[OS] Substack Recommendations 1
Inaugural Edition
I started recommending Substacks here almost six months ago. I noticed that you can only recommend five blogs before Substack hides the rest and adds a “see more” button, so I thought it would be more interesting to rotate Substacks in and out of my recommendations every so often (I eventually landed on six months) rather than just add to an ever-growing pile of which visitors see but the tip. Concomitant with these six month refreshes, I plan to post an introduction to the blogs I have chosen to recommend. When I recommended these Substacks almost six months ago, I meant to post an introduction to them, but never got around to it. So here I am.
But actually, first, a story. Yesterday morning, I was at my temple for Shabbat services, and a small boy ran to the front of the room during the d’var. He started knocking against the glass, testing how the transparent clay felt and sounded against his knuckles just starting to bud from the baby fat born upon his hands. He was probably 2 or 3 years old—I’m not very good at judging these ages, but I hear these sorts of things happen around that time. This rap, rap, rapping against the temple wall went on for about ten seconds before his mother looked over. She had had a part to play in the service and so had not been looking in his direction previously. She squatted beside him and said quietly, “you have to stop.” He returned a quiet “why?” She murmured, “because the people here. . .” and I was too far away to make out the rest. Then he tried knocking against his mother’s temple—the other one. It was a quick raising of the fist, quick enough that I could not avert my eyes fast enough to miss his mother taken back, eyes wide, mouth open, gasping audibly. I’m not sure exactly why I looked away—it just felt like the sort of thing I shouldn’t have seen. There were murmurs and whispers in the temple, nothing disrespectful but the low sound of piqued attention. The child almost immediately started crying and was ushered out of the room by his two parents. We could hear his wailing on the other side.
I think the child liked the feeling of the glass on his knuckles, and he liked his mother’s approval, and he wasn’t quite sure what would happen if he felt his mother’s head on his knuckles. I think the child was confronted with a problem—if I keep rapping the glass, my mother won’t like it—and attempted a solution—so I will rap upon my mother’s head. The child then discovered tragedy: he could not square the circle, and his attempt at resolving his two desires made everything so much worse. How understandable that he might hit his mother! He already taps her on the waist, pulls at her hand, squeezes her leg tight with all his might. But when he does this, she is surprised, disappointed—he has wronged her. How terrible! I can’t imagine there is much more important to him, especially at that age, than his mother.
Anyways, let’s get onto the recommendations.
Outlandish Claims by Aaron Zinger
I like many blogs with many thousands of subscribers written by seasoned professionals of some kind or another. This is an example of an excellent amateur blog. There is a clear voice and perspective, but the subjects vary widely, both reflecting the perspective and keeping the blog from becoming narrow or rote. I admire how creative the posts often are, and as many as I have read, I hope to read them yet more consistently going forward.
If I’m being honest, the blog description immediately got me: “Midrash all the things, celebrate progress, abolish standardized education.” While I have a less combative attitude towards standardized education, I appreciate the verve it took to put out the—I’ll just say it—outlandish claim. One of Aaron Zinger’s posts was the basis for my moral masturbation post, so I simply must thank him, if nothing else, for that.
Here are a couple of my favorite posts from Outlandish Claims (there are several others which are stored on various windows on my laptop and which I sincerely hope to get around to reading soon):
Statecraft by Santi Ruiz
This guy is not an amateur. He’s a professional. And that is kind of why I find this podcast-blog so valuable: it is government from the perspective of the professionals. The massive hulking issues of the day soak up so much of our time, but “politics is the slow boring of hard boards,” and Statecraft is your overdue lesson in carpentry. How does government work? What are the people that make up government doing? How can they do it better? What are the nitty gritty problems of executing the laws which make our country less bountiful and fair? The episodes are, in the main, interviews with various civil servants about what they did, what they do, and what they want to do better.
I need to listen to this stuff more, but here are some of my favorites:
Mr. and Mrs. Psmith’s Bookshelf by Mr. and Mrs. Psmith
I don’t know how these two do it, but they are a married couple raising approximately 5 trillion children (I think that’s how many they said?) and writing about a book review every single month. The pseudonyms are funny, the reviews are great, and the book choices keep you guessing. The two each have their own interests and voices, and their relationship gives the blog further texture. As much as I love the gimmick, it really is the quality of the writing and analysis that keeps me coming back. I don’t always agree after reading them—how boring would that be!—, but I always come away with something new, interesting, and evidently well-considered. They have moved Demons upwards on my to-read list and were partly why I read When We Cease to Understand the World (the other part being a friend from college demanding it).
Here are some favorites:
Numb at the Lodge by Sam Kriss
The best thing on Substack.
Dan Davies’ “Back of Mind” by Dan Davies
This blog is good for a very particular lens repeatedly used in concise, well-written analyses of various goings-on. Dan Davies is trying to revive management cybernetics, which is a way of understanding organizations through their flows of information and capacity for managing the variety of circumstances they come to face with. The blog led me to read his book, The Unaccountability Machine, and I found it a valuable tool in my cognitive toolkit. The blog serves to give instances of that idea, some further insight into its workings, as well as some various odds and ends of practical advice.
These are a bit shorter, so I’ll suggest a few more than the others:
These are all blogs I sincerely admire, and there are many more blogs which I admire as well. There is such a glut of fantastic writers on this site that my email inbox is truly a mess. They all make me want to be a better blogger and clearer thinker. My recommendations this time span political and subject-matter differences. I hope to keep that up. The next set of recommendations will come around July 1st.