Air Conditioning, Modern Friendship, and Rooftop Farming

“The Great Land Robbery.” In the Atlantic, Vann R. Newkirk II narrates a tragic story about black land ownership in the Mississippi Delta. Between racist lending practices, global commodity markets, and, more recently, corporate purchasers, black landowners are losing ground: “In just a few years, a single company has accumulated a portfolio in the Delta almost equal to the remaining holdings of the African Americans who have lived on and shaped this land for centuries.”

“Ditch Your Air Conditioning. You’ll Be Fine.” Franklin Schneider argues AC makes hot days feel even warmer than they are.

“Technology and Modern Friendship.” Responding to the sense that the internet is changing the nature of relationships, Richard Gibson surveys the history of friendship to demonstrate that friendship has always been technologically mediated. Of course, that means that as digital technologies change the way we “do” friendship, they are indeed shifting the experience and reality of our friendships.

“Small Organic Dairy Farmers Say the Rules are Stacked Against Them. One Rule in Particular.” Lisa Held reports on the challenges organic dairy farmers face and a loophole that larger dairy operations are exploiting.

“The Limits of Liberal Universalism.” Ben Sixsmith poses prudential questions about immigration and defends the legitimacy of certain forms of nationalism.

“What The Nationalists Get Wrong: A Defense of the Particular and the Universal.” Over at Postliberal Thought, Andrew Willard Jones, Marc Barnes, and Jacob Fareed Imam respond to the National Conservatism conference by arguing that “rather than a new nationalism, a Catholic postliberalism promotes a new localism within a new universalism.”

“China Will Do Whatever It Wants in Hong Kong.” Matthew Walther points out the limits of American moral grandstanding—anything that threatens our pocketbooks: “No country benefits more from our reluctance to shoot inside the financial tent than China.”

“World’s Largest Urban Farm to Open – On a Paris Rooftop.” Caroline Harrap reports for the Guardian on urban farming developments in Paris and elsewhere.

“Tuition Is Rising and Enrollment Is Holding. So Why Are Christian Colleges Struggling?” Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra provides a pretty good analysis of why so many small colleges—particularly Christian colleges—are in financial difficulty right now.

“In God’s Country.” Elizabeth Bruenig talks with several evangelical Christians in Texas about their conflicted feelings regarding Trump.