Blog

Climate change is expensive, but that’s not the point
Why would we calculate how many dollars the planet’s worth? How many trillion dollars? Does it matter? Climate change is very, very expensive. It will make us reassess what it means for something to be expensive.

I’m not debating that
But what’s this article doing, then? If cheese-breads are puffy, why are nut-breads less puffy? No one is asking what bakers are up to! Might be a conspiracy. Maybe nut-breads should be banned.

You won’t be afraid of that book anymore
You’ll feel better when you acknowledge your own reactions. Some people don’t want us to think and feel for ourselves, because doing so is part of what it means to be, and they want us to be afraid.

A story worth telling: The world we will build
‘Let This Radicalize You’ asks us to tell stories about how we’ll support each other. Tell a story about how people support each other. People who are listening want to feel they can find a personal role to play. It’s worth doing.

5 ways philosophy fails (sometimes)
Too much time looking down, forgetting to come up for air. I do philosophy. I must accept there’s no one true answer. I must care, help others care, be practical, keep going. I’ll fail often. I hope for small wins.

We wait for the writer to finish the story
Patiently waiting for that person to return. We find ourselves talking too much. Sick of the sound of our own voice. Self-consciousness restricts creativity. Better to write nothing at all?

Can a man take a woman’s gold medal?
After years insisting it’s a cardinal sin, he did it. Transness is real; it just isn’t made of metal. The prize can’t be transferred. If you don’t have transness, that’s fine. You inhabit yourself.

The Heritage Foundation’s new policy paper on one-man, one-woman marriage
They’ve always been sour on gay marriage. Now they’ve written up a plan for a society that doesn’t include us. The Heritage Foundation longs to return to what they remember as a pre-2015 condition when no one had yet written about trans people, sex toys or polyamory.

Fragments of Briceño Guerrero’s surreal philosophy
‘Little architect of the universe’. Anything can shrivel up, disappear, cease to exist. You may be bigger and stronger than everyone else, but the abyss could swallow you tomorrow.