What I read today

Posted on by albrooke

Hope for the mind; mining SF for authoritarianism; seeing the obvious.

Billy Brennan, “Why Do some Dementia Patients ‘Return’ Just Before They Die?” The New York Times (July 14, 2026) [link], examines the scientific research into “paradoxical lucidity,” in which patients with dementia may display a recurrance of mental function even when the brain has deteriorated for years:

  • paradoxical lucidity seemed to offer an opportunity to scientifically investigate “the most fundamental question that we as humans have to grapple with”: the relationship between the body and the mind — and the nature of consciousness itself.

Ali Rıza Taşkale, “Silicon Valley has a science fiction problem,” Aeon (July 14, 2026) [link] looks at the science fiction narratives that the tech billionaires have cited for inspiration and proposes that their readings are narrow–supporting claims for authority, but ignoring their visions of unchecked technological optimism. Thus

  • Elon Musk and Star Trek, Blade Runner, Foundation,
  • Mark Zuckerberg and Snow Crash
  • Jeff Bezos, The High Frontier
  • Peter Thiel, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, The Lord of the Rings

Taşkale’s theme is that these fictional narratives do not present their technological futures as desirable, but that part is lost in the tech visionaries’ inspiration:

  • Perhaps nowhere is this more legible than in the naming of Palantir Technologies. J R R Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings (1937-49) is one of the great works of 20th-century literature precisely because it is an extended meditation on the corrupting nature of power. Written in the shadow of industrialised warfare and imperial extraction, it insists on the value of the small, the local and the unglamorous against the totalising ambition of industrial force. Its central moral is not that evil can be defeated by the right hero wielding the right weapon – it is that power itself corrupts, that the Ring cannot be used for good by anyone, and that the only salvation lies in relinquishing the will to dominate entirely. Tolkien’s fictional race of hobbits prevail not because they are powerful but because they are outside the logic of power.

Joe Posnanski, “The Obvious Answer,” Substack (July 16, 2026) [link] connects a wonderful story about casual English watchers of baseball and casual American watchers of soccer: “Sometimes the obvious answer is the right answer.”

Then

Posted on by albrooke

From Joe Poz (Joe Posnanski, “Chasing 3,000 Ks,” Joe Blogs (May 19, 2025) [link]):

  • When I was a kid, the big ballpark promotion was Bat Day. There were other cool giveaways — ball day, jacket day, cap day, T-shirt day, I think we did all of them because my father has always believed in getting value for his dollar — but bat day was the big one. I mean, they really used to give full-size (well, Little League-size) baseball bats to thousands and thousands of people. Were we a better society then? I mean, that obvious answer is: No. We were definitely NOT a better society then — for about 10,000 reasons. But it was a time when they could give bats to, say, 10,000 or 20,000 people and be confident that people would not use them to beat each other. That’s something.

Yeah, actually it is something.

Read, Feel, Think

Posted on by albrooke

Three great reads:

A very well-written piece on the value of (well-written) children’s literature by Lindsey Cornett, “The Gospel According to Charlotte’s Web” The Conversational Life (May 9, 2025) [link].

I particularly like:

  • But I love Charlotte’s Web most of all because it paints such a beautiful picture of the kingdom of God. When children’s literature is discussed in Christian circles, books like The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe often dominate the conversation, perhaps because we know so much about the faith of the author. I don’t know if E.B. White was a person of faith, but I do know that Charlotte’s Web portrays a counter-cultural way of living and honoring one another, of making our world more whole. On Zuckerman’s farm, it is the despised, the lowly, the feared—the rat, the pig, the spider—who are best able to see each creature for the gift they are and to create a home where all are seen and cared for. 

You will probably come out of this with a list of books to reread that you haven’t picked up in some time (or ever).

The great sportswriter, Joe Posnanski (joeblogs.com), is so prolific he cannot “stay in his lane.”

It is often quite magical when he veers off into other topics. This week he and his wife have a daughter graduating from college. His stories about taking Elizabeth to Harry Potter World (“Katie the Prefect” [link]) or taking her to Hamilton (“The Story of Tonight” [link]) will make you mist up. Today’s offering was about taking her to see Bruce Springsteen (“No Retreat, Baby” [link]). (If you don’t care for the sports, just scroll down.)

The baseball writing is pretty great, too (even though Joe is no fan of the Yankees).

Here’s something that will make you think! Mary Harrington, “The Female Gaze” Reactionary Feminist (May 2, 2025) [link]. (Don’t worry, you don’t have to agree with everything — that’s the thinking part.)