Uber’s Path of Destruction, Hubert Horan, American Affairs Journal. I feel guilty any time I use Uber rather than a traditional taxi or mass transit. The dire state of ridesharing companies like Uber and Lyft further cements my belief that the age of individual automobile has hit its twilight years. There’s no greater a civilization-ending waste than the automobile, at least in urban areas. Also, any time some SV sociopath tells you he’s (it’s almost always a he) “disrupting” some market segment, kick him somewhere painful and then get the hell away.
Bundyville, Season Two, Leah Sottile, Longreads. Read this, listen to this, and understand that this is totally not fiction, that some of your fellow citizens actually believe in the American Redoubt as a plan rather than bad dystopian storytelling.
How to Make Up Planets and Accidentally Influence People, Kayne Lynch, The Nib. Touching upon a similar species of idiot surveyed in Bundyville, from another direction.
Rereading Gene Wolfe, Tor.com. I’m still working on rereading Iain M. Banks’s Culture novels, but Wolfe is on the list to read through someday.
To the Moon, Jessica Handler, Brevity. Jessica is an instructor and patio drummer at Wildacres, the writing workshop we attend each summer. She posted this older piece in honor of the Apollo anniversary. From another Wildacres instructor, John Kessel, a reminder to all writers that “the moon is not an ornament.”