“Pay Attention to How You Pay Attention.” Ezra Klein wrestles with the limitations of liberalism in the face of big tech efforts to capture users’ attention: “In the end, I don’t believe it will be possible for society to remain neutral on what it means to live our digital lives well. Absent some view of what human flourishing is, we will have no way to judge whether it is being helped or harmed.”
“We Gave Students Laptops and Took Away Their Brains.” Jared Cooney Horvath reports on the shocking news that screens might in fact be bad for learning: “The more time students spent on screens at school, the further their scores fell. On average, those who used computers for more than six hours per day scored 65 points lower than their peers who didn’t use them at all. That’s the difference between the 50th and the 24th percentile—equivalent to a two letter-grade drop.”
“No-phone Policies Have Been a Positive for Many Michigan Schools.” Cheryl Holladay, Ashley Patti and Krista Tacey-Cater talk with teachers and students who are grateful for phone-free school days: “While there has been pushback from some students and their parents, administrators and teachers widely agreed that removing cellphones from the school day is yielding benefits just three months into the school year. Administrators noted increased engagement and learning and more interaction among students and less-stressed students. The best parts of not being allowed their cellphones during the day, Bosel and Foster said, are being able to interact more with their classmates and the free time it provides.” (Recommended by Dominic Garzonio)
“AI is Destroying the University and Learning Itself.” Ronald Purser files a dispatch from a university that has sold its soul to AI. Accreditors should punish such dereliction of duty, but they won’t: “As the university trades its teaching mission for ‘AI-tech integration,’ it doesn’t just risk irrelevance—it risks becoming mechanically soulless. Genuine intellectual struggle has become too expensive of a value proposition. The scandal is not one of ignorance but indifference. University administrators understand exactly what’s happening, and proceed anyway. As long as enrollment numbers hold and tuition checks clear, they turn a blind eye to the learning crisis while faculty are left to manage the educational carnage in their classrooms.” (Recommended by Aaron Weinacht.”
“When a House Is Not a Home.” The inimitable Matthew Walther gets to the heart of the various housing crises: “Everyone is missing the point, even though some of them gesture vaguely—in some cases even accidentally—in the right direction. Any conversation about the price of “housing” simply begs the question. It assumes a world which none of us actually inhabits, namely one in which something called “housing” exists—a vast undifferentiated stock, like inhabitable pink slime. No one wants “housing”; everyone wants home.”
“A Nation of Subscribers.” Matthew Burdette sees the proposed 50-year mortgage as of apiece with the increasingly common mode of surviving by subscription: “Permanent renting conditions people in ways that are antithetical to political freedom. Not having a secure place in the world shapes you, and what it shapes you into is the kind of person who isn’t able truly to engage in politics, even if there are no explicit legal barriers keeping you from participating. Impermanence conditions people out of political life.” (Recommended by Adam Smith.)
“Charlie Kirk’s Final Message to America.” The headline is rather dramatic, but this excerpt from Kirk’s new book on the sabbath is quite good: “We’ve been conditioned to believe that our worth is tied to our availability, our output, our visibility. But Sabbath teaches us that your value is not measured by your responsiveness or productivity. It’s measured by your belonging—your rootedness in God’s love. . . . Let the Sabbath be your weekly rebellion. Let it be the time when the world’s demands go silent, and the eternal voice becomes audible again.”
“The Closing of the Conservative Mind.” John McCormack and Michael Warren report on debates within ISI and the conservative movement: “The extent to which the institution has been transformed under Burtka’s leadership is debatable. There are still a significant number of traditional conservatives—both journalists and scholars—who participate in ISI programs. But ISI’s movement toward nationalist-populism and postliberalism under Burtka is undeniable. And it has been deliberate.”
“I Thought My Marriage Was Broken. Then I Stayed In It.” Larissa Phillips describes how submitting to the difficult form of marriage brought a deep and abiding joy: “It’s impossible to understand why some marriages last and others don’t. But when I listen to people who stay married for decades, I hear the same thing over and over: ‘Back then, we didn’t know if we’d make it.’ I’ve heard this enough times that I think doubt is inevitable. I think it’s why there are rituals and promises and legally ordained vows and ever-larger anniversary celebrations: because marriage has always been hard. But that doesn’t mean it’s wrong.”
“The Most Impractical Tool in My Kitchen.” Tyler Austin Harper celebrates a good tool (just ignore his concerning comment about a “knife drawer”): “he case for adding carbon steel to your knife block is not about utility. It is a stand against the march of efficiency that has affected perhaps no sphere of American life more than our diets. They are noticeably out of place in a food culture that includes fast-casual restaurants, meal boxes by mail, 20-minute ‘weeknight recipes,’ and Silicon Valley–approved meal replacements such as Soylent—and that’s exactly the point.”
“Why I Need Jane Eyre.” Wendy Kiyomi describes how Jane Eyre gave her a vocabulary for hope in dark days: “On the first Sunday in Advent several years ago, I was late to church. Our children were seriously mentally ill, and we were all in turmoil. Our house wasn’t clean, we weren’t having nice family dinners, and we had no Christmas plans. We also weren’t getting places on time.”
