“We Are Bombarding America’s Forests With Roundup.” Nate Halverson has a level-headed and disturbing report on the use of glyphosate to manage US forests. In the wake of mega fires, there’s a long overdue reassessment of forest management and a willingness to use logging and prescribed burns to reduce potential fuel, but spraying Roundup everywhere seems like a bad idea: “I saw vibrant green mountain whitethorn bushes, rabbitbrush, and purple-tinged bull thistles, with energetic bees bopping from flower to flower. The towering trees were gone, but new saplings abounded—cedars, pines, firs, and more—scattered randomly amid the greenery, already a foot or two high. No such verdant revival is visible on the private timberland before me. No bees, no flowers—it’s a virtual dead zone where the only life consists of row upon row of manually planted, tightly packed conifer saplings, all less than a foot tall. This is because, unbeknownst to most people, logging companies and the US Forest Service have been spraying massive amounts of herbicide in clear-cut and fire-ravaged forests of California—and throughout the nation. And not just any herbicide, but glyphosate, a potent and problematic weed killer best known by the brand name Roundup.”
“A Comedian Crowned with Brussels Sprouts: Retrieving Peter De Vries.” Ralph Wood chronicles the marvels of a Dutch Calvinist’s wit: “At their best, his novels memorably embody what, again with fine irony, he called “the eternal severities”—the timeless, time-laden truths about the tragicomic human condition. Thus should Peter De Vries be crowned with both the Brussels sprouts of comedy and the laurel wreath of tragedy. He remains, simultaneously, our master of hilarity and melancholy.”
“A Letter to Me.” Brian Miller ponders a difficult question: “How can younger generations aspire to preserve something they have never experienced?”
“Australia’s Teen Social Media Ban Isn’t Perfect. But It’s Helping Analog Families.” Amy Lewis talks with parents in Australia about how the country’s new law prohibiting children under 16 from having social media accounts is playing out: “Before the ban, Katherine Popping said her children felt like they were missing out on not being on social media, which they were toying with allowing at age 16. Now that the ban is in effect, it’s more socially acceptable to not have social media, ‘and it’s not us that are being the rule makers,’ she said.”
“Recovering the Virtues in This Age of Vice: Four New Books.” Nadya Williams reviews four new books about virtues and considers why this seems to be a hot topic right now: “we desperately need the virtues—and our society, as [Matthew] Arbo reminds, desperately needs virtuous citizens. Society doesn’t just happen on its own, after all. Still, we will never fully embody the virtues in this life—just ask all the Desert Fathers and Mothers who continued to struggle with sin even after decades of pursuing saintly lives in the desert, away from regular temptations. But this is not the final word, [Alan] Noble reminds: ‘The end of all virtues is love, and the manifestation of love from God toward us is grace.’”
“How to Pursue Virtue in a Distracted Age.” And Andy Shurson has a longer review essay responding to Alan Noble’s new book: “The easy route in cultural critique is to rail against the lack of virtue in society. Yet the truth is that as technology has progressed, we’ve gradually eroded the elements of life that used to help everyone develop virtue. For example, Noble notes that it’s hard to develop fortitude in our world because ‘nearly every social force is oriented toward reducing our suffering and removing barriers to our goals at all costs’ (65). Technology extends our reach and removes resistance, making life easier—but sometimes too easy. As a result, our wills atrophy just like a muscle when it goes unused. Like astronauts stuck in space without gravity, we need to find new ways of exercising our virtues to remain strong.”
“Stop the AI Build-Out, Start the Fight.” Aaron Regunberg responds to an odd essay in the Jacobin arguing that building more data centers is an “equity” issue. He sees things rather differently: “The grassroots resistance to artificial intelligence data centers that is springing up in communities across the country outlines the kind of working-class coalition many of us on the Left have always dreamed of — a diverse, nonpartisan, top-bottom movement against Big Tech billionaires that has the potential to reshape American politics in incredibly positive ways.”
“ECONOCLAST: Herman Daly and the Gospel of Growth.” John de Graaf is launching a new film about Daly’s economic vision. This film “is the timely story of the humble scholar who took on the most-widely accepted belief of his discipline—that continued economic growth is the goal of our economy, and is sustainable on a finite planet. Instead, Daly argued, we should view the economy as a subsidiary of the environment, completely dependent on nature, necessitating limits to growth. In his work in academia and at the World Bank, Herman Daly was a giant in the emerging field of ecological economics. His life and work have inspired thousands, and through this film, will inspire many thousands more.”
“Cultivating a Return to the Land.” Quinton Amundson describes the history of the Catholic Land Movement and reports on his revival: The CLM “represented a practical avenue of living the main principles outlined in Pope Leo XIII’s influential 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum (Rights and Duties of Capital and Labour) — right to private property, dignity of human labour, right to a just wage, the right to organize and a preferential treatment of the poor.”
“For this All-Male Book Club, Reading has been a Shared Pleasure for 30 Years.” Maggie Penman visits a neighborhood book group that’s been going for thirty years: “There’s a stereotype that men don’t read fiction. Indeed, in a 2024 survey, only 13.7 percent of men reported reading for pleasure in a given day (though women weren’t reading much more). The numbers have been plummeting for years. But this group defies the odds.”
