Worth your time
A few things, mostly by people who aren't me, that are worth your time
I used to remember more or less everything. It was a tiny superpower, and it served me well in school and work … for a few decades, at least. But I no longer remember everything, or even close to it, and I am frequently and painfully aware of the drop-off: Remembering everything meant I never bothered to work at developing various skills most people rely on to overcome the fallibility of memory.1
So the topic of memory is frequently on my mind. And that’s one reason I’ve found coverage of Joe Biden’s age so frustrating: A lot of the supposed examples of his mental decline that are frequently cited seem like nonsense; they’re completely inconsistent with my experience relating to what people remember. Take the recent hyping of his inability to recall the year in which events occurred. Many people have pointed out to me that I “speak in years” — when I talk about something that happened in the past, I tend to specify the year. It isn’t something I even noticed about myself until enough people pointed it out, long ago. But I had already noticed that most other people don’t have immediate recall of the specific dates or years of events, even when prompted. I noticed that early on, because it was very different from the way my memory worked. So when the nation’s leading political reporters have fainting spells over Joe Biden not remembering a year, I can’t help think That isn’t memory loss, that’s just how most people are.
Quick, off the top of your head, in what year did you see U2 play at the Carrier Dome? In what year did your sister have her second child? What year did your father die?
In my experience most people would struggle to immediately come up with the right answer to all of those questions. And if they were under oath and answering incorrectly could go very badly for them, they’d probably say they weren’t sure.
Michelangelo Signorile had an illuminating discussion with a neuroscientist who studies memory (there’s a transcript if you prefer to read, as I do):
A few other things that are worth your time …
Jill Fillipovich has an excellent piece about right-wing attacks on abortion, IVF, contraception, and non-procreative sex, concluding: “It is this to which the far right objects. Their ideal society is one in which men are in charge and women are dependent on them — and that does require that sex remain risky, that pregnancy be risky, that women have fewer options and fewer freedoms. It’s not that these folks _want_ women to live shorter, less-healthy lives, or that they want more children to die before their fifth birthday; it’s that women living shorter, less-healthy lives and a higher proportion of dead kids is simply an acceptable cost in exchange for the larger goal of restoring the patriarchal order.”
For Slate, Take Back The Court president Sarah Lipton-Lubet shares her experience in post-Dobbs America.
Nearly two years ago, late into the night on a Monday, I had the terrifying realization that I needed to move my embryos. Immediately.
A few hours earlier—just as I was starting to wrap up work for the day—my phone had lit up in what felt like one long, continuous stream of alerts. Politico had just obtained a leaked copy of the Supreme Court’s draft Dobbs opinion overturning Roe v. Wade. As a reproductive rights attorney leading a Supreme Court reform organization, I knew my immediate next steps. Conference call. Media statement. Email to our supporters. I’d been preparing for this moment since Donald Trump was elected.
But what I had spent less time thinking about was how this would affect me personally. I wasn’t at all prepared for what to do about my embryos.
I’ve been a consultant and strategist for Take Back The Court for nearly five years; Sarah’s piece might be the best written work TBTC has ever produced. I hope you’ll take the time to read it.
The New Republic’s Greg Sargent has an excellent piece on the Supreme Court’s decision to help Donald Trump delay his insurrection-related trial:
Note that [Republican former Rep. Lynne] Cheney stated unequivocally that voters deserve to know whether Trump committed crimes while trying to overthrow democracy—and deserve a full accounting of those actions—precisely because the sheer gravity of what he did threatens the democratic system itself.
As of now, [Rep. Jamie] Raskin told me, “The Supreme Court has bestowed a giant gift on Donald Trump.”
Any efforts by the hard-right faction of the court to delay Trump’s trial render it an “enemy of the Constitution and the rule of law,” Raskin continued. “The Democratic Party has to stand up. It’s up to us.”
I wrote about the Supreme Court’s move for Take Back The Court’s newsletter, to which I hope you will subscribe:
the Court’s decision about whether Trump has immunity from prosecution for his attempts to subvert the 2020 election might not matter nearly as much as the Court’s decision to hear the case, and the timeline on which the Court decided to do so.
Dan Pfeiffer adds:
This may be the most blatant Supreme Court intervention in a campaign since Bush v. Gore — with the same result. Disregarding that three of the nine justices were appointed by Trump; Clarence Thomas also has a massive conflict of interest because his wife was involved in the insurrection for which Trump seeks immunity.
Brian Beutler wrote about Russia’s ongoing attempts to help Trump gain power:
It’s wrong to say history is repeating itself, because it never really stopped. Russia tried to help Trump win in 2020 through a botched effort to smear Joe Biden, which ultimately saw Trump corrupt the U.S. foreign policy process. When Biden won anyhow, the operation simply continued, and ultimately, through the dissemination of fabricated evidence, formed the basis of a fictional corruption scandal that has damaged Biden over years and culminated in a Republican effort to impeach him.
The government’s meager deterrence efforts clearly haven’t worked. With all that damage done—enough perhaps to explain his two point deficit in national polls—Biden should commit to ensuring this foul partnership produces no further success. He can do this by keeping the public informed of any ongoing cooperation between Russia, the Trump campaign, and Trump’s allies in the GOP as we approach the November election. Trump may win anyhow, but at least we’ll have been warned.
Read the whole thing.
Oliver Willis gets it:
Last night I watched Squaring the Circle (The Story of Hipgnosis), Anton Corbijn’s documentary about the design firm responsible for some of the most memorable album covers of the rock era, from Wish You Were Here to Houses of the Holy to “Melt” to Electric Warrior. If the topic appeals to you, the film will not disappoint. It’s available on Netflix, or for rent in the obvious places.
What have you read, watched, or listened to lately?
Like taking notes. Or, more to the point, reviewing notes.
The only way I remember what years my niece and nephew were born is by remembering which Springsteen tours we had to work my sister’s attendance around.