Your Mid-Week Experiment
I got COVID. 0/10. Would not recommend. Would like to see a manager.
I didn’t get to the essay last weekend because I was busy with a nasty bout of the plague. After two-plus years, I caught a bit of the coronavirus and went down for the count. Good news, however. My blood oxygen levels never dipped into the danger zone, and I feel like I’m getting a little better every day. The worst of it is that scotch doesn’t taste good anymore, which I refuse to believe is a permanent condition. I’m sure I’ll be better by the paperback launch of Forget the Alamo next week. See you at Book People not this Monday, but next Monday?
Until then, I’ve got some good stuff for you. Let’s get to it, shall we?
“As my friend, author, and deep thinker Jason Stanford recently wrote in his excellent Substack blog, every dystopian story starts in bleakness and despair…but the story isn’t about that. It’s about the human transcendence of such hardships. Give us a model for it, and a reason to believe it’s possible.” (Fox Print Editorial)
“More children die by gunfire in a year than on-duty police officers and active military members.” (Scientific American)
“Once you see that life-and-death contrast, and you come back to a peaceful life and a peaceful job, everything seems to be less meaningful by comparison.” (Washington Post)
“From 2019 to 2020, the relative increase in the rate of firearm-related deaths of all types (suicide, homicide, unintentional, and undetermined) among children and adolescents was 29.5% — more than twice as high as the relative increase in the general population.” (The New England Journal of Medicine)
The United States, land of the sort of free. (Freedom House)
Loving Lords of the Realm (John Helyar)
“I am … long on ‘optimism’ as I return to Washington, D.C. … because of the costs to us all if we don’t leverage this moment for a common cause.” (Frederick Kempe)
We’ve been watching utter crap in the COVID ward. If you are foggy and exhausted, these movies pass muster. They won’t ask too much.
Oh, Michael Bay. Never stop Michael Baying.
Thanks to Noom, I lost 40 pounds over 2020-21 and have kept it off since then. Click on the blue box to get 20% off. Seriously, this works. No, this isn’t an ad. Yes, I really lost all that weight with Noom.
We set up a merch table in the back where you can get T-shirts, coffee mugs, and even tote bags now. Show the world that you’re part of The Experiment.
We’ve also got a tip jar, and I promise to waste every cent you give me on having fun, because writing this newsletter for you is some
Buy the book Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick banned from the Bullock Texas History Museum: Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of the American Myth by Bryan Burrough, Chris Tomlinson, and myself is out from Penguin Random House. Out in paperback this June!