Your Mid-Week Experiment
11 things to read, two new songs, and a dumb movie that I liked more than I expected
Thanks for the great response to Sunday’s essay on my cognitive resistance to accepting the lunacy in the Texas GOP platform at its literal meaning. One of my favorite subscribers, T.Y.M., called it “One of your best essays, in my view--hilarious, provocative, and sobering.” Folks, I’ve had starred reviews in the pre-publication outlets and positive reviews in the big newspapers, but when I hit your target I feel like I actually did something important. Thanks.
Let’s get to it.
“They said they hope to eventually buy their own cameras.” (Axios)
This isn’t just a phase. America has gotten dumb. h/t SCG (The Atlantic)
“The last few years are an important reminder that good leaders/correct ideas fail without good communication and bad leaders/abhorrent ideas can find serious traction with good communication. It’s not enough to be right. You have to be able to sell it.” (Ryan Holiday)
“A good editor is hard to find.” (Austin Kleon)
“PwC predicts that newspaper circulation revenues, in both digital and print, are expected to surpass advertising in 2022.” (Axios)
“The most famous case of editorial intervention in English literature has always bothered me—you know, that Dickens’s friend Bulwer-Lytton advised him to change the end of Great Expectations: I don’t want to know that! As a critic, of course, as a literary historian, I’m interested, but as a reader, I find it very disconcerting.” (Robert Gottlieb)
Thanks to my buddy E for mentioning the peacock edition of The Experiment in his wedding email.
“I don’t know how to explain to someone why they should care about other people.” (Kayla Chadwick)
This is so creepy I suspect it’s balderdash. (Axios)
Shocked as heck that Free Guy was good.
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 now!