{ "version": "https://jsonfeed.org/version/1", "title": "affairs on Stephen Schenkenberg", "icon": "https://avatars.micro.blog/avatars/2025/10/4351.jpg", "home_page_url": "https://schenkenberg.micro.blog/", "feed_url": "https://schenkenberg.micro.blog/feed.json", "items": [ { "id": "http://schenkenberg.micro.blog/2025/11/25/dan-wang-sharply-introducing-the.html", "content_html": "\n

Dan Wang, sharply introducing the thesis to his new book, “Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer a Perfect Future”:

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The best hedge, I know against tightening intentions between the two superpowers is mutual curiosity. The more informed Americans are about Chinese, and vice versa, the more likely we are to stay out of trouble. The starkest contrast between the two countries is the competition that will define the twenty-first century: an American elite, made up of mostly lawyers, excelling at obstruction, versus a Chinese technocratic class, made up of mostly engineers, that excels at construction. That’s the big idea behind this book. It’s time for a new lens to understand the two superpowers: China is an engineering state, building big at breakneck speed, in contrast to the United States' lawyerly society, blocking everything it can, good and bad.

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Breakneck is the story of the Chinese state that yanked its people into modernity—an action rightfully envied by much of the world—using means that ran roughshod over many—an approach rightfully disdained by much of the world. It is also a reminder that the United States once knew the virtues of speed and ambitious construction. Traversing dazzling metropolises and gigantic factories, Breakneck will illuminate the astounding progress and the dark underbelly of the engineering state. The lawyerly society has virtues, too, to teach China. Each superpower offers a vision of how the other can be better, if only their leaders and peoples care to take more than a fleeting glance.

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Intrigued by Wang, I checked out and enjoyed this podcast interview as well his annual reflection letters.

\n", "date_published": "2025-11-25T18:48:13-05:00", "url": "https://schenkenberg.micro.blog/2025/11/25/dan-wang-sharply-introducing-the.html", "tags": ["affairs","technology","books"] }, { "id": "http://schenkenberg.micro.blog/2025/05/03/adolescence-was-a-remarkable-unforgettable.html", "content_html": "

“Adolescence,” was a remarkable, unforgettable series, made with emotional and cinematic deftness. Streaming on Netflix.

\n", "date_published": "2025-05-03T09:05:59-05:00", "url": "https://schenkenberg.micro.blog/2025/05/03/adolescence-was-a-remarkable-unforgettable.html", "tags": ["affairs"] }, { "id": "http://schenkenberg.micro.blog/2025/04/06/sharp-dispiriting-nyt-piece-by.html", "content_html": "

Sharp, dispiriting NYT piece by Steven Kurutz: “The Gen X Career Meltdown,” subtitled, “Just when they should be at their peak, experienced workers in creative fields find that their skills are all but obsolete.“ I remember being struck by Douglas Coupland’s novel, including the form, when my grad school class dug into it in the late 90s. In his intro, Kurutz reminds us that Coupland’s characters had reconciled themselves to “diminishing expectations of material wealth.”

\n", "date_published": "2025-04-06T18:39:57-05:00", "url": "https://schenkenberg.micro.blog/2025/04/06/sharp-dispiriting-nyt-piece-by.html", "tags": ["affairs","technology","books"] }, { "id": "http://schenkenberg.micro.blog/2025/03/09/deeply-reported-nyt-piece-by.html", "title": "NYT: \"They Had an Answer to Their City’s Decline. Then Came the Immigration Crackdown.\"", "content_html": "

Deeply reported NYT article by Lydia DePillis about St. Louis’s efforts to attract foreign-born residents, historically and within the current climate. A concerning, frustrating read, though it’s heartening to see a range of local leaders advocating for this issue nationally. Attracting, welcoming, and assisting immigrants and refugees has been such an important part of our city’s last few decades, and we’ll be worse off, as a whole region, without it continuing. (I’ve experienced this first-hand; the International Institute helped settle my wife’s family when they arrived more than 25 years ago.) Gilberto Pinela, who I was fortunate to get to know when he was at Cortex, sums up what this could mean for the region:

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“We are experiencing the early stages of a winter demographic. It’s not only affecting the city and the region, but soon it will affect the entire state,” said Mr. Pinela, sitting in the mayor’s office at City Hall, in a part of downtown that feels deserted on a weekday afternoon. “The same politicians that are trying to isolate the state are going to be suffering the consequences of this later on.”

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\n", "date_published": "2025-03-09T09:37:36-05:00", "url": "https://schenkenberg.micro.blog/2025/03/09/deeply-reported-nyt-piece-by.html", "tags": ["affairs","STL"] }, { "id": "http://schenkenberg.micro.blog/2024/10/27/from-our-strange.html", "content_html": "

From “Our Strange New Way of Witnessing Natural Disasters,” by Brooke Jarvis in the NYT:

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Suddenly, some experience that previously seemed distant or impossible becomes something we’ve watched happen — not with distance or solemnity on the evening news, but mixed into the jumble of images of everyday life that scroll across our feeds. The details move rapidly from the inconceivable to the familiar, from things we would never expect to things we can easily picture, things we almost feel that we’ve experienced ourselves. Yes, this is what it looks like when you film through a car window while everything around you burns. This is what it looks like when the ocean crashes through the window of your living room. This is what it looks like when a riverbed tries to carry nearly two dozen times more water than it usually holds, or when houses bob downstream like rubber duckies. To quote a viral tweet about a previous calamity: “Climate change will manifest as a series of disasters viewed through phones, with footage that gets closer and closer to where you live until you’re the one filming it.”

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\n", "date_published": "2024-10-27T07:41:06-05:00", "url": "https://schenkenberg.micro.blog/2024/10/27/from-our-strange.html", "tags": ["affairs"] }, { "id": "http://schenkenberg.micro.blog/2024/10/02/excellent-recent-interviews.html", "content_html": "

Excellent recent interviews with Ta-Nehisi Coates by Jon Stewart and Terry Gross. Have ordered “The Message” and can’t wait to start reading.

\n", "date_published": "2024-10-02T18:49:43-05:00", "url": "https://schenkenberg.micro.blog/2024/10/02/excellent-recent-interviews.html", "tags": ["affairs","books"] }, { "id": "http://schenkenberg.micro.blog/2024/09/15/toni-morrison-in.html", "content_html": "\n

Toni Morrison, in a 1975 lecture, quoted by Ketanji Brown Jackson in her new memoir, “Lovely One”, which I’m reading now:

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The function, the very serious function of racism … is distraction. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being. Somebody says you have no language and so you spend twenty years proving that you do. Somebody says your head isn’t shaped property so you have scientists working on the fact that it is. Somebody says you have no art, so you dredge that up. Somebody says that you have no kingdoms, and so you dredge that up. None of that is necessary. There will always be one more thing.

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\n", "date_published": "2024-09-15T09:29:24-05:00", "url": "https://schenkenberg.micro.blog/2024/09/15/toni-morrison-in.html", "tags": ["affairs","ideas","books"] }, { "id": "http://schenkenberg.micro.blog/2022/05/10/why-the-past.html", "content_html": "

“Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid” — Jonathan Haidt’s bleak, incisive essay in The Atlantic about social media and society. (Interestingly, the print piece I read in my issue this evening has the less clickbaity headline “After Babel.” Was that replaced because it would have performed less well on social?)

\n", "date_published": "2022-05-10T21:52:00-05:00", "url": "https://schenkenberg.micro.blog/2022/05/10/why-the-past.html", "tags": ["affairs"] }, { "id": "http://schenkenberg.micro.blog/2019/05/13/george-packer-on.html", "title": "George Packer on Richard Holbrooke", "content_html": "

Packer’s recent cover story for The Atlantic — “Elegy for the American Century” — is an exceptional piece of longform reporting and vivid narration. Excerpted from his new book, Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century.

\n", "date_published": "2019-05-13T21:43:57-05:00", "url": "https://schenkenberg.micro.blog/2019/05/13/george-packer-on.html", "tags": ["affairs","ideas"] }, { "id": "http://schenkenberg.micro.blog/2018/09/02/losing-earth-the.html", "title": "“Losing Earth: The Decade We Almost Stopped Climate Change”", "content_html": "

Nathanial Rich’s whole-issue article in the NYT Magazine. I read it in one punch-in-the-gut gulp on a car trip unusually free of kids and other responsibilities. Can’t recommend it more highly.

\n", "date_published": "2018-09-02T21:03:00-05:00", "url": "https://schenkenberg.micro.blog/2018/09/02/losing-earth-the.html", "tags": ["affairs"] }, { "id": "http://schenkenberg.micro.blog/2018/05/20/lucky-podcast-the.html", "title": "Lucky Podcast: \"The Choice\"", "content_html": "

I don't think I've ever been more moved by an audio story than I was listening to this two-part podcast episode called \"The Choice\": 

In April of 1992, Nada Rothbart was living happily in Sarajevo, Bosnia, with her husband and two young sons–till the night the Bosnian Civil War broke out on the street in front of her home. By the time they recognized what was happening–it was too late; Nada was trapped with her children, surrounded by tanks and snipers. After 60 days with almost no food, no water, and no power, a surprise ceasefire was announced. Nada put on her shoes, grabbed her children, and walked out the door.

That's just the beginning of this remarkable, harrowing story that contains both the worst and best of what's possible in life. Part 1: online or iTunes. Part 2: online or iTunes.  (H/T to Snap Judgement, where I first heard episode 1.) 

\n", "date_published": "2018-05-20T14:04:52-05:00", "url": "https://schenkenberg.micro.blog/2018/05/20/lucky-podcast-the.html", "tags": ["affairs","family"] }, { "id": "http://schenkenberg.micro.blog/2017/03/14/exit-west.html", "title": "Exit West", "content_html": "

What a time for this deeply affecting Mohsin Hamid novel to appear. Here’s Jia Tolentino on The New Yorker’s website:

The novel feels immediately canonical, so firm and unerring is Hamid’s understanding of our time and its most pressing questions. Whom are we prepared to leave behind in our own pursuit of happiness? Whom are we able to care for, whom are we willing to care for, and why are our answers to those questions so rarely the same? At one point, Saeed points out to Nadia that millions of refugees previously came to their own native country, “when there were wars nearby.” Nadia replies, “That was different. Our country was poor. We didn’t feel we had as much to lose.” Comfort, she knows, can anesthetize one against concern for others. 

This is my first Hamid book, and I’m impressed. Looking forward to catching up with some recent interviews.

\n", "date_published": "2017-03-14T21:37:00-05:00", "url": "https://schenkenberg.micro.blog/2017/03/14/exit-west.html", "tags": ["affairs","books"] }, { "id": "http://schenkenberg.micro.blog/2016/09/05/fractured-lands.html", "content_html": "

“Fractured Lands”: An extraordinary, deeply affecting single-article issue of The New York Times Magazine. Unforgettable.

\n", "date_published": "2016-09-05T20:31:00-05:00", "url": "https://schenkenberg.micro.blog/2016/09/05/fractured-lands.html", "tags": ["affairs"] }, { "id": "http://schenkenberg.micro.blog/2013/01/01/year-in-review.html", "title": "Year in Review: 2012", "content_html": "

This post is part of my Annual Favorites list I’ve been keeping for the past decade-plus.

Favorite Books (Goodreads profile)

  1. The German Genius, by Peter Watson (choice passages)

  2. Journey to the Abyss: The Diaries of Count Harry Kessler, 1880-1918 (choicepassages)

  3. Life Sentences, by William H. Gass

  4. Nox, by Anne Carson

  5. A Hologram for the King, by Dave Eggers

  6. Rineke Dijkstra: A Retrospective

  7. Donald Judd

  8. Every Love Story is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace, by D.T. Max

  9. The Long Goodbye, by Megan O’Rourke

  10. Gerhard Richter: Panorama

  11. Where Good Ideas Come From, by Steven Johnson

  12. The Lifespan of a Fact, by John D’Agata and Jim Fingal

  13. Chip Kidd: Book One: Work, 1986-2006

  14. The Oath: The Obama White House and the Supreme Court, by Jeffrey Toobin

  15. The Obamas, Jodi Kantor

  16. Some of My Lives, by Rosamond Bernier

  17. The Art of Fielding, by Chad Harbach

  18. Berlin Stories, by Robert Walser

  19. The Address Book, by Sophie Calle

  20. The Englishman who Posted Himself and Other Curious Objects, by John Tingey

  21. Art and Activism: Projects of John and Dominique de Menil

  22. The Sense of an Ending, by Julian Barnes

  23. The Bridge on the Drina, by Ivo Andrić

  24. Shards, by Ismet Prcić

  25. The Promise: President Obama, Year One, by Jonathan Alter

  26. Elizabeth Costello, by J. M. Coetzee

  27. How to Live: Or A Life of Montaigne, by Sarah Bakewell

  28. Death in Spring, by Mercè Rodoreda

  29. The Art of Intelligence, by Henry A. Crumpton

  30. Zoe Strauss: 10 Years

  31. Mortality, by Christopher Hitchens

  32. Karaoke Culture, by Dubravka Ugrešić

  33. The Fate of Greenland, by Philip W. Conkling

  34. Redheaded Peckerwood, by Christian Patterson

Happy to have read Karen McGrane’s Content Strategy for Mobile, Frank Chimero’s The Shape of Design, and Mike Monteiro’s Design Is a Job, but would keep them off the ranked list. Same with “Mark Owen”‘s No Easy Day.

Favorite Movies: 2012 (Letterboxd profile) 

  1. Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present

  2. Gerhard Richter Painting

  3. Moonrise Kingdom

  4. Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry

  5. Lincoln

  6. The Master

  7. The Queen of Versailles

  8. Something from Nothing: The Art of Rap

  9. Arbitrage

  10. Skyfall

  11. The Dark Knight Rises

Didn’t connect with: Headhunters, We Have a Pope, The Bourne Legacy.

Favorite Movies: Pre-2012

  1. A Separation

  2. Bill Cunningham New York

  3. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

  4. Certified Copy

  5. Margin Call

  6. Notorious

  7. A Dangerous Method

  8. Bridesmaids

  9. Young Adult

  10. Moneyball

  11. Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop

  12. J. Edgar

  13. Too Big to Fail

  14. Hopscotch

  15. Haywire

Music

I continue to be a huge fan of Rdio, which I pay $10 a month to be able to stream music on a desktop, iPad, or iPhone. (This includes, say, streaming the new Nas via my home’s wi-fi as I mow my suburban lawn.) There will always be rituals and a closeness to the music I miss from my CD days, but the advantages of Rdio — especially the ability to discover and immediately listen to new music, particularly hip-hop and classical — are significant. I don’t have a ranked list here, but my listening history is an open book.

Favorite Articles, Essays & Blog Posts (categorized, not ranked)

Affairs

Culture

Tech & Media

Essays

Misc. Reporting, Articles & Posts

Most-Used iPhone & iPad Apps

I start every morning with the NYTimes’ iPad app. I listen to podcasts, NPR, and music via Instacast, Public Radio Player, and Rdio. I journal using Day One, which is synched using Dropbox on all devices. The new 1Password 4 is a slick companion to the essential desktop app. I organize a lot of my work and personal life using Evernote, and keep up with tasks using Things. Other apps I use often: Reeder (every night, to catch up with the day’s articles), Goodreads, Fantastical, Tweetbot (iphone) and Twitter (iPad), Instagram, Facebook, Checkmark, Instapaper, Pinboard, Netflix, PBS for iPad, Simple, and iBooks (largely for work PDFs).

Final Notes

One unusual memory I have from 2012 is spending several weekday evenings in March walking through my neighborhood for an hour or so, listening to the day’s oral arguments for and against the healthcare act. (My greatest moment of exasperation was hearing Justice Scalia mock-ask whether he was seriously supposed to get through so many pages of material.) In April, I published Abstractions Arrive: Having Been There All the Time, an iPad-only e-book pairing an essay by William H. Gass with photographs by Michael Eastman; New York Times coverage was a cherry on top. May’s Confab conference was one of the best I’ve attended. In August, Tamara and I enjoyed a few highly cultural days in Miami. Surpassing all that, though — we’re expecting a baby in late May of 2013. I expect this should be my best year yet.

\n", "date_published": "2013-01-01T14:45:00-05:00", "url": "https://schenkenberg.micro.blog/2013/01/01/year-in-review.html", "tags": ["music","affairs","technology","books","literature","year in review"] }, { "id": "http://schenkenberg.micro.blog/2012/10/21/evan-osnos-boss.html", "title": "Evan Osnos: \"Boss Rail\"", "content_html": "

An exceptional piece of reporting in The New Yorker.

\n", "date_published": "2012-10-21T21:26:36-05:00", "url": "https://schenkenberg.micro.blog/2012/10/21/evan-osnos-boss.html", "tags": ["affairs"] }, { "id": "http://schenkenberg.micro.blog/2012/10/14/the-selfdestruction-of.html", "title": "\"The Self-Destruction of the 1 Percent\"", "content_html": "

Interesting historical perspective from Chrystia Freeland, writing in the Times:

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The story of Venice’s rise and fall is told by the scholars Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson, in their book “Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty,” as an illustration of their thesis that what separates successful states from failed ones is whether their governing institutions are inclusive or extractive. Extractive states are controlled by ruling elites whose objective is to extract as much wealth as they can from the rest of society. Inclusive states give everyone access to economic opportunity; often, greater inclusiveness creates more prosperity, which creates an incentive for ever greater inclusiveness.

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\n", "date_published": "2012-10-14T14:28:48-05:00", "url": "https://schenkenberg.micro.blog/2012/10/14/the-selfdestruction-of.html", "tags": ["affairs","ideas"] }, { "id": "http://schenkenberg.micro.blog/2012/03/17/ezra-klein-the.html", "title": "Ezra Klein: \"The Unpersuaded\"", "content_html": "

A fascinating New Yorker piece — subtitled “Who listens to a President?” — about the limits, and even potential drawbacks, of even the most finely shaped rhetoric amid our two-party system.

\n", "date_published": "2012-03-17T08:50:00-05:00", "url": "https://schenkenberg.micro.blog/2012/03/17/ezra-klein-the.html", "tags": ["affairs"] }, { "id": "http://schenkenberg.micro.blog/2012/02/06/this-american-life.html", "title": "This American Life: \"Alien Experiment\"", "content_html": "

Jack Hitt explores Alabama’s immigration bill, HB56. Great segment. 

\n", "date_published": "2012-02-06T21:07:31-05:00", "url": "https://schenkenberg.micro.blog/2012/02/06/this-american-life.html", "tags": ["affairs"] }, { "id": "http://schenkenberg.micro.blog/2012/02/03/dahlia-lithwick-colbert.html", "title": "Dahlia Lithwick: \"Colbert v. the Court\"", "content_html": "

A sharp summing up. It’s interesting to learn that Justice Kennedy’s majority opinion stated, presciently, that “fiction and caricature can be a powerful force.”

\n", "date_published": "2012-02-03T08:21:00-05:00", "url": "https://schenkenberg.micro.blog/2012/02/03/dahlia-lithwick-colbert.html", "tags": ["affairs"] } ] }