Culture

A water drop and ripples

Vitalogy is a reminder of our need for adventure (at least for me).

By Justin Katz | March 6, 2024 |

Yesterday, I listened to Pearl Jam’s Vitalogy album all the way though for maybe the first time because it’s the 574th best-selling album, and I’m tracing that list from the top. The band’s prior recording, Vs., had been such a disappointment that I didn’t bother with its follow-up. Vs. came out while I was a…

People stare at their cell phones while disasters happen around them

What is it about social media lately? (A hope for controlling the crisis.)

By Justin Katz | February 29, 2024 |

Almost in passing during a recent podcast featuring Greg McKeown, Tim Ferriss stepped into an idea I’ve been contemplating lately: [A]s my job, I interview some of the top performers in the world, hundreds of them, and the change that I have seen for those people in that subset who are already, I think most…

A water drop and ripples

A few words on the viral video of girls dancing at a concert (or something).

By Justin Katz | February 29, 2024 |

I haven’t seen anybody outraged by this video. I have seen a lot of people displaying their moral superiority to the people who are supposedly outraged by it, though. For that reason, it seems like a good example of the way in which social media can social engineer movements by creating opportunities for communal opposition…

A water drop and ripples

Yes, pet euthanasia often comes down to convenience.

By Justin Katz | February 26, 2024 |

I mean, I know from experience it can still be sad and traumatic, but at the end of the day, few people exhaust the medical possibilities before concluding the cost is too high.  That’s why this tweet is an example of the way in which political arguments can brush aside the most significant distinctions: Kelsey…

A water drop and ripples

The cause of the young-adult suicide drop is less important than the cause of its resumption.

By Justin Katz | February 24, 2024 |

Armand Domalewski asks an important question, when he observes a quick decrease in teen and young adult suicide after 1994, which held until about 2008 and in 2017 exceeded its previous high: The more important question, though, is what has been happening since 2007/2008. Having graduated high school in 1993, I’d speculate that the drop…

Reporter shocked at 19th Century public meeting

A Central Landfill meeting gives a sense of what’s being lost from media.

By Justin Katz | January 11, 2024 |

Considering how frequently I criticize professional journalists, I may too infrequently convey how powerful I think their role can (and should) be.  A recent Johnson Sunrise article by Rory Schuler, about the resignation/retirement of Rhode Island Resource Recovery Corporation (RIRRC) Executive Directo Joseph Reposa, is an excellent example of what we’re losing.  Without making a gooey…

The RI State House in the middle of a plantation

A recipient society produces the government plantation.

By Justin Katz | January 4, 2024 |

So much of Rhode Island’s predicament can be explained by incentives.  People who rely on government for their prosperity, for instance, have a great deal of incentive to manipulate the processes thereof, whereas our community lacks institutions with incentive to counterbalance them politically.  Something similar and related — though much broader on a social scale…

A water drop and ripples

Let’s keep parents’ real responsibility in mind.

By Justin Katz | January 3, 2024 |

The following chart is definitely interesting, but I fear our society has lost appreciation for the fact that parents’ fundamental responsibility is the blue line.  If that’s down, they’re failing, no matter what the red line does.

A water drop and ripples

Could things we now think of as bullying have had positives?

By Justin Katz | December 6, 2023 |

That’s a deliberately provocative statement, but it points to a common error in our thinking.  When aspects of our culture strike us as bad, or at least wrong, we tend to think of them as lingering shadows from our benighted past.  We see more clearly these days, right? But some of those things — maybe…

A water drop and ripples

Does RI media not know how to process this… or not want to?

By Justin Katz | December 6, 2023 |

We’re descending to a place, in the United States and Rhode Island, in which controversy is not permitted over certain subjects, as Erika Sanzi points out: Of course, several trends probably all come together. Media outlets don’t have the business model to fund all that they used to, and most journalists don’t have the legal…