change In the Effective Altruism forums, John Halstead and jackva summarize recent updates to the likelihood of extreme warming.
Why a Political Philosopher is Thinking about Carbon Removal [partially paywalled] Robinson Meyer and Olufemi Taiwo talk about carbon capture and related politics in the Atlantic.
Science and Health
‘Last Hope’ Experiment Finds Evidence for Unknown Particles Natalie Wolchover in Quanta magazine reports on muon g-2 news in an accessible, yet thorough, way
How Life Sciences Actually Work Alexey Guzey surveys life science academia from an outsider’s perspective
The maddening saga of how an Azheimer’s ‘cabal’ thwarted progress toward a cure for decades the late Shannon Begley in STAT details an example of groupthink in science academia.
The Science of Terrible Men Kathryn Paige Harden in aeon wonders what to do with the fact that most of the pioneers of genetics were eugencists and whether that means we can dismiss their contributions to science.
Is Sunscreen the New Margarine Rowan Jacobsen in Outside suggests that everyone is free… not to wear sunscreen
Race and Identity
The Identity Hoaxers [partially paywalled] Helen Lewis writes about the phenomenon of people who fraudulently pretend to have marginalized identities for the Atlantic.
Identity Fraud Jenny G. Zhang in gawker writes about using actually having marginalized identities as a vehicle for grift
Doing the Work at Work [partially paywalled] Bridget Read in the Cut looks at efforts at corporate DEI initiatives, and finds something that has much more in common with other kinds of “corporate ____ initiatives” than either proponents or detractors would like to think
The right-wing attack on racial justice talk [paywalled] Randall Kennedy in The American Prospect writes on CRT and the anti-CRT backlash
And more specifically on the 1619 project, Matthew Karp has an essay in Harper’s Magazine entitled History as End [partially paywalled].
Politics and Government
The Myth of Panic Tanner Greer in Palladium magazine writes against the advice not to panic. Relevant to the discussions of coronavirus communications above, but also more broadly.
The Triumph of American Idealism Alex Hochuli in Damage Mag writes about the incongruous globalization of specifically American causes and discourse topics
Making policy for a low-trust world Matt Yglesias at his substack has suggestions for how politicians should react to the public no longer trusting them: with simpler-to-explain policies.
Rated Zed 