Assorted Links

Posted on by Josh Nudell
  1. We the Aggrieved– An essay on Inside Higher Ed about the partisan nature of this election and how “tribal” anything political has become. The author focuses on how both sides have been playing up the victim card.
  2. Like: Facebook and Shadenfreude– An article in the Paris Review that discusses one of the many issues with Facebook, namely that it does not distinguish between types of sharing, but rather categorizes all sharing as a positive experience. The author examines some of her own experiences on Facebook and discusses the triviality of the sharing and witnessing frustrating and heartbreak in others, more or less concluding that Facebook did not make her happier. I agree with most of her article, though it is also shallow on a few levels, including that she (evidently) has no plans to change her behavior vis a vis Facebook, and deals with some of the larger social implications of the online life in a tangential way.
  3. Two words: working wifi– A portrait of modern life–people huddled around a closed Starbucks, likely in order to use the free wi-fi.
  4. Chris Christie, Your Future President, Sandy Edition– Charlie Pierce at Esquire’s Politics Blog suggests that (by merely doing the right thing in terms of hurricane relief, ironically) Chris Christie is reaffirming his credentials as the early favorite to win the 2016 election. All he has done is praise the president’s leadership, take responsibility for disaster relief in his state, and tell people to get lost when they ask about politics.
  5. A Trip Through Hell: Daily Life in Islamist Controlled North Mali– A story in Spiegel by a German reporter who got permission to visit Northern Mali and see what hte condions were like under Ansar Dine rule. He suggests that there is growing popular unrest against the Islamic group which one of the people he interviews characterizes as a group of adolescents. Interestingly, one of the activists interviewed is female.
  6. Sandy zeigt, wie marode Amerikas Infrastruktur ist – From Joe, an article in German about the ailing nature of infrastructure in the United States. The article claims that nearly all infrastructure systems (power grid, roads, bridges, dams, ports, airports) are a problem, both susceptible to storms like Sandy, but also to more typical weather conditions. Of course, not modernizing the infrastructure will merely cost more money and hinder the economy in the long run (not unlike healthcare). The article does not cover every infrastructure issue I have with the US, but it also called attention to a few I had not considered, including that many ports may be too small to accommodate new generations of container ships.