The Dive, 4/1/25
Your monthly compilation of what's what on global politics, American society, and an assortment of odds and ends
Quote of the Month
“The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts. One’s right to life, liberty, and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly, and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections... If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein. If there are any circumstances which permit an exception, they do not now occur to us.” - Justice Robert H. Jackson, West Virginia Board of Education vs. Barnette (1943)
What I’m Reading:
1. Why invading Canada is a bad idea
Why you should read it: The Atlantic columnist and strategy scholar Eliot Cohen details just why invading Canada is such a bad and dumb idea.
“When I served as counselor of the State Department, I advised the secretary of state about America’s wars with Iraqi insurgents, the Taliban, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and al-Qaeda. I spent a good deal of time visiting battlefields in the Middle East and Afghanistan as well as shaping strategy in Washington. But when I left government service in 2009, I eagerly resumed work on a book that dealt with America’s most durable, and in many ways most effective and important, enemy: Canada… Unfortunately, we have tried this before, with dismal results. In 1775, before the United States had even formally declared independence from Great Britain, it launched an invasion of Canada, hoping to make it the 14th colony. The psychological-warfare geniuses in Congress ordered that the local farmers and villagers be distributed pamphlets—translated into French—declaring, ‘You have been conquered into liberty,’ an interesting way of putting it. Unfortunately, the Catholic farmers and villagers were largely illiterate, and their leaders, the gentry and parish priests who could read, were solidly on the side of the British against a bunch of invading Protestants… We tried again in 1812. Thomas Jefferson, the original Republican, described the acquisition of Canada as ‘a mere matter of marching.’ This was incorrect. The United States launched eight or nine invasions of Canada during the War of 1812, winning only one fruitless battle. The rest of the time, it got walloped. For example, General William Hull, like other American commanders a superannuated veteran of the Revolution, ended up surrendering Detroit with 2,500 troops to a much smaller British and Indian force. Court-martialed for cowardice and neglect of duty in 1814, he was sentenced to death but pardoned.”
“Since the War of 1812, Americans have not tried any formal invasions of Canada, but there was tacit and sometimes overt support for the 1837–38 revolt of the Canadian patriotes, a confrontation over Oregon (a sober look at the size of the Royal Navy dissuaded us from trying anything), and the Fenian raids of 1866 and 1870. The Fenians were rather like the Proud Boys, only better organized and all Irish, and they also ended up fleeing back over the border… Canadians may have gone in for wokeness in recent years, it is true, but there is the matter of their bloody-minded DNA. It was not that long ago that they harvested baby seals—the ones with the big, sad, adorable brown eyes—with short iron clubs. They love hockey, a sport that would have pleased the emperors and blood-crazed plebeians and patricians of ancient Rome if they could only have figured out how to build an ice rink in the Colosseum… There is a martial spirit up north waiting to be reawakened. Members of the Trump administration may not have heard of Vimy Ridge, Dieppe, the crossing of the Sangro, Juno Beach, or the Battle of the Scheldt. Take it from a military historian: The Canadian soldiers were formidable, as were the sailors who escorted convoys across the North Atlantic and the airmen who flew in the Battle of Britain and the air war over Germany. Canada’s 44,000 dead represented a higher percentage of the population than America’s losses in the Second World War. Those who served were almost entirely volunteers.”
Why it matters: “Bottom line: It is not a good idea to invade Canada. I recommend that in order to avoid the Trump administration becoming even more of a laughingstock, Secretary Hegseth find, read, and distribute to the White House a good account of the Battle of Chateau[gay]. It could help avoid embarrassment.”
2. Why NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander needs to be an American
Why you should read it: For The Bulwark, retired U.S. Army General Mark Hertling explains why NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander has got to be an American officer.
“Since Gen. Dwight Eisenhower became the first supreme allied commander Europe in 1951, every top NATO commander has been an American. ‘SACEUR’ is likely the coolest name for the position, but it’s more than a title—the person who holds that job serves as the strategic glue binding the transatlantic alliance together, and that person becomes the symbol of leadership and commitment to the most successful security alliance in history. That’s why recent reports suggesting that President Trump is considering relinquishing the SACEUR role—as part of an initiative to transform U.S. combatant commands around the world—should alarm allies, military planners, and every American who values global stability and a strong relationship with our most important allies… The post is as much about strategic vision, international diplomacy, and sound operational management as about leading troops in combat. The person in that role must project both power and unity, equanimity and a bit of detached fairness toward countries large and small. That’s why the role has often been held by America’s most capable and talented officers, from Eisenhower to Matthew Ridgway to Wes Clark to the current occupant, Christopher Cavoli. Removing the U.S. general from this post would create a vacuum of leadership at the very center of NATO, and such a vacuum would immediately create confusion, friction, unnecessary competition, and risk in coalition operations.”
“The tradition of American military leadership in NATO dates to World War II, when Eisenhower was appointed supreme commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force. The logic is relatively simple: French, British, Belgian, Canadian, Polish, and other allied forces would fight under an American commander because the Americans had brought an enormous military across an ocean to liberate the continent… Transferring the position to another country’s general as European nations are expanding their defenses against an emboldened Russia would be changing horses midstream; this change would not be a minor administrative reshuffle or a simple ‘change of command’ but a seismic shift in the architecture of collective defense. The SACEUR is dual-hatted as commander of U.S. European Command (EUCOM), one of the combatant commands that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is considering for transformation, downsizing, and integration with other commands. But being dual-hatted in this position allows SACEUR to integrate U.S. military power directly into NATO operations, ensuring the alliance can rapidly coordinate during a crisis… The fact that the man (and so far it has been all men) leading the most successful alliance in history wears the Stars and Stripes on his shoulder gives the United States extra clout in Europe. As valuable as our allies are, it seems inexplicable that any American would want to defer to a foreigner about the fate of the alliance—and the blood and treasure of Americans… Moreover, the geopolitical signals of such a decision would be catastrophic. Moscow would see it as an unmistakable sign of Western division and American retreat. When President Obama announced the ‘rebalance to Asia,’ I was in command in Europe, and I was immediately called by representatives from most of our NATO allies asking what it all meant for U.S. support. I also saw intelligence that noted Russia’s glee. Allies on NATO’s eastern flank—Poland, the Baltic states, Romania—felt especially vulnerable. Even more importantly, Beijing and Tehran would certainly take note: America no longer leads the world’s most successful military alliance.”
Why it matters: “Make no mistake: Removing the U.S. general from the SACEUR post would be a soft exit from NATO leadership, even if Article 5 commitments remain on paper. It would undercut American influence at the very moment when a fragmented world demands unity among democracies. If the United States steps back, others will step in—but not necessarily in ways that serve American interests or global security. The SACEUR role is not a burden, it is a major strategic advantage in a strong multinational alliance. Leadership in this multinational coalition isn’t just about directing forces—it’s about projecting trust, capability, and the moral authority that binds coalitions together. Relinquishing that would be a self-inflicted wound and a gift to our adversaries. Now is certainly not the time for additional retreat. Now is the time to lead.”
3. How Trump is shooting America in the feet with a bazooka
Why you should read it: Washington Post columnist Catherine Rampell observes that if President Trump wanted to cripple American power it’s hard to say what he would be doing differently.
“More than anything else, President Donald Trump loves winning. Yet he has already positioned America to lose the 21st century, in three simple steps:
Alienate your friends.
Destroy your business environment.
Slaughter your golden goose (i.e., science and research).
“Trump most vividly demonstrated Step 1 with his Oval Office tantrum against a war-torn ally. But it also includes his gratuitous insults of our friends; abrupt termination of programs tackling global public health menaces (including some that the United States caused); and threats to punish our closest trading partners… All that soft power the United States accumulated over the past century is vaporizing. This means no friends to support us against our adversaries, whether rogue nations or terrorist groups. Ticking off our allies also means ticking off some of our best customers, who will turn to economic competitors. In some cases, these customers are outright boycotting U.S. products.”
“Our country’s greatest global advantage, by far, is in science, research and technology. We have long been the global leader in R&D, which is why we have the most innovative companies, the most successful tech sector and the mightiest military. It is this knowledge sector — not some imagined renaissance in low-value goods manufacturing — that will determine who ‘wins’ the 21st century… Despite all this, Trump is gutting our scientific and research infrastructure.”
Why it matters: “Trump and his allies might think they’re merely ‘owning’ the libs. In reality, he’s forfeiting what could have been the next great American century.”
4. Why Europe should create its own nuclear deterrent
Why you should read it: In Foreign Policy, Syracuse international relations professor Michael John Williams argues that questions about the reliability of America’s nuclear umbrella ought to prompt European nations to build their own shared deterrent.
“Minus America, Europe finds itself unarmed in a dangerous, nuclear world. The arms control regimes developed during the Cold War have been abrogated by both the United States and Russia. China, never a signatory to the bilateral U.S.-Russia agreements of the Cold War, now seeks to expand and upgrade its own nuclear deterrent. Achieving a trilateral nuclear arms agreement would always have been tough, but without the Cold War agreements in place, the task is nigh impossible. To make matters worse, nuclear proliferation means that there are now nine nuclear powers… These are powerful incentives for the EU to develop a pan-European nuclear deterrent. Relying on Washington to provide extended nuclear deterrence for Brussels is an increasingly dubious proposition. And in this nuclear world, the actors with seats at the negotiating table to forge new nuclear arms control agreements will need to be nuclear powers themselves. If Europe wants to promote nuclear arms control, it paradoxically needs to go nuclear first.”
“But the pursuit of a new nuclear capability by any one state in Europe is likely to trigger a security dilemma for the others—if Germany were to go nuclear, would this reassure Poland, or would it incentivize Warsaw to develop its own capability? Just as the United States used nuclear sharing to manage proliferation in early Cold War Europe, Brussels would do well to manage this situation proactively via a shared European nuclear project. Moreover, the development of a nuclear arsenal is extremely costly and difficult. Coordinating a pan-European deterrent would be more economical, focusing efforts against external threats rather than internal competition… The solution to these myriad challenges is a collective European finger on a collective European nuclear launch button. The best way to do this would be to dust off early Cold War plans for the [Multilateral Force]… a proposal to create a fleet of surface ships and submarines, crewed by European NATO allies, with the intent of giving those allies multilateral ownership and control in the nuclear defense of Western Europe.”
Why it matters: “For 75 years, nuclear sharing in NATO has provided the United States an ability to manage proliferation and served as a strong tool of alliance management. But the only thing certain with the Trump administration is uncertainty, and Europe must plan accordingly. Although U.S. extended deterrence theoretically still covers NATO allies, European countries would be foolish not to develop a pan-European nuclear alternative… In a best-case scenario, a European nuclear deterrent will strengthen NATO, and in the worst-case scenario, if the United States abandons Europe, the continent will not be defenseless.”
5. How Trump is destroying America’s state capacity
Why you should read it: Niskanen Institute director David Dagan writes in Persuasion on how Trump’s demolition job on the federal government amounts to an anti-New Deal.
“President Trump’s unilateral campaign to dismantle state capacity at home and shake the postwar liberal alliance abroad resembles the first 100 days of the New Deal in terms of its ambition and the backdrop of social upheaval. But the immediate causes and implementing strategy could hardly be more different. Trump’s campaign is based on a grotesquely distorted account of the problems we face, and his solution has not been to summon Congress to action but rather to sideline it… His approach to this ‘crisis’ has not been to ask Congress for extraordinary powers, but simply to take them: bullying and firing federal workers in defiance of the law, freezing appropriated funds, decapitating and shutting down agencies created by Congress. And the Republican-led Congress, far from objecting to these moves, has largely responded by applauding and approving the nominations of scandalously unqualified individuals to key posts in government. (The reduction of congressional Republicans to mere cheerleaders reflects a key difference between Trump and FDR: Roosevelt was elected with a sweeping mandate that reflected the real crisis the country was in, and his Democrats held overwhelming majorities in Congress. This made the lawful path to a constitutional restructuring much easier than it would be for today’s razor-thin, splintered GOP majority.)”
“Of course, the fact that Trump managed to build a stunning political comeback and refashion the GOP in his image is indicative of the real problems facing America. The prosperity generated by the capitalist system that FDR saved in the New Deal has multiplied many times over, but the life satisfaction of average Americans has lagged. Rising premiums to education have benefited the third of Americans with college degrees and the regions where they congregate, leaving the rest of the country feeling abandoned. The blossoming of the internet age has upended recreation and social life as well as traditional working arrangements in industries ranging from retail to media to tax preparation… Donald Trump’s answer seems to be that liberal democracy is not up to the job. According to the logic of the Great Demolition, liberal democracy is largely a front for the machinations of a ‘woke elite’ that has brought us to this sorry state of affairs. It means the ‘censorship’ and sidelining of far-right critics that Vice President J.D. Vance recently bemoaned in Germany. As in the 1930s, Americans are drawn to whispers that only strongman rule can liberate the majority to speak its mind and enact its will.”
Why it matters: “If it persists, the indiscriminate de-staffing and disempowering of the administrative state will amount to a reduction in both the gasoline and the engine oil available to America’s innovation economy. We will see less of the basic scientific research that leads to the new materials, drugs, and technologies that wealth is built on. We will see a decline in the capacity of American universities to attract top-flight talent, and, eventually, to offer undergraduates world-class education. We will see fewer of the inspections and routine monitoring that give the mass public the confidence to participate in the markets for food, medicine, air travel, the financial system, and other industries. We will eventually see lower innovation, higher prices, and less employment... The New Deal was a staggeringly ambitious effort to pull Americans back from the abyss. The superpower built on those achievements is now being systematically degraded with the same level of ambition. The effect may be to pull us back from frustrated prosperity to something far worse.”
6. Why DOGE amounts to nothing more than a repackaging of free market ideology
Why you should read it: In Fast Company, lawyer Jay Willis contends that Elon Musk’s DOGE represents little more than the latest incarnation of old-fashioned free market dogmatism.
“At a press conference in the Oval Office earlier this month, Elon Musk—a billionaire who is not, at least formally, the President of the United States—was asked how the Department of Government Efficiency manages potential conflicts of interest to ensure ‘accountability and transparency.’ In response, Musk suggested that simply opening a browser tab would assuage the reporter’s concerns. ‘We post our actions to the DOGE handle on X, and to the DOGE website,’ he said. ‘So all of our actions are maximally transparent…’ The ‘Regulations’ tab [of the DOGE website], however, reveals the true nature of Musk’s project, which is not to deliver tax relief to working people, but to free wealthy corporations from pesky regulatory oversight. The page abandons dollars-and-cents metrics for something different: an ‘Unconstitutionality Index’ that divides the number of regulations enacted by federal agencies by the number of statutes passed by Congress each year. Users can scroll down to see how many regulations these agencies—’unelected bureaucrats,’ as DOGE calls them—have published, and even how many hundreds of thousands of words those regulations run.”
“DOGE’s war on the very concept of regulation demonstrates just how little ‘innovation’ Musk and his henchteenagers are bringing to the putative task of streamlining the federal government’s workflow. Corporate interests, eager to shed even modest limitations on their ability to pay out executive bonuses and shareholder dividends, have spent decades arguing that regulations are unauthorized exercises of legislative power. At DOGE, Musk is simply repackaging these bog-standard, free-enterprise talking points with the trappings of Silicon Valley technobabble. In his position as this country’s de facto copresident, the more regulations he manages to scuttle, the more he and his cronies’ companies stand to profit.”
Why it matters: “By enlisting Musk to go full Founder Mode on a dated federal bureaucracy, DOGE was pitched as the means of fulfilling every politician’s favorite promise: to run government more like a business. ‘We’re going to get the government off your back and out of your pocketbook,’ Musk told rallygoers in October to rapturous applause. But there is nothing new about the DOGE playbook, other than the involvement of a celebrity tech executive who is amused by memecoin backronyms. It is a decades-long ideological project to empower people like Musk to make themselves even wealthier at the expense of everyone else.”
7. Why DOGE’s plan to push AI across the government is “wildly dangerous”
Why you should read it: In Tech Policy Press, University of Michigan professor Ben Green outlines DOGE’s irresponsible and unworkable plans push AI into virtually every corner of the federal government.
“Led by Thomas Shedd, a former Tesla engineer now in charge of the General Services Administration’s technology team, the plan is to deploy AI widely across the federal government. The overall goal is to cut the agency’s budget by fifty percent. Shedd suggested using AI to analyze contracts for redundancies, root out fraud, and facilitate a reduction in the federal workforce by automating much of their work… To predict how Musk’s proposed transformation will go, we can look at prior examples of integrating AI into government decision-making and operations. There are already many instances of AI-driven governance gone wrong—particularly in cases where the goal is to root out fraud and cut budgets… In my home state of Michigan, the Unemployment Insurance Agency (UIA) adopted an algorithm (the Michigan Integrated Data Automated System, aka MiDAS) to streamline its operations. The UIA’s goals were to prevent unemployment fraud and to eliminate one-third of the existing staff by automating their work. MiDAS quickly boosted the cases of suspected welfare fraud by a factor of five, which led to a 23-fold increase in the UIA’s revenues… The only problem? Almost every accusation of fraud—93% of supposed fraud cases—was incorrect. Then, even once these errors became clear, it took years of litigation for the wrongly accused to receive the money they were owed. For many people, the fraud charge remained on their criminal record for years, barring them from jobs.”
“What will happen if these plans for an AI revolution in government move forward? Already, we are seeing evidence that DOGE is repeating the same mistakes that have plagued other instances of government automation… DOGE will likely make many baseless judgments of waste and fraud based on AI results. This outcome will be partly due to Musk’s own wildly over-expansive definitions of waste and fraud. He has stated, without any evidence and contrary to other estimates, that ‘A trillion dollars can be saved just by addressing waste, fraud, and abuse.’ Given this viewpoint, DOGE’s AI developers will surely be more worried about avoiding false negatives (overlooking an instance of fraud) than false positives (incorrectly labeling a contract as wasteful or fraudulent), particularly in cases where they may have a conflict of interest… DOGE has already demonstrated a pattern of misinterpreting contracts, leading it to vastly overstate the savings it has generated. On February 19, DOGE posted a ‘wall of receipts,’ boasting $16.5 billion in savings from canceled contracts. Their calculations were riddled with mistakes. For instance, many ‘canceled’ contracts had ended years ago or were terminated under prior administrations... To make matters worse, DOGE is making these decisions in an opaque and unaccountable manner. It is unclear what role AI has played in the actions that DOGE has already taken. Moving forward, an AI’s classification of fraud could lead to contracts being canceled immediately without any notice or appeals process. When this action harms a person or organization, they may not be able to get a clear explanation of what happened aside from ‘the AI said so.’”
Why it matters: “A central reason for these flawed AI tools is that engineers underestimate the complexity of government processes. In turn, engineers embed their superficial assumptions into software and overestimate their tools’ capabilities… The DOGE team is displaying this engineering hubris to an extreme degree. They are racing forward with little care for existing laws and protocols. Without spending the time to understand government operations, Shedd has asserted that AI can replace many federal workers… Of course, for Musk and his allies, these problems may be features rather than bugs. The AI will help them rapidly cut the federal budget and assert their dominance over the government. So what if many fraud accusations are incorrect and some essential government operations get waylaid?”
8. How human rights groups default to anti-Israel positions
Why you should read it: The Atlantic staff writer Michael Powell reports how prominent human rights groups like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Doctors Without Borders have refused to take into account Israeli perspectives and concerns about their conflict with the Palestinians, to the point of excommunicating their own Israeli chapters.
“Amnesty’s goal was to serve as an advocate for victims and prisoners of conscience, and to stand apart from the polarized politics of the Cold War. The same ethos influenced the founders of Human Rights Watch and Doctors Without Borders… More recently, though, human-rights leaders have grown accustomed to looking at the complicated stew of politics and culture in Israel and Palestine and blaming Israel foremost. As the cultural and political left has come to dominate the human-rights community, young staffers with passionate ideological commitments have helped rewrite the agendas of the best-known organizations. Critical theories of social justice, built on binaries that categorize Palestinians as oppressed and Israel as the oppressor, now dominate many conversations about the Jewish state, which a constellation of groups casts as uniquely illegitimate—a regressive, racist ethnic ‘Western’ state in an Arab sea.”
“Human-rights groups fairly argue that disagreeing with Israel’s actions and policies is not anti-Semitic, but they have become more and more averse even to considering Israel’s side. ‘There’s clearly a leftist perspective that would like to do away with Israel,’ the longtime Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth told me. Roth led the group for decades before stepping down in 2022 and maintained that his former employer did not share this perspective. Some other former employees of the group disagreed. “The trend is to substitute ideology and personal belief for the principles of the human-rights movement,” Danielle Haas, who left her job as a senior editor at Human Rights Watch, told me… Major human-rights groups’ shift toward overt opposition to Israel has had the unusual effect of sidelining many of Israel’s own activists, who historically are among the sharpest critics of the Israeli government’s behavior in Gaza and the West Bank. These activists—along with many Jewish counterparts around the world—object to the reflexive condemnation of Israel and wrestle with questions they find vexing: How can the country protect itself from Hamas? What would a proportionate, defensible response to October 7 look like?”
Why it matters: “After leaving Amnesty, Dan Balson has found himself adrift. He has begun, with reluctance and disappointment, to wonder about the assumptions of so many in the human-rights movement. ‘Within Amnesty, the phrase ‘Criticism of Israeli policy is not anti-Semitism’ has taken on a kind of mystical significance,’ he told me. ‘It is repeated frequently and forcefully, in private and in public. Amnesty’s leadership appears to believe that, if said with the proper zeal and elocution, the phrase will magically ward off deeper scrutiny…’ [Roy] Yellin, the left-wing Israeli activist who has collaborated with major international groups, is even more disillusioned. ‘They think if they just scream ‘genocide’ and ‘apartheid,’ maybe we will go back to Europe… Some days I feel like I’ve just been a useful idiot.’”
9. Why Trump’s should properly be considered anti-constitutional
Why you should read it: New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie calls attention to the fact that President Trump’s illegal actions aren’t just unconstitutional but anti-constitutional, actively hostile and antithetical to any notion of constitutional self-government.
“Part of the conceptual basis of constitutionalism is a division between sovereignty and government. Sovereignty is the possession of supreme authority over the polity, and government is the instrument of that sovereignty. In an absolute monarchy or dictatorship, sovereignty belongs to the man or woman in charge, who commands the state in its entirety. In a constitutional system such as ours, sovereignty belongs to the people, who invest their authority in a set of rules and norms, a constitution, which binds and subordinates the government to their ultimate will… An anti-constitutional act is one that rejects the basic premises of constitutionalism. It rejects the premise that sovereignty lies with the people, that ours is a government of limited and enumerated powers and that the officers of that government are bound by law… The new president has, in just the first two months of his second term, performed a number of illegal and unconstitutional acts. But the defining attribute of his administration thus far is its anti-constitutional orientation. Both of its most aggressive and far-reaching efforts — the impoundment of billions of dollars in congressionally authorized spending and the attempt to realize the president’s promise of mass deportation — rest on fundamentally anti-constitutional assertions of executive authority.”
“President Trump is clearly not restrained by the Constitution. He’s also not restrained by another important element of constitutionalism — an interest in and concern for the future… But this future sense is missing from the president and his political movement. Set against it, [legal scholar Jack] Jackson correctly observes, is a ‘radicalized politics of apocalyptic orientation’ that ‘happily sacrifices the prospect of a future for a present-tense ‘victory’ or redefines the sacrifice of the future as victory itself.”’”
Why it matters: “When the president claims sovereign power to ignore Congress or deport foreign nationals without due process — when he treats the law as a suggestion, rejects any limits on his authority and makes the government his personal fief — he is both degrading the constitutional order and abdicating his responsibility to future generations of Americans. He is rejecting the obligation we have, as citizens, to carry on the effort to ‘form a more perfect union’ and ensure that ‘government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.’ He is selling our birthright so that he might enjoy a bit more power for the time he has left in office, indifferent to what it might mean for Americans yet to be born.”
Odds and Ends
How the James Webb Space Telescope found auroras on Neptune…
Paleontologists describe the recently-unearthed new species of dinosaur Duonychus tsogtbaatari as a “giant, feathered mix of a sloth and giraffe…”
How a trio of amateur mid-nineteenth century British linguists decoded the cuneiform writing of ancient Mesopotamia…
On the myriad receptions of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby over the century since its publication…
How Kurdish immigrants established themselves in Moorhead, Minnesota…
What I’m Listening To and Watching
Daredevil: Born Again, the revival of the Marvel television series featuring blind lawyer Matt Murdock and his superheroic, crime-fighting alter ego Daredevil (played by Charlie Cox) facing off against crime lord-cum-mayor of New York Wilson Fisk (Vincent D’Onofrio).
The Leopard, a lavish Italian-language Netflix adaptation of Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s 1958 novel about an aristocratic patriarch and his family confronting political and social change in 1860s Sicily.
Mickey 17, Oscar-winning director Bong Joon Ho’s black comedy science-fiction film starring Robert Pattinson as the title character, an “expendable” who does the dirty work for a space colonization mission and is repeatedly cloned back to life when he dies.
“Redemption Song,” a posthumously released Johnny Cash cover of a track from Sheryl Crow’s 1996 self-titled album.
“Better Days,” the second song off of Graham Nash’s 1971 solo debut album Songs for Beginners.
Image of the Month
