The Water Dipper 333

Charles Eisenstein lays out some initial policy proposals that could help farmers stay solvent while transitioning to more regenerative agricultural practices.

Christine Rosen pens a biting response to Katherine Boyle’s rosy picture of techno-families.

Grace Russo isn’t impressed with her alma mater’s AI assistant.

Jen Pollock Michel describes what she’s learned while caring for her aging mother.

“Food Is Not Magic.” Garth Brown probes the oddities that ensue when people conscript food into an ideological project: “Contradictions and superficiality do not discredit the claim that the modern…

“The Good Life, According to Gen Z.” Maya Sulkin talks with several Gen Zers who, in good Porcher fashion, left the big-city corporate rat race to move back home: “In…

“How Major League Baseball Lost its Soul.” Bill Kauffman may be biased, but at least he’s honest: “I highly recommend Homestand, Will Bardenwerper’s new book contrasting the community-enhancing qualities of…

“We are Letting Schools Poison our Children.” Hadley Freeman has some harsh (but accurate) critiques of ed tech: “You don’t need to be Mr Gradgrind to be repulsed by this…

“The Intellectual Virtues of the Small Magazine.” Jeff Reimer brilliantly narrates the joys of an intellectual life and the role that small magazines can play in foster this: ‘Now remember…

“In Due Season.” Chris Gregorio reviews and praises Matt Miller’s Leaves of Healing: “As he reflects on each slice of liturgical time and the period of garden time in which…

“Can Using a Dumber Phone Cure ‘Brain Rot’?” Bryan X. Chen tells readers of the New York Times that there’s nothing we can do in the face of our society’s…

“Can We Go to the Neighbourhood?” Amber Lapp has a lovely essay on how her daughter helped her live in her neighborhood: “The sight of this toddler in a sparkly…

“Play (and Watch) Ball!” Bill Kauffman praises baseball as a community-building pastime, and he highly recommends Will Bardenwerper’s new book: “I started going to ball games with my parents and…

“Have Humans Passed Peak Brain Power?” John Burn-Murdoch points to several indicators that humans across the world are simply thinking and understanding less now than happened ten years ago. The…

Save the date for our fall FPR conference at Baylor! “The Tacit Dimension of Shop Class.” Mars Hill Audio is publishing an audio version of this classic Mark Mitchell essay.…

“Larry Ellison’s Half-Billion-Dollar Quest to Change Farming Has Been a Bust.” Tom Dotan reports on one tech titan’s efforts to remake agriculture from his base on an Hawaiian island: “Little…

“Sexuality After Industrialism.” James Wood urges conservatives to learn from Ivan Illich’s analysis of gender: “Illich forces us to reconsider the very foundation of our gender debates. Targeting the sexual…

“How Progressives Froze the American Dream.” Yoni Appelbaum’s essay, drawn from his new book Stuck, has some fair critiques of NIMBYism and thoughtful reflections on the tensions inherent in zoning,…

“Salesforce Is Using A Hallucination To Sell AI.” Alan Kluegel turns an analysis of a dumb AI commercial into a meditation on the likely social effects of AI adoption: “The…

“Matter Matters.” Paul Kingsnorth kicks off a new series at his Substack exploring ancient holy sites in Europe: “I’ve always been fascinated by how humans interact with their landscapes: what…

“How do I Kill my Microsoft Copilot?” Sam Leith is not particularly fond of Microsoft’s new AI helper: “As far as Big Tech is concerned, no crap idea is so…

“Last Boys at the Beginning of History.” This essay by Mana Afsari defies summary. Let me just say it is very good: “I was begging to be given values, community,…

“Educating Humans.” I’m relishing the new issue of Plough. Alex Sosler has a great essay on trade schools, Tim Maendel describes one teacher’s creative ways of teaching his students to…

“AI and All Its Splendors.” I continue my mulling on AI and its underlying temptations in this lengthy essay for Christianity Today. I aim to craft a book proposal this…