All but the most visible, verified-by-default Democrats (and fellow travelers) on X spent the last election alongside the rest of the unverified users in X’s proverbial spam folder, mostly invisible to the rest of the platform but especially to people who didn’t already follow and want to hear from them. They might have been scrolling in a familiar-enough place. But they were posting into a void, living out a sort of mass shadowban of everyone who wasn’t willing to pay for a subscription. It wasn’t harrowing so much as strange and a little sad, with established users going through the motions, posting and sharing and waiting, propelled by years of habit, imagining audiences where they simply no longer existed.
Taking a break from my life as a nurse to say that I’m currently listening to Ethan Iverson’s Playfair Sonatas — though “currently” means “when my head finally falls on the pillow.” I think this may well be my Record of the Year for 2024. 🎵
Each of the six volumes of Churchill’s history of the second world war has a Theme. Here’e the one for the final volume.
Stuart Ritchie: “As ever, you have to wonder whether the field of Alzheimer’s research has a disproportionate level of bad science, or whether it’s just getting disproportionate attention and all fields are like that.”
One day he was so happy, so healthy, and the next….
In Christianity Today my colleague SJ Murray has an essay on why Christians need to rediscover Boethius. See also her very cool Boethius Project.