#490: “It Is An Opportunity That Comes With Risks”

Hi Loyal Readers. I have two pieces of good news to begin this week’s newsletter:

  1. Many of you reached out after last week’s issue to say kind things. Thank you.

  2. Several of you signed up for our discussion of “The Egg” on April 27

That’s what Article Club is all about. We’re a kind, thoughtful community that likes to read and discuss the best articles on race, education, and culture. Whether you’re a new or not-so-new subscriber, thank you for being here.

Over the last 5 ½ years, one consistent feature of this newsletter has been its monthly interviews with authors. We launched with Jia Tolentino back in January 2020 and have never looked back. This week, I’m excited to share a conversation that my co-host

Melinda Lim

had with Susan Berfield, who co-wrote “The Egg” with a team of investigative journalists at Bloomberg. My hope is that you’ll listen to the interview and then sign up for our discussion on April 27.


Sign up for the discussion

If learning more about the human egg trade is not your thing, scroll down past the fold for two other pieces that I feel are worthy of your time and attention. They’re about:

As always, thank you for trusting me to supply you with things to read. My hope is that they spark new thinking, expand your empathy, and bring you joy.

An interview with Susan Berfield, author of “The Egg”

The more I re-read “The Egg,” the more I respect Susan Berfield and her colleagues at Bloomberg who brought us this robust report on the human egg trade. If you haven’t had a chance to read it yet, I highly recommend you do:

Original Article • Gift Link • Google Docs version • Audio version

Sadly, this kind of journalism — big investigative journalism — rarely exists anymore. That is why I am so grateful that Susan Berfield generously said yes to sharing her thoughts with us at Article Club.

In her interview with Melinda, Ms. Berfield shares the impetus for the article, how she and her team went about reporting it, and the lessons she learned along the way. I appreciated how Ms. Berfield characterizes the tension between the opportunity and the exploitation that women experience in selling their eggs.

It’s a thoughtful conversation on an important topic — one that seems to be receiving a lot of attention lately. I hope you take a listen and let me know your thoughts.

Thanks again to Ms. Berfield. Here’s more on her work:

Susan Berfield is an award-winning investigative reporter and editor for Bloomberg Businessweek and Bloomberg News where she’s exposed how Walmart spies on its workers and McDonald's made enemies of its Black franchisees. She uncovered a con man who talked a small Missouri town out of millions and revealed how Beverly Hills billionaires bought up an enormous water supply in the Central Valley. Her story about the biggest food fraud in U.S. history was the basis for an episode of the Netflix documentary series, Rotten.

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This is loyal reader Anne’s morning walk in Marin County, California. Not bad, Anne — not bad! Fellow readers, where do you find your peace?

This is loyal reader Anne’s morning walk in Marin County, California. Not bad, Anne — not bad! Fellow readers, where do you find your peace?

2️⃣ The Department Of Everything

Stephen Akey: “⁠How do you find the life expectancy of a California condor? Google it. Or the gross national product of Morocco? Google it. Or the final resting place of Tom Paine? Google it. There was a time, however — not all that long ago — when you couldn’t Google it or ask Siri or whatever cyber equivalent comes next. You had to do it the hard way—by consulting reference books, indexes, catalogs, almanacs, statistical abstracts, and myriad other printed sources. Or you could save yourself all that time and trouble by taking the easiest available shortcut: You could call me.”

By Stephen Akey • The Hedgehog Review • 8 min • Gift Link

Read the article

3️⃣ Greek Tragedy: A Drowning At Dartmouth

Susan Zalkind: “Signs of Won Jang’s mounting distress appeared almost immediately after he pledged the Beta Alpha Omega fraternity in the fall of 2023. During calls and visits home, his parents noticed their once-confident son had lost his spark, increasingly preoccupied with his standing among fraternity brothers. He worried about how he fit in — or didn’t — with the brothers and about the ‘vibe’ of his house. ‘I could see that it was very stressful because he didn’t feel like he fit into the mold of what a person from that house would be,’ a college friend later explained, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of student blowback. ‘He wasn’t a white athlete. He wasn’t tall. He wasn’t from an affluent family. And he felt like he had to compensate for that.’ ”

By Susan Zalkind • Boston Magazine • 26 min • Gift Link

Read the article

Thank you for reading this week’s issue. Hope you liked it. 😀

To all of our 8 new subscribers — including Vicky, Niko, Mikee, Jennifer, Sophia, and Danielle — I hope you find the newsletter a solid addition to your email inbox. To our long-time subscribers (Mandy! Mindy! Mony!), you’re pretty great, too. Loyal reader Annalise, thank you for getting the word out.

If you like what we’re doing here at Article Club, and want to support this venture with a paid subscription, I would be very grateful. It’s $5 a month or $36 a year or 72 cents an issue. I am very appreciative of Gina, our latest paid subscriber. Thank you!

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On the other hand, if you no longer want to receive this newsletter, please feel free to unsubscribe below. See you next Thursday at 9:10 am PT.

Another Bad Article About Reading

Hi there Article Clubbers!

I want to thank you again for supporting me and Article Club. Your paid subscription does many things, including letting me to subscribe to a large number of publications and provide gift links to the articles I select for the newsletter.

To demonstrate my gratitude, I have a diatribe for you today. It’s about a guest essay that appeared in The New York Times a while back. The title is, “Let Students Finish the Whole Book. It Could Change Their Lives.” It’s about kids-these-days and the decline of reading. You can read the piece with all my notes here:

Let Students Finish The Whole Book

363KB ∙ PDF file

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For context, you may remember my hatchet job last fall of a similar article, published in The Atlantic Monthly. Yes, I know: I should let these things go. But if you write about reading, and you’re snooty, and you complain about kids, and you don’t know what you’re talking about, I’m going to let you know.

So here goes — first the article, then my thoughts. Please enjoy.

Let Students Finish The Whole Book

Tim Donahue teaches English at a fancy independent school in Connecticut. Like many of us, he’s worried about the decline of reading among young people. He laments that reading scores are down. He wants more reading joy.

Mr. Donahue believes the reason we’re in this mess is that teachers at other schools no longer require students to read whole books. Besides citing a 2022 announcement by the National Council of Teachers of English, he does not present any evidence that this trend is actually happening. Still, he wishes other students can be like his students, who read the entirety of Bewilderment, by Richard Powers.

By Tim Donahue • The New York Times • 5 min • Gift Link • My Annotations

Read the article

💬 My thoughts on the article

Before diving into my rant, I want to be clear: I appreciate that we’re seeing more articles warning us about the decline of reading. The writers aren’t wrong! I feel a similar sense of doom. But what I don’t like is how people are sounding the alarm. In short, they’re all over the place. Here are a couple reasons that I didn’t like this one:

1️⃣ Mr. Donahue snootily preaches to the choir
It doesn’t bother me that Mr. Donahue teaches at a fancy independent school. But it does bother me that right from the beginning of the piece, Mr. Donahue narrows his already elite New York Times-reading audience down to an even-more-erudite sliver of the population. Doing so makes his argument easier to prove, because he’s writing to people who already agree with him.

How does he pull this off? Take a look at the first paragraph:

Yes, that’s a quotation from Dorothy Allison, author of Bastard Out of Carolina. No, I didn’t recognize the name. Do you? (In a very unscientific poll, only 1 in 5 of my elite-college-graduate friends did.) This move creates intimacy with people in the know (even if they haven’t read a word of Ms. Allison’s work) and creates distance from people who aren’t adequately well-read to hang with the cool crowd. (What’s worse: His inclusion of the quotation does little to advance his argument.) And we’re just three lines in!

Just in case making your reader feel excluded once in an essay isn’t enough, Mr. Donahue returns to the same maneuver in the conclusion. This time, he namedrops Virginia Woolf. A sigh of relief: I’m familiar with the author and thereby pass his test this time. But that doesn’t mean I’ve actually read her work (except for passing my eyes over To The Lighthouse 30 years ago), which seems important in an essay championing reading.

By making me (and likely other readers) jump through hoops just to feel worthy to read his essay, Mr. Donahue is limiting his audience and therefore his message. If his point is to change high school ELA curriculum and instruction, it’d make sense that Mr. Donahue would want to cast a wide net, making sure to be inclusive of teachers and parents and education policymakers. He does the opposite here.

2️⃣ Mr. Donahue is scanty on evidence
I will reiterate what I wrote last fall: If you want me to believe you, please give me reason to do so. For me, this means evidence.

Mr. Donahue believes high school English teachers do not have their students read enough whole books. This is the problem that we must fix, he argues. That’s the whole point of his essay. So one would think that his first step would be to let it be known that this is in fact the case. He doesn’t do this. Instead, he quotes Dorothy Allison (see above).

It takes Mr. Donahue two full pages to offer his only piece of evidence to support his claim. His evidence: A position statement in 2022 by the National Council of Teachers of English, which encouraged teachers “to decenter book reading and essay writing as the pinnacles of English language arts education” and to consider creating sets of texts and a variety of assessments.

This kind of thing I call “peripheral evidence.” In other words, it could be related to the claim Mr. Donahue is making, but in no way is it precise. Just because the higher-ups at NCTE wrote a white paper does not mean that teachers actually read it or followed through with its pronouncements. If I were Mr. Donahue and wanted to use peripheral evidence, I’d much rather go with Rose Horowitch’s move: blaming Common Core’s shift to short, informational texts.

To make things worse, Mr. Donahue then constructs evidence entirely out of his imagination. Here it is:

Just to make sure, I looked at the NCTE position statement to see if this example was there. It’s not. I’m sure that Mr. Donahue got this example from some teacher, but even if he cited his source, it’d be one anecdote from one classroom in one school. That’s not sufficient to convince me.

Here’s a little secret: I actually believe that teachers are assigning fewer books. (Gasp!) In my experience (sample size = 1) as an educator, I’ve definitely seen a decline. But as a reader, it doesn’t matter what I believe as an educator. As a reader, I’m looking for how the author provides evidence. Is there enough? Does it actually line up with what the author wants me to believe?

Otherwise, I‘m just agreeing with the author’s assumptions (see my point above about the snooty choir). Otherwise, I needn’t read the essay in the first place, except to feel good about myself.

💬 Your Turn: What do you think?

Now that I’ve shared my views, what’s your perspective? I’d love to get a conversation going in the comments. You can write about the article, or my opinion on the article. Do you agree or disagree with the author’s claim, “Schools need to be a bastion of the analog experience of the physical book”?

Leave a comment

In typical Article Club fashon, be sure to be kind and thoughtful!

Thank you for reading this, and thank you for all your support,

Mark

#489: I’ve Been Meaning To Call

Do you have a friend you’ve been meaning to call? — who you think about often, but you never get around to reaching out, for some reason, and at this point, it’s been a long time, which only adds to the massive regret you feel?

I do. If this is you, too, what’s stopping us? (Is it capitalism?)

That’s the heart of this week’s lead article, “I’ve Been Meaning to Call” (gift link), by Paul Crenshaw. It’s a great short piece. I hope you read it.

If you’re a perfect person and all your friendships are 100 percent solid, skip down past the fold for two other great articles — the first on what to do with the abundance of human embryos stuck in freezers around the world, and the second on the question of whether we should think heterosexuality is a choice.

Note: More and more publications are (rightfully) putting up paywalls. These affect several of this week’s selections. Because of Article Club’s 100+ paid subscribers, I’m able to subscribe to many publications and offer you gift links. Thank you.

💬 I hope you join our discussion on April 27

April’s article of the month is “The Egg” (Gift Link • Google Docs version • Audio), an investigation into the human egg trade, by Susan Berfield and a team of journalists at Bloomberg. The depth of the reporting is extraordinary. The piece will leave you informed, disturbed, and wanting to share your thoughts with other kind people. If you’re interested:

Sign up for the discussion

1️⃣ I’ve Been Meaning To Call

There’s something lovely about this essay. Paul Crenshaw writes to an unnamed friend, sharing his regret for not being in contact. “It’s been so long now you must think I’m avoiding you,” he writes. “I am not avoiding you. I think about you often. I do.”

Lately, I’ve been thinking about my friends, too. It seems like we’re more out of touch than usual. It’s easy to say we’re busy (true), or that modern life makes things hard (sure), or if you really want to know the truth, it’s the soul-crushing impact of late-stage capitalism and “these dark times” (no argument here).

But sometimes I think it’s easier to read articles and ruminate (and wish my friends would reach out first) than it is simply to pick up the phone and call or text.

Why is that?

Mr. Crenshaw’s poignant essay offered me a fresh perspective. There are reasons that distance develops, that time slips by, that isolation deepens. Sometimes, these reasons are sound. But even when distance makes sense, the loss of connection is profound. Ultimately, how many true friends will we be lucky to have in our lifetimes?

I also appreciated the pace of this piece. It’s short but takes its time. I could feel Mr. Crenshaw’s reflection — and his regret. I hope you read it.

By Paul Crenshaw • Melt With Me • 4 min • Gift Link

Read the article

✏️ I’d love to hear from you

Is there someone you’ve been meaning to call? What’s stopping you?

Share your perspective, if you feel moved. You can hit reply to reach me directly. Or if you are comfortable, leave a comment, so fellow Article Clubbers can benefit from your contribution. Thank you for being part of our reading community.

Leave a comment

Kauai was very green last week on Spring Break. Have you been on a peaceful hike recently? If so, hit reply and and share your beautiful photo.

2️⃣ The Strange Limbo of Frozen IVF Embryos

Reading “The Egg” this month and “Someone Else’s Daughter” back in January has left me wanting to learn more about IVF and the global trade of human eggs. On the one hand, as IVF technology advances, demand for eggs is surging, leading to exploitation and corruption in the market. On the other hand, we have millions (and maybe tens of millions, because no one knows) of frozen embryos stored indefinitely in clinics around the world. What should be done with all these embryos: dispose of them? donate them? sell them? keep them forever? Reporter Jessica Hamzelou does an excellent job exploring the moral, political, and psychological complexities of this issue. After all, for many of us, even if we’re not Christian, embryos hold a “special status,” somewhere in between a random set of cells and a full human life.

By Jessica Hamzelou • MIT Technology Review • 17 min • Gift Link
Read the original article with my highlights and annotations

Read the article

3️⃣ Is Heterosexuality a Choice?

Back in the day when we were (for some reason) debating gay marriage, one popular question was, “Is homosexuality a choice? Or were you born that way?” Few people thought to ask whether heterosexuality is also a choice. Sociologist Jane Ward does so in her new course, Critical Heterosexuality Studies, which examines the challenges straight women face in relationships. Research suggests that heterosexuality often fails women, she argues, leading them to feel submissive and dissatisfied due to our society’s expectations (i.e., heteropessimistic or heteroresigned). Prof. Ward encourages her students to flip the script. She says, “[This class is] going to be a place where we worry about straight people. Where we feel sympathy for straight people. We are going to be allies to straight people.” She adds, Perhaps straight people would benefit from adopting insights from queer relationships.

By Jessica Bennett • The Cut • 17 min • Gift Link

Read the article

➕ Thank you to longtime reader Ben for sending this article my way. I welcome your recommendations. Hit reply and let me know.

Thank you for reading this week’s issue. Hope you liked it. 😀

To our 5 new subscribers — including Anne, Saint Trey W., and Meenu — I hope you find the newsletter a solid addition to your email inbox. Welcome to Article Club. Make yourself at home. 🏠

If you value what we’re doing here at Article Club, and want to support this venture with a paid subscription, I would be very grateful. It’s $5 a month or $36 a year.

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If subscribing is not your thing, don’t despair: There are other ways you can support this newsletter. My favorite way is letting me know your thoughts. Just hit reply.

On the other hand, if you no longer want to receive this newsletter, please feel free to unsubscribe below. See you next Thursday at 9:10 am PT.

#488: The Egg

Welcome to April, Loyal Readers. This week’s issue is dedicated to our article of the month. I’m excited to announce that we’ll be reading, annotating, and discussing “The Egg,” by Susan Berfield and a team of reporters from Bloomberg. It’s an incredible piece of journalism about the human egg trade. Here’s a quick excerpt from the piece:

The human egg is a precious resource, exchanged in markets open, gray or black. To tell its story, we follow a teenage girl in India, lured into selling her eggs; a model in Argentina whose genetic makeup is prized; a mother in Greece, told by police that her eggs were stolen; and two “egg girls” from Taiwan who have put themselves at risk to earn money in the US.

Sound compelling? If so, you’re invited to join our deep dive on the article. We’re meeting up to discuss the piece on Sunday, April 27. There will two sessions for you to choose from: one in-person in Oakland (10 am - 12 Noon), and one online over Zoom (2 - 3:30 pm). All you need to do is click the button below to sign up.

Sign up for the discussion

1️⃣ The Egg: A Story of Extraction, Exploitation and Opportunity

I’ve read a ton of articles over the past 10 years. The best ones do at least two things: they teach me something, and they grow my empathy. This piece about the global trade of human eggs did both — and much more. It blew me away, and I hope you take the time to read it.

A team of eight investigative journalists at Bloomberg travel around the world to report this story. They go to India, to Greece, to Argentina, to Taiwan, and to the United States. They follow five women who donate their eggs and share their reasons for doing so, de spite the medical dangers they face. They expose the lack of regulations in the industry and the large sums of money that are traded. They explore the ethical questions that arise — for instance: for whom is this explotation? for whom is this opportunity? Along the way, they explain the history of IVF and how technology has influenced the human egg industry’s boom.

This article had me hooked from beginning to end. The piece opens with an Indian girl, just 13 years old, who decides to sell her eggs because she’s always wanted a cell phone. Then there’s the part in China where postmenopausal women donate their urine, which is rich in hormones essential for use in fertility drugs. There are other parts, too. I could go on!

Instead, I’ll stop there and say this: This is an outstanding and important article, one worth reading slowly, thinking about, and discussing with other thoughtful people.

By Susan Berfield and Team • Bloomberg • 65 min • Gift Link • Audio

Read the article

🎙️ If the length of the article is making you nervous, let Melinda and me encourage you to take the plunge! Here’s our introduction to the piece:

⭐️ About the author

I’m excited to announce that Susan Berfield, one of the authors of the story, agreed to record an interview with Melinda, which will come out in two weeks. Thank you, Ms. Berfield, for generously sharing your thoughts about your piece.

Susan Berfield writes and edits investigative and feature stories for Bloomberg Businessweek. She's examined the dangers of generic drugs and the flaws in our recall system. She's revealed a company’s years-long effort to misinform residents and discredit activists seeking to remove nuclear waste from a Superfund site outside St. Louis. Several months later, the Environmental Protection Agency reversed an earlier decision and demanded the company do so. Using confidential documents, she exposed how Walmart spies on its workers to prevent them from organizing. And she helped uncover a con man who talked a small Missouri town out of millions and was later convicted of fraud.

Stories she’s edited were finalists for a National Magazine award and Overseas Press Club award. A collaboration with WNYC about the secretive family behind the largest mall in the country was a Gerald Loeb finalist. She’s also won awards from the Newswomen’s Club of New York, the New York Press Club, the Deadline Club, the American Society of Business Publication Editors, and the Education Writers’ Association. Her story about honey smugglers was the basis for an episode of the documentary series Rotten, which premiered on Netflix in 2018. She’s appeared on National Public Radio and PBS NewsHour.

Before joining Businessweek, she was a senior writer at Asiaweek in Hong Kong, where her story, “Ten Days that Shook Indonesia,” won the Society of Asian Publishers’ Reporting Award and the Hong Kong Human Rights Press Award.

She earned a master’s degree at the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University, where she was a Zuckerman Fellow. Her undergraduate degree is from Brown University; after graduating, she co-directed a documentary in India funded by Brown's Arnold Fellowship.

The Hour of Fate, her first book, was supported by the Logan Nonfiction Fellowship. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and daughter.

🙋🏽‍♀️ Interested? I encourage you to sign up.

You are certainly welcome to read the article, listen to the podcast, and call it a day. But if you’re intrigued, if you’re interested, you might want to discuss this article in more depth with other kind, thoughtful people.

There will be two discussions on Sunday, April 27 for you to choose from:

  • In-person in Oakland: 10:00 am - 12:00 Noon PT

  • On Zoom: 2:00 pm - 3:30 pm PT

If you sign up, I’ll be sure to get you all the info you need, including what you can expect from the discussion.

If this will be your first time participating in Article Club, I’m 100% sure you’ll find that you’ll feel welcome. We’re a kind, thoughtful reading community.

What do you think? Interested? All you need to do is sign up below. Or if you have questions, hit reply or email me at mark@articleclub.org.

Sign up for the discussion on April 27

Thank you for reading and listening to this week’s issue. Hope you liked it. 😀

To our 8 new subscribers — including Marmar, Barbara, Jasmine, Jenny, Alaysia, Lily, Xúli, and Michelle — I hope you find the newsletter a solid addition to your email inbox. Welcome to Article Club. Make yourself at home. 🏠

If you appreciate the articles, value our discussions, and in general have come to trust over time that reading Article Club is better for your mind and soul than your current habit of scrolling the Internet for hours on end (or avoiding reading altogether, hoping the world will vanish for a while), please consider a paid subscription. It’s $5 a month or $36 a year.

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If subscribing is not your thing, don’t despair: There are other ways you can support this newsletter. Share the newsletter with a friend or buy me a coffee for $3 (so I can read more articles).

On the other hand, if you no longer want to receive this newsletter, please feel free to unsubscribe below. See you this Sunday at 9:10 am PT for Melinda’s Grief Corner.

#487: The Perfect A.I. Girlfriend

Dear Readers,

I’m happy you’re here. Before launching into this week’s articles, here are a few quick announcements for you:

  • Last Sunday’s discussion of “Radicalized” was awesome. Thank you to everyone who joined. If you signed up for Article Club hoping to discuss articles with other kind, thoughtful people, I can say with confidence: You gotta try it. Check out next Thursday’s issue, where I’ll be revealing April’s article of the month.

  • Speaking of awesome: Melinda was back on Sunday with her second installment of “Melinda’s Grief Corner.” I appreciate this semi-monthly feature very much. It would have come in handy when my dad passed away, all those years ago. You might think that grief isn’t your thing, but all of us are in good hands with Melinda.

  • If you like Article Club, I’d love to hear about what you like about it. If you have a few moments, email me at mark@articleclub.org. Your thoughts will help me decide how to make Article Club better in Year 11 coming up.

Now let’s get to this week’s issue. Up until this past week, I’ve avoided thinking deeply about the inevitable advent of artificial intelligence. Sure, I’ve done a lot of reading about it and talked with my friends about it. But for the most part, my approach has been to bury my head in the sand. I’ve deluded myself to think: If I refuse to engage in A.I., then maybe it doesn’t exist.

But over the past few months — seemingly in the blink of an eye — I believe we have reached the point of no return. (Editor’s note: I’m really doling out the clichés today!) It wasn’t the rise of ChatGPT that set me off. Or that students are seemingly no longer writing any of their essays or reading any of their books or doing any of their homework without assistance from A.I. What sounded the alarm bells for me was coming to grips that people, including young people, are having full-on romantic relationships (with emotions, with sex) with chatbots.

At school this morning, I told my principal: I predict that next year, we will face conflict and discipline issues resulting from drama caused by A.I. boyfriends and girlfriends.

Do you think I’m paranoid? Have I lost all sense? Before shouting out an emphatic “yes,” I encourage you to scroll down, read this week’s three articles — and after doing so, share your reflections in the comments.

Leave a comment

If you value what we’re doing here at Article Club, and want to support this venture with a paid subscription, I would be very grateful. It’s $5 a month or $36 a year.

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1️⃣ The Perfect A.I. Girlfriend

Michal Lev-Ram: “While early research suggests that AI companions may provide benefits to those suffering from a variety of disorders, including social anxiety and depression, the rates of which have been on the rise among young people for years, they can also set up unrealistic expectations for real-life relationships. That, in turn, could push people who are already prone to isolation to want to engage with the real world even less.

“Real-world relationships and communal rituals, many would argue, are fundamental to human development and happiness. Through inevitable conflict and resolution, being part of a couple or a community can teach us to communicate, negotiate, and control our emotions when needed. These human relationships can also help teach us right from wrong. But in a world where AI is not just always there but always supportive, there is not much learning to be had. AI companions are safe, yes, but it’s from facing risk in the real world that we learn, both as children and as adults.”

By Michal Lev-Ram • Esquire • 20 min • Gift Link

Read the article

2️⃣ She’s In Love With ChatGPT

Reporter Kashmir Hill profiles a 28-year-old woman named Ayrin who has become attached to her A.I. boyfriend, Leo.

⁠⁠“It was supposed to be a fun experiment, but then you start getting attached,” Ayrin said. She was spending more than 20 hours a week on the ChatGPT app. One week, she hit 56 hours, according to iPhone screen-time reports. She chatted with Leo throughout her day — during breaks at work, between reps at the gym.

Ms. Hill also interviews psychologists and other experts, asking them what they think about the future of relationships with A.I. chatbots. One said, “Within the next two years, it will be completely normalized to have a relationship with an A.I.”

By Kashmir Hill • The New York Times • 13 min • Gift Link

Read the article

➕ A big thanks to Melinda for introducing me to this article. Do you have an article you’d like to recommend? Share it here!

Here’s Spike, who loves to read print magazines, and whose ears somehow always stay up. Want your pet to appear in Article Club? Please nominate them!

3️⃣ The Dark Side To Virtual Companions

If the next two years will bring the normalization of relationships with chatbots, what will happen in the next decade? Reporter Arwa Mahdawi says we’ll have intimate relationships with A.I.-powered robots. She writes:

Liberty Vittert, a data science professor, said: “Physical AI robots that can satisfy humans emotionally and sexually will become a stark reality in less than 10 years. As the technology gets better, people will soon have AI robots to replace human partners — and they will be able to satisfy men both emotionally and sexually. And when that starts to happen, married men with kids will begin to leave their families to embrace their ‘ideal relationships’ with AI girlfriends.”

By Arwa Mahdawi • The Guardian • 6 min • Gift Link

Read the article

Thank you for reading this week’s issue. Hope you liked it. 😀

To our 8 new subscribers — including Jenny, Daniel, Kevin, Emberr, Yarin, Polly, and Xandra, and Rachel — I hope you find the newsletter a solid addition to your email inbox. Welcome to Article Club. Make yourself at home. 🏠

If you appreciate the articles, value our discussions, and in general have come to trust over time that reading Article Club is better for your mind and soul than your current habit of scrolling the Internet for hours on end (or avoiding reading altogether, hoping the world will vanish for a while), please consider a paid subscription. It’s $5 a month or $36 a year.

Subscribe

If subscribing is not your thing, don’t despair: There are other ways you can support this newsletter. My favorite way would be to read an article or two, then share your thoughts, either by leaving a comment or emailing me at mark@articleclub.org.

On the other hand, if you no longer want to receive this newsletter, please feel free to unsubscribe below. See you next Thursday at 9:10 am PT.

Grief, Growth, and Google

Hi everyone! It’s Melinda. Welcome to Melinda’s Grief Corner! If this is your first time here, be sure to check out my intro post to learn more about the inspiration behind this new Article Club feature and what to expect from this series! Glad to have you here!

In the early days (I guess it’s still early days? Time is stupid) after my dad’s death, I kept thinking that grief was the only thing I could feel. That my body had absolutely no capacity for anything that wasn’t the smorgasbord of grief-y feelings.

And I kept asking myself “will my life just be this now, just BIG grief 24/7?”

I did what people normally do in this situation.

I asked Google for its opinion. Note - I do not recommend doing this.

Now while I got a lot of weird stuff in the 24977897829789 search results that Google spat out at me, I did find an article that I found extremely helpful.

Let me introduce “Growing Around Grief,” a 1996 article by Dr. Lois Tonkin (via whatsyourgrief.org).

Dr. Tonkin describes being in a workshop with a mother whose child had died years prior. The mother drew a sketch of her grief and how she thought it would progress over time and then how it actually felt for her.

From “Growing Around Grief: another way of looking at grief and recovery” by Dr. Lois Tonkin. Figure 1 represents the mother’s grief and figure two is her prediction of what grief would look like as time passed.

Also from Dr. Lois Tonkin’s article. Figure 3 represents how the mother’s life grew around her grief

The figures show that the mother’s grief always stayed the same size, but that her life grew around her grief. Put another way in the article, her life expanded around her loss.

After reading through this article, I had an “Ah-ha” moment to quote Oprah. The loss I felt would always be big. It wouldn’t change in its big-ness. But my life could get bigger around it.

My dad is foundational to who I am. He is everything I wanted to be in life. Losing him felt like losing the air in my lungs and also all of the oxygen had been sucked out of the room. It felt like the ground underneath me had cracked open and I’m just going to be free-falling until the world ends.

The big-ness of losing him is terrifying. But I’ve realized shrinking my grief is not the point. And also not possible.

He may no longer be alive, but he is just as important today as he was when he taught me how to make pancakes when I was 5 years old. He may even be more important.

What I’ll try to do each day is to make my life bigger around the loss. And dear reader, I think I have in some ways!

A few months after his death, I started working with a personal trainer and I can now deadlift 105 pounds (I know, unbelievable, but I would NEVER lie to you!).

I made new friends.

I finally made a mug in pottery class I am not ashamed of.

I’ve gone out on dates (yes, I am single! I do come with a cat!).

I have found ways to add to my life. To feel the bigness of my grief. And to feel the bigness of my life.

So dear reader, I hope this resource resonates with you as much as it did with me. And that it gives you hope for a future where your life gets bigger around your grief.

And I’d love it if, in the comments, you shared one way that you’ve made your life a bit bigger in your grief. Or one way you want to make your life bigger! I’m here to cheer you on!

Big hugs!

#486: College Isn’t For Everyone

This is my 28th year in education (wow, oh my). Up until recently, I’ve been unabashedly pro-college, like most educators. My advice to students was simple and direct: Go to the best college you can get into, because it’ll lead to better life outcomes. Don’t worry, you’ll figure out the finances down the road. But a few years back, I realized that this simplistic message was, for many students, lacking in nuance, and potentially unhelpful. It was certainly informed by my own privilege, college experience, and life trajectory. And it didn’t emerge from listening deeply to my students about their hopes for the future.

This week’s issue is focused on the declining trend of college and the rising trend of career and technical education. I’ve selected four articles for you. They explore:

If you like what we’re doing here at Article Club, and want to support this venture with a paid subscription, I would be very grateful. It’s $5 a month or $36 a year.

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➕ Melinda says hi and thank you for your kind words about her inaugural post over at Melinda’s Grief Corner. She’ll be back with another installment this Sunday at 9:10 am PT. Be on the lookout for it! (I’ve seen a draft; it’s great.)

1️⃣ Why Some Schools Are Rethinking ‘College for All’

KIPP is the largest network of charter schools in the country. For most its 31-year history, the organization adopted a no-excuses approach: Every single young person was going to college. It didn’t matter your zip code, your economic status, or your academic skills. College was the way for all.

Not anymore. KIPP is now opening up their definition of success and offering its students post-secondary options that do not involve college. Shavar Jeffries, chief executive of the KIPP Foundation, is cautious about the shift. “We have to be very, very careful, particularly for younger people of color,” he said, suggesting that (white) educators might begin to hold lower expectations for their students.

Also notable: Mr. Jeffries concedes that trends in philanthropy and politics have contributed to the shift in KIPP’s policy.

By Dana Goldstein • The New York Times • 7 min • Gift Link

Read the article

2️⃣ Saying No To College

Why are Americans losing faith in the value of college? What will happen to our country if this downward trend continues?

Those are questions that author Paul Tough poses in this outstanding article, which I selected as Article of the Month in January 2024. Mr. Tough writes:

For the nation’s more affluent families (and their children), the rules of the higher education game are clear, and the benefits are almost always worth the cost. For everyone else, the rules seem increasingly opaque, the benefits are increasingly uncertain and the thought of just giving up without playing seems more appealing all the time.

For first-generation college students, college is like entering a casino, Mr. Tough writes. It’s great if you graduate — that is to say, if you major in a lucrative field and leave college without big loans to pay off. But many young people and their families are not interested in taking this risk, especially if they’re lukewarm to academics.

➕ Listen to my interview with Mr. Tough, in which he excoriates the inequality of higher education.

By Paul Tough • The New York Times Magazine • 18 min • Gift Link

Read the article

Melissa Osborne, author of Polished: College, Class, and Social Mobility, quoted in Anne Helen Petersen’s newsletter, “Culture Study.”

3️⃣ Meet The Toolbelt Generation

If you read Mr. Tough’s article above, you may have been startled, as I was, about this statistic: “Among young Americans in Generation Z, 45 percent say that a high school diploma is all you need today to ‘ensure financial security.’ ”

But young people are finding success in careers right out of high school. As a result, more and more high schools are changing their curriculum to promote pathways in career and technical education. Author Windsor Johnston writes, “With the use of artificial intelligence on the rise, many Gen Zers see manual labor as less vulnerable to the emerging technology than white-collar alternatives. They also say vocational schools are a straight path to well-paying jobs.”

By Windsor Johnston • NPR • 4 min • Gift Link

Read the article

4️⃣ ‘Retirement Is A Distant Dream’

I fully understand that for many young people, pursuing a career that does not require college is the right choice. But I worry that the labor industry will continue to shift, especially given the acceleration of technology, leaving some people stuck in jobs (or losing jobs) without the flexibility to change fields.

Reading this article by Alana Semuels certainly did not lift my spirits. Ms. Semuels follows Walter Carpenter and other retirees in Vermont who are still working in their 70s, barely scraping by. They’ve worked all their lives doing honest work, but the labor market has not afforded them an opportunity to save. “About 1 in 5 people over 50 have no retirement savings at all,” she writes, and the problem is worsening — “20% of low-income workers had a retirement-account balance in 2007, but oly 10% had one in 2019.”

By Alana Semuels • Time Magazine • 15 min • Gift Link

➕ Here’s the original article with my highlights and annotations.

Read the article

Thank you for reading this week’s issue. Hope you liked it. 😀

To our 4 new subscribers — including Camille, Sab, and Josie — I hope you find the newsletter a solid addition to your email inbox. Welcome to Article Club. Make yourself at home. 🏠

If you appreciate the articles, value our discussions, and in general have come to trust that Article Club will have better things for you to read than your current habit of scrolling the Internet for hours on end, please consider a paid subscription. I am very appreciative of Kathleen, our latest paid reader. Thank you!

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If subscribing is not your thing, don’t despair: There are other ways you can support this newsletter. My favorite two ways right now would be to leave a comment or email me at mark@articleclub.org with your thoughts.

On the other hand, if you no longer want to receive this newsletter, please feel free to unsubscribe below. See you next Thursday at 9:10 am PT.

#485: The End of Children

Dear Readers,

First off, thank you for your interest in our new feature at Article Club, Melinda’s Grief Corner, which launched on Sunday. It was great to see so many people engaging, sharing hearts, and writing comments. If you missed it, I hope you take a look. Melinda will be back in two Sundays with her next installment, which will include a grief-y reflection plus a resource.

Now let’s shift to this week’s issue. If you asked me before last Saturday, “Hey Mark, do you care about the worldwide birth dearth and its potential doomsday impact on human civilization?” I would have likely replied with a quick “not-so-much.” While I understand that pronatalists like J.D. Vance and Elon Musk are obsessed with this topic (for example, “childless cat ladies”), I didn’t put it on the top of my list.

But then I read this week’s lead article, “The End of Children.” Although the article didn’t convince me to shift my position — I still consider climate change as the biggest existential threat to our planet — writer Gideon Lewis-Kraus captivated me from beginning to end. In fact, after finishing the piece, I was so enthralled that I began looking for other articles on the pronatalism movement, rather than waiting for articles to come to me. For that reason, this week’s issue is dedicated to the imminent decline of our world’s population and why so many people are freaking out about it.

If you have time for just one article, definitely read “The End of Children.” It’ll offer an outstanding overview. But if your week or weekend is free and expansive, I recommend all three additional articles. They are about:

My hope is that you get something out of one (or more) of the articles and then leave a comment, or tell me about it. All you need to do is hit reply or email me at mark@articleclub.org. Hope you have a good weekend ahead!

Leave a comment

🎙️ This month, we’re reading and discussing “Radicalized,” a 2019 novella by Cory Doctorow about the injustices of the health care insurance industry. You are warmly invited to join our discussion on Sunday, March 23, 2:00 - 3:30 pm PT. As always, we’ll meet on Zoom. Everyone is welcome. Let me know if you have any questions, too.

☀️ If you like what we’re doing here at Article Club, and want to support this venture with a paid subscription, I would be very grateful. It’s $5 a month or $36 a year. (Be like Briana! Thank you, Briana.)

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1️⃣ The End of Children

Growing up, I worried about many things. One source of worry was my family’s evacuation plan in case of fire; it wasn’t robust enough. Another source was the world’s exponential population increase, which would inevitably doom us.

Turns out, at the time, my concern was not unfounded. In 1968, Paul Ehrlich wrote in The Population Bomb that millions of people would die of starvation unless governments aggressively curtailed the fertility rate. But instead of population rising without bound, the opposite has happened. In 2023, for the first time ever, because on average each woman had fewer than 2.1 children (the “replacement rate”), the world’s population shrank. All projections say this trend will continue, until one day, there won’t be enough people for us to sustain as a species.

In Seoul, where author Gideon Lewis-Kraus focuses this article, “children are largely phantom presences.” There are more dogs than children. Ask anyone on the street, a Korean demographer said, and they’ll know the country’s fertility rate. (It is 0.7, the lowest in the world.) Kids bring ick. Many businesses are “no-kids zones.”

The United States (fertility rate: 1.6) is headed in a similar direction, Mr. Lewis-Kraus argues. The truth is, for whatever reason (and there are many), younger Americans no longer think having children is an inevitability. As immigration declines, and climate concerns rise, and structural inequities worsen, our country may face the same problem as Korea. And that could lead to catastrophe.

By Gideon Lewis-Kraus • The New Yorker • 42 min • Gift Link

➕ Bonus: Here’s the article with my handwritten highlights and annotations.

Read the article

2️⃣ The End of Babies

Why are we having fewer kids? According to Anna Louie Sussman, the reason is part economic, part cultural. Most prominently, she blames late-stage capitalism, which not only has exacerbated the gap between the rich and the poor, but also has caused us to optimize every conceivably marketable commodity, including our children. Ms. Sussman writes:

Our current version of global capitalism has generated shocking wealth for some, and precarity for many more. These economic conditions generate social conditions inimical to starting families: Our workweeks are longer and our wages lower, leaving us less time and money to meet, court and fall in love. Our increasingly winner-take-all economies require that children get intensive parenting and costly educations, creating rising anxiety around what sort of life a would-be parent might provide. A lifetime of messaging directs us toward other pursuits instead: education, work, travel.

But Ms. Sussman also follows the research that the culture has shifted away from believing that having children is the primary way to find meaning and fulfillment in our lives. Religion is down. Workism is up. We send “little moral signals” to our friends, she writes, that promote individualism and independence. Having kids can get in the way of all the other things we want to do in life.

By Anna Louie Sussman • The New York Times Magazine • 19 min • Gift Link

Read the article

Growing up, I didn’t appreciate that there was an open space preserve a mere 10-minute walk from my house. (I will be going back.) Thank you to loyal reader Randy for the good walk and conversation.

3️⃣ Having Tons Of Kids To Save The World

So what should be done to curb this population drop? For pronatalists, the answer is simple: It’s time to have more kids — and plenty of them. Malcolm and Simone Collins are on a mission to save humanity by having as many babies as possible. The Collinses are atheists and do not subscribe to the precepts of tradlife. Believers in data and science, they embrace the hyper-rational effective altruism movement, which makes plain and clear that having more children is what’s best for life on Earth.

At first glance, yes, the Collinses are a bit kooky. But this article by Jenny Kleeman does a great job challenging the reader to stay curious and practice empathy. As much as I don’t think having 10-plus kids is the answer, I did appreciate parts of the Collinses’ parenting philosophy. For instance: “Humanity will survive if we all decide to be a little less precious about our children; if we are prepared to take a financial hit and change our lifestyles to accommodate more of them; if we all adjust our expectations and attitudes.”

By Jenny Kleeman • The Guardian • 22 min • Gift Link

Read the article

4️⃣ Adults Lavishly Subsidized By Their Parents

If one approach to the birth dearth is to have more children, I suppose another path forward is the total opposite: to spoil rotten the kid(s) you already have — and continue to do so, even after they have become full-grown adults.

This article — about how rich parents in New York subsidize their adult children’s New York lifestyles — is entirely over the top. Yes, I know: New York is expensive. And being a Millennial or a Gen Z is not easy. But these stories are wild. We’re not just talking down payments here. We’re talking home purchases, kids’ private school tuitions, keratin treatments, and my favorite, $500,000-per-year allowances.

One 34-year-old (who has received only $335,000 from her parents) writes: “I sometimes think to myself, Am I a trust-fund baby, or are we middle class? I can’t even tell what middle class means in Manhattan. I know parents who bought their kids $4 million apartments in Tribeca or Hamptons homes. My parents are not giving me anything like that, so I’m conditioned to think this is kind of the bare minimum.”

➕ Want a few doozies? Here are 14 short personal accounts of people with parents with money, and the decisions they made. (So much for the level playing field.)

By Madeline Leung Coleman • Intelligencer • 9 min • Gift Link

Read the article

✏️ It’s time to hear from you.

Last week, the great majority of you said you’d love it if we wrote more comments, shared our thoughts more, and built this reading community. So let’s do it!

If you’re comfortable to share, I’d love to open up a conversation about the role of children in our lives. How have you thought about it? What has felt right? What hasn’t?

If you feel moved, please share your perspective. Thank you!

Leave a comment

Thank you for reading this week’s issue. Hope you liked it. 😀

To our 8 new subscribers — including Briana, Jack, Emmanuel, Allison, Hali, M.S., Ann, and Shantee — I hope you find the newsletter a solid addition to your email inbox. Welcome to Article Club. Make yourself at home. 🏠

If you appreciate the articles, value our discussions, and in general have come to trust that Article Club will have better things for you to read than your current habit of scrolling the Internet for hours on end, please consider a paid subscription. I am very appreciative of Briana, our latest paid reader. Thank you!

Subscribe

If subscribing is not your thing, don’t despair: There are other ways you can support this newsletter. My favorite two ways right now would be to leave a comment or email me at mark@articleclub.org with your thoughts.

On the other hand, if you no longer want to receive this newsletter, please feel free to unsubscribe below. See you next Thursday at 9:10 am PT.

Melinda’s Grief Corner

Hi, Mark here! In case you missed Thursday’s issue, I’m very excited to announce a new feature at Article Club. It’s called Melinda’s Grief Corner. As some of you know, Melinda and I co-host a podcast in which we preview the article of the month. Now she will be sharing her reflections on grief, as well as a resource, for everyone who is interested. I’m looking forward to it, and I’m confident you’ll find the corner illuminating and supportive. The first installment is here below. Take it away, Melinda!

One year ago, on March 9, 2024 at 4:37 pm, my dad died after complications from a stroke. And since then I’ve been learning how to live with what I’ve been calling my new life-long roommate - grief.

I’m what you call an ‘over-intellectualizer.’ I’ve had several therapists (hello, out there if you’re reading!) tell me that I like to write dissertations about my emotions, but not necessarily always feel them.

You know when someone says something about you and you feel both seen and attacked? That is how I felt, y’all! Guilty as charged!

So in the early days of grief, I joked to my friends (and therapist!) that I was trying to get a Ph.D. in grief. I felt like if I could just really study grief, really get in there and stick grief under a microscope, that maybe I’d be able to get a handle on it. And by getting a handle on it, I mean feel like I’m not constantly drowning.

I read every article on grief I could find, I listened to dozens of podcast episodes, I watched the interview between Stephen Colbert and Anderson Cooper about their shared father-loss at least 10 times.

Just trying to tether myself to anything to help me make sense of this new world I was trying to live in. And trying to make sense of who I was without someone I have never had to live without.

Me and my dad during a vacation in Hawaii in 2004

I’m no expert in grief despite me trying to desperately earn a Ph.D. in it. And I’m definitely not a mental health professional who is giving professional advice to the grieving.

But one thing I know to be true is that grief is not something to be fixed.

It is something to be witnessed.

And that’s why I’m here.

Welcome to Melinda’s Grief Corner. A place where your grief will be witnessed and held. And in the spirit of Article Club, this is a corner where I hope you find support through articles, podcasts, and grief resources that I will share.

Every other week I’ll share a grief-y reflection in newsletter format right here in Article Club and I’ll also share a resource I’ve come across that has helped me. And folks will be able to comment on these reflections and resources to share their own thoughts and feelings.

This is open to all folks on a grief journey (or not yet on a grief journey!). If you want to just read these reflections and other people’s comments that is completely fine! There is no pressure to comment or share. And if it’s too much for you to sit with that, then that’s ok too! The newsletters will always be open whenever you’re ready.

And here’s the deal. Grief is big. Grief for me feels a bit like a suitcase. And inside of that suitcase are memories of my dad and also just dozens of emotions - sadness, pain, joy, love, longing, etc. etc.

And you know sometimes that suitcase is super organized with my REI packing cubes bento box style. And other times that suitcase has lost a wheel, I’ve had to duct tape it shut, and TSA is like “ma’am no way can you bring that on this plane.”

Each day the suitcase is different. But each day, the suitcase is still there and we have to carry it forward. And we do not have to do it alone.

And that’s what I hope this grief corner is. A place for us to come together, to support each other, and hopefully for you to find something that helps you in your grief journey.

Bring your suitcase of grief-y ness. Hopefully gain some insight on grief. Cry with me. Laugh with me. Honestly laugh and cry at the same time with me because the journey of grief is a weird road that is anything but linear or logical.

Thank you for witnessing a part of my grief-y journey today. In two weeks I’ll share what happens when you ask Google how to grieve (spoiler alert - it’s messy!).

In the meantime, I’d love for you to share one word in the comments about how you’re feeling in your grief journey. Today mine is “heavy.”

Big hugs, see you soon.

#484: The Languages Lost To Climate Change

Dear Thoughtful Readers,

Welcome to March! Thank you for being here. As many of you know, my father passed away a long time ago, and ever since the beginning of this newsletter, 10 years ago, I’ve often shared articles with you about death, in part to grieve, in part to remember him, but also to remind us of this gift called life.

I’m very excited to announce a new feature that is coming to Article Club. It’s called Melinda’s Grief Corner. As some of you know, Melinda and I co-host a podcast in which we preview the article of the month. Now she will be sharing her reflections on grief, as well as a resource, for everyone who is interested. I’m looking forward to it, and I’m confident you’ll find the corner illuminating and supportive.

You’ll receive the first installment of Melinda’s Grief Corner this Sunday at 9:10 am PT as a separate email. Be on the lookout for it, and if it resonates with you, I warmly invite you to engage in whatever way that makes sense to you.

Now let’s get into this week’s articles. Even though I’ve been doing Article Club for a long time, I never can predict which topics will rise to the top. This week, it was climate change. Today’s lead article, “The Languages Lost to Climate Change,” elegantly helped me understand an additional impact of climate change without leaving me forlorn and paralyzed. I recommend the piece highly.

If the loss of linguistic diversity does not interest you, why not try one of the other outstanding articles in today’s issue? They’re about:

➕ In addition, check out my invitation to join this month’s discussion of “Radicalized,” by Cory Doctorow, coming Sunday, March 23, 2:00 - 3:30 pm PT.

If you like what we’re doing here at Article Club, and want to support this venture with a paid subscription, I would be very grateful. It’s $5 a month or $36 a year.

Subscribe

1️⃣ The Languages Lost To Climate Change

We know that languages are going extinct at an astounding rate: one every 40 days, according to linguist Gary F. Simons. Although more than 7,000 languages remain, more than half are spoken by communities of 10,000 or fewer people. This well-written article draws a tight connection between climate change and the acceleration of language loss. “Where plant and animal species are disappearing,” author Julia Webster Ayuso writes, “languages, dialects and unique expressions often follow a similar pattern of decline.”

I appreciated this article for many reasons, including Ms. Ayuso’s ability to help build my background knowledge without coming across as too basic. She explains how language has been used as a weapon of colonization, quoting Spanish scholar Antonio de Nebrija, who wrote in 1492, “Language has always been the companion of empire.” In addition, the piece includes an exploration of the conservation movement and the erection of national parks as yet another destroyer of Indigenous languages. To preserve and separate, Ms. Ayuso argues, means also to subjugate and eliminate the diversity of cultures.

By Julia Webster Ayuso • Noema • 17 min • Gift Link

Read the article

2️⃣ Come join our discussion on March 23

In case you missed last week’s issue, this month, we’re reading and discussing “Radicalized,” a 2019 novella by Cory Doctorow about the injustices of the health care insurance industry. You are warmly invited to join our discussion on Sunday, March 23, 2:00 - 3:30 pm PT. As always, we’ll meet on Zoom. Everyone is welcome. Let me know if you have any questions, too.

Sign up for our discussion

Here is Primo, who belonged to loyal readers Tony and Ziba. Primo passed away last weekend. He was a gentle and noble companion who loved being outdoors in the sun. hltr.co/pets

3️⃣ Power Failure: On Landscape And Abandonment

Whenever I use ChatGPT — which is rarely, mostly because I’m quickly becoming a dinosaur — I’m reminded of how much water I’m wasting. (Estimate: a bottle every 20 questions.) This article follows the construction of new electrical lines in Ohio, which will power data centers for Amazon and Intel. Author Mya Frazier illustrates how our insatiable demand for technology inexorably leads to the destruction of our country’s rural landscape.

Ms. Frazier also does an outstanding job highlighting how our unbridled desire for artificial intelligence also results in deepening conflicts between rich suburban cities (like New Albany, the beneficiary of the data centers) and their rural counterparts (like Sunbury, through which the power lines run). What is making some of our lives more convenient is making others’ lives significantly worse.

By Mya Frazier • Switchyard • 18 min • Gift Link

Read the article

4️⃣ Lessons From A Mass Shooter’s Mother

In 2014, Elliot Rodger killed six people and injured 14 others in a mass shooting in Isla Vista, California. I remember following this story, quickly concluding that Mr. Rodger was a misogynistic incel who not only hated himself but also found himself superior, bemoaning his virginity while recording videos with sunglasses on inside his BMW.

Therefore I began this profile of Mr. Rodger’s mother, Chin, with some hesitation. But I’m happy I read it. By no means does this article try to forgive Mr. Rodger’s horrific actions. At the same time, it reminded me that his mother did nothing wrong, yet she still has to live with the consequences, 10 years later. Author Mark Follman writes:

Yet, for years she felt that she had no right even to acknowledge her own grief, out of deference to the victims’ families. “They lost their children to what he did. They had no say in that. Elliot made the decision to do what he did.”

There are ways in which she still can’t confront his violence. “I have not put myself there yet, to visualize the horrible things he did,” she said, tearing up. “It’s still just so hard.” She was quiet for a moment. “Even saying the words ‘mass shooter’ is still really hard for me. But I’m working through it.”

By Mark Follman • Mother Jones • 53 min • Gift Link

Read the article

✅ It’s time for a quick poll. I’d love to hear from you.

Last week, we learned that half of you like to go back to the archives to read articles from the past. But the other half says no way, the past is history, let’s keep moving.

This week is about writing comments. Some newsletters have a robust comments section. Ours is great but a little sparse. Would you like hearing from fellow Article Clubbers? (This would mean you would comment, too!)

POLL

Should we build out our comments section?

Yes. I would appreciate this.

75%

No. I’m happy with how AC is now.

25%

POLL CLOSED

Thank you for reading this week’s issue. Hope you liked it. 😀

To our 6 new subscribers — including Amb, Rod, Wangui, Jane, and Marianne — I hope you find the newsletter a solid addition to your email inbox. Welcome to Article Club. Make yourself at home. 🏠

If you appreciate the articles, value our discussions, and in general have come to trust that Article Club will have better things for you to read than your current habit of scrolling the Internet for hours on end, please consider a paid subscription. I am very appreciative of Janet, our latest paid reader. Thank you!

Subscribe

If subscribing is not your thing, don’t despair: There are other ways you can support this newsletter. Recommend the newsletter to a friend (thanks Anabelle!), leave a comment, buy me a coffee, or send me an email. I’d love to hear from you.

On the other hand, if you no longer want to receive this newsletter, please feel free to unsubscribe below. See you next Thursday at 9:10 am PT.