The New Yorker takes a look at my corner of Colorado

This really cute piece about Nucla, Colorado even has a Cortez reference:

One day, his mobile home was broken into, and thieves made off with some stock certificates. Mr. Brick had never used a broker—to him, they were just as untrustworthy as doctors—so he went to the Apothecary Shoppe for help. Before long, Don was making dozens of trips across Disappointment Valley, driving two hours each way, in order to get documents certified at the bank in Cortez, Colorado. Eventually, he sorted out Mr. Brick’s finances, but then the older man’s health began to decline. Don managed his care, helping him move out of various residences; on a couple of occasions, Mr. Brick lived at Don’s house for an extended stretch. At the age of ninety-one, Mr. Brick became seriously ill and went to see a doctor in Montrose. The doctor said that prostate cancer had spread to his stomach; with surgery, he might live another six months. Mr. Brick said he had never had surgery and he wasn’t going to start now.

Really good stuff. Maybe I could get something about Dolores in there! Now that the New Yorker is on the case, it seems like an under-covered topic.

Comments

Why Did Reality Winner Leak to the Intercept?

So Reality Winner, former NSA contractor, is in federal prison for leaking classified information — for five years and three months, the longest sentence of any whistleblower in history. She gave documents on how Russia had attempted to hack vendors of election machinery and software to The Intercept , which completely bungled basic security procedures (according to a recent New York Times piece from Ben Smith, the main fault lay with Matthew Cole and Richard Esposito ), leading to her capture within hours. Winner recently contracted COVID-19 in prison, and is reportedly suffering some lingering aftereffects. Glenn Greenwald has been furiously denying that he had anything at all to do with the Winner clusterfuck, and I recently got in an argument with him about it on Twitter. I read a New York story about Winner, which clearly implies that she was listening to the Intercepted podcast of March 22, 2017 , where Greenwald and Jeremy Scahill expressed skepticism about Russia actual...

The Setswana Grammar Manual

One of my few successes during my service here was formatting the Peace Corps South Africa grammar manual for Setswana, written mostly by Art Chambers, an SA16 volunteer. For anyone wanting to learn Setswana, I reckon it's a pretty good primer, so I present it for free here . If you think it sucks and you want to make changes, or you'd like to take a look at the raw TeX file, you can find it here .

Russiagate and the Left, Round II

Corey Robin has responded to my article arguing that the left should take the Trump-Russia story more seriously . I do appreciate that he considers me an ally, and I feel the same towards him. However I am not convinced. The points I want to make are somewhat disconnected, so I will just take them one at a time. What should be done? Robin complains that I don't give much attention to the question of how we should respond to Russian electoral espionage. As an initial matter, the question of whether a problem is an important one is logically distinct from what the response should be. There is a sizable vein of skepticism about Russiagate on the left, and the argument of the post was that skepticism was misplaced. Solutions can be worked out later. This point is rather similar to the centrist argument that you can't talk about Medicare for All unless you've got a fully costed-out bill detailing all the necessary taxes and regulation. However, I have advanced some pol...

Ryan Cooper

Search This Blog