There is a comforting fairy tale that people tell themselves about food regulation. Europe is the anxious parent cutting grapes into quarters, America is the cool uncle tossing the kid a steak knife and saying, “Build character.” Both sides insist they are protecting the child. Both sides are partly right. And when it comes to beef, the argument is not really about beef. It is about what you do with … Read the rest
There is a kind of noise that comes after a shot. Not only the sound in the street, but the sound in the mind. People rush to fill the silence with a story, because silence feels like weakness. And in America, silence is treated like surrender.
So a woman is dead, an agent is alive, and a short video floats through phones like a torn page from a longer book… Read the rest
In our time, there is a fashionable sport which requires no equipment, no training, and very little courage. One simply sits down, opens a screen, and begins to despise strangers with excellent confidence. It is convenient because it feels like action, but it is mostly posture. It also has a small side effect: it eats the mind from the inside, slowly, politely, like rust that never announces itself until the … Read the rest
By Eric Le Roy
One of my students put this article under my nose yesterday during a class discussion. He is Swiss, and the original article was in German. So here is a translation of the gist of it:
Germany: In front of a nursing home for people with dementia in Duisburg, a fake bus stop has recently been installed. A fictitious timetable hangs on the typical bus … Read the rest
I once knew a man—let us call him Mr. Granite—who had a talent for moral architecture. He built his opinions the way some people build coastal fortresses: thick walls, narrow gates, and very few windows.
Over coffee, in a place where the chairs were designed to make you leave promptly, Mr. Granite announced, with a pleasant certainty, “I would never do something like that.”
He said it the way people … Read the rest
