What Gheorghe is Reading

Taking the mantle from Sentence Dave this morning to recommend a pair of long-form magazine pieces for your edification and/or extended bathroom reading.

First, The Washington Post published a really excellent piece entitled "The Searchers" as part of its ongoing series profiling generally obscure public servants working on a broad range of Federal government programs. Written by Dave Eggers, the article is an exploration of work being done by scientists and researchers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA. 

The giant brains at JPL are working on the wondrous challenge of determining whether sentient life exists elsewhere in the galaxy, and yet the dominant theme of Eggers' piece is humility. Instrumental Technologies Vanessa Bailey (who just happens to have found one of 82 known exoplanets as a graduate student at the University of Arizona) says in a quote that captures the essence of the thing, "...[P]ersonally, I would find that incredibly inspiring, finding life on another planet. I like feeling small. I like going into Yosemite with the mountains and feeling part of an inconsequential piece, but part of this bigger whole. So, to me, I think finding life elsewhere would only expand that sense, but in a very positive and I think a hopeful way. It also lessens the pressure on you to get everything right because you’re not so special.”

Ta-Nehisi Coates famously doesn't find himself all that special, even though his peers in journalism and writing do. Ten years after his groundbreaking work in The Atlantic, "The Case for Reparations", Coates is back with a new book tackling the light subject of Israel, Palestine, and the American media.

Ryu Spaeth offers a detailed and thoughtful review of both Coates' new book, The Message, and the evolution of the author's thinking on the subject matter in New York Magazine. In it, Spaeth chronicles Coates' deliberative and expansive writing process, his deep dives into source materials, and in the case of this book, his ten-day trip to Palestine in the summer of 2023 to experience the region first-hand. Coates returned to America shocked and saddened by what he saw, and its parallels with some of his home nation's worst days. As Spaeth writes, "For Coates, the parallels with the Jim Crow South were obvious and immediate: Here, he writes, was a “world where separate and unequal was alive and well, where rule by the ballot for some and the bullet for others was policy.” And this world was made possible by his own country: “The pushing of Palestinians out of their homes had the specific imprimatur of the United States of America. Which means that it had my imprimatur.”"

In particular, I was struck by the way Coates dismisses bullshit for what it is. Having been told that the conflict between Israel and its subjugated territories is "complicated", he gets angry, saying, “It’s complicated, when you want to take something from somebody.”

I hope you get a few moments to check out the two pieces. We'll return to your regularly scheduled dipshittery in short order. There's money to lose gambling on college football.