Newsletter

4: The longest siege

by

You can’t hide as much on an island.

Joseph Mallord William Turner, Vignette Study of a Ship in a Storm via Rabih Alameddine

From Sunday all the way into Tuesday, Hurricane Dorian pummeled the Bahamas, leaving behind mass destruction and flooding and a death toll of at least 23. Two entire neighborhoods home to many Haitian immigrants were pretty much leveled. One meteorologist wrote for the Washington Post:

“Grand Bahama Island may have just endured the longest siege of violent, destructive weather ever observed.”

Hurricanes don’t generate their own forward momentum, rather they float along at the desire of global wind currents. Dorian is part of trend known as “stalling,” where instead of plowing through communities, a hurricane moves in and then just sort of sits there for a long stretch of time, dumping water and tearing apart everything it can with winds in this case up to 185 mph. Dorian moved slower than a person walks and at times didn’t move at all, leisurely hammering Grand Bahama Island for over 40 hours. Imagine being in a hurricane for 40 hours.

As you probably guessed, there is a compelling case that stalling is connected to climate change—models show global winds generally slowing down, in part because the Arctic is warming rapidly and there’s less temperature contrast to stir them up. We also know that warmer waters are creating stronger hurricanes, rising sea levels are creating bigger storm surges, and more moisture in the air is producing more rain during these storms. There was a lot of lame storm coverage that didn’t mention these facts, and lamer coverage that merely quoted Democrats pointing them out. But there was also a ton of good analysis pieces, including this one from Michael Mann and Andrew Dessler.

Sort of coincidentally this week I have been talking to people at community foundations in places like Puerto Rico and Hawaii about their climate work. I keep asking them some version of the question, do you get any pushback from people in the community who don’t want to act on or even acknowledge climate change? One person in Hawaii I spoke with today sort of politely laughed and said:

You know, you can’t hide as much on an island. If things happen, they happen pretty quickly and it’s pretty obvious. So I think people are very aware, and in our lifetimes we have seen drastic changes. … It’s just obvious to everyone, so it’s really not an issue here. You can talk about it openly and actually if you don’t mention it, someone’s probably gonna call you on it.

Speaking of Long Sieges

Meanwhile on the mainland, CNN punished us for demanding more climate coverage by making us watch presidential candidates talk about it for 7 hours straight until we got sick and swore we would never ask about climate change again.

The result was riveting television for those of us who watched the entire thing—just kidding I did not watch any of it! I had things to do and didn’t want to sit around and watch CNN for 7 hours I don’t know what to tell you guys. I opted to wait until morning for the clips and recaps, like this one and this one and this one. I also checked in on Twitter where I learned that apparently Joe Biden’s eye filled up with blood.

Joking aside I am actually really glad that the town hall happened and it should be considered a major victory for activist groups like Sunrise who have been campaigning for months for a climate debate (the reason it had to be town hall style and for so long is that the DNC unforgivably rejected a true debate). The town hall was also a victory for Jay Inslee rip and Warren is even absorbing some of his climate plan. So even if it was pretty inaccessible, the town hall sends a signal and hopefully marks a step toward us being better at talking seriously about this stuff in the public sphere. And there was a lot of substantive discussion, including several questions from the audience holding the candidates accountable for their policies and campaigns. Some clear differences are emerging on nuclear, natural gas, and carbon taxes. And some dumb CNN stuff like Wolf Blitzer asking if he has to drive an electric car like come on Wolf.

CNN, which most days is like a Labrador trying to explain the state of the world, deserves some credit for doing it. Hopefully we will continue to see more coverage, outside the context of Democratic politics, woven into more daily news stories, and connecting the issue to people and their lives. If you want to see a non-7-hour summary of the candidates’ climate plans, this one isn’t bad.

“The Daemon Lover” by Maggie Umber in Now 5

More Links

  • A Globe writer outlines the living hell that is finding an apartment in Boston.
  • Massachusetts’ equity goals for its legal weed industry are going pretty much horribly. “Our ancestors, as black and brown people, would laugh at the fact that we put trust and faith in the government to want to help us.”
  • Around 30% to 40% of the U.S. food supply goes uneaten, but 1 in 8 Americans is food insecure, and food waste contributes 8% of global warming emissions.
  • A new sort of anti-prison opened up in Oakland, a center to focus on restorative justice and combat mass incarceration. “Too often, when people think of the term ‘public safety,’ they’re thinking of punishment and prisons. We felt a need for something equally tangible, equally visible, in concrete, brick, and mortar form.”

What I Wrote

A post I wrote called Epstein, Science, and the Power of Saying No to Money ran this week, building on a lot of the stuff I’ve been talking about here lately. It points out that scientists often think they are immune from matters of politics and power (and often they are just complete bastards). But accepting money holds meaning and consequences, and it’s how the scientific enterprise connects with society.

In the aftermath of toxic donor scandals, some beneficiaries are responding by giving back or donating the money, a respectable move. An even better one would be declining it in the first place. After all, philanthropy is an exercise of power, and one way that our institutions, thinkers, artists and, indeed, all of us can use our own power is via the underrated act of saying “no.”

Podcasts

I’m listening to an Ezra Klein Show with British writer Joe Higgs, who writes about chaos magic and Alan Moore and Timothy Leary kind of stuff. He wrote a book about this electronic music duo that took a million pounds to an island and just lit it on fire. He’s also talking about how because Gen Z is always networked via smartphone they are less fixated on individuality, more empathic, and more anxious, which is why when they watch The Breakfast Club they hate Judd Nelson and love Anthony Michael Hall and also they do things like fight climate change and gun violence.

Music

I guess I’m a little late in promoting this band, since Wikipedia tells me they broke up approximately one month ago. But Philadelphia’s own, or I guess formerly own, Cayetana still has two excellent studio releases you can enjoy and that I highly recommend. I kind of hate to link to a cover because they have so many great songs of their own, including this one, but I do love their version of Age of Consent. 

This issue comes to you from my bedroom, where I am hiding with our two tiny dogs because a perfectly nice man is repairing our kitchen ceiling and otherwise the dogs will bark at him and possibly bite him. Even from in here, the oldest dog who only has one eye is still barking at him. Despite these challenging constraints, Crisis Palace carries on. Sorry this one was a little dark.

Though it may be annoying, be like my one-eyed dog this week. Keep barking if you think something is wrong, and then later on you can take a very long nap.

Tate

3: In every dream home a heartache

by

Come to my house and call me a bedbug to my face

Mascuppic Lake in Tyngsboro, Massachusetts, home to many dark family stories but also a good place to haul some ass on a jetski.

I kind of didn’t want to talk about David Koch because there’s something about it that makes me imagine some Portlandia sketch where there’s a community meeting about a dog park or something and a person in a fleece hat keeps bringing up the Koch brothers. Which is to say there is a certain type of liberal who is obsessed with the Koch brothers and tries hangs all of the country’s problems on them. 

That said, we can certainly hang a bunch of the country’s problems on them! And so, with his recent death at 79, let’s take a minute to acknowledge David Koch’s truly horrible legacy. 

One reason I wanted to talk about the Kochs is that I just finished an article that has not been published yet, but it’s about the folly of celebrating philanthropy based on generosity or effectiveness, neither of which makes it an inherent good. Here is a preview: 

Generosity is often framed in terms of voluntary redistribution, but we’ve seen how giving is not particularly effective at breaking up large fortunes. Some of the world’s most generous donors, Bloomberg, Gates, Buffett, and others, have watched their personal fortunes balloon since committing to give away that very money. Wealth once accumulated develops a gravitational pull that leaves generosity far too weak a tool when it comes to untangling inequality. 

It feels relevant in the context of David Koch, because there’s a narrative out there that with his passing we shouldn’t be attacking him, due to his generosity toward things like art museums and cancer research. MIT, in particular, whitewashed his legacy, a posthumous thank you for the alum’s donations over the years. That kind of sanitization is a dangerous way to respond to any powerful person’s death. 

Setting aside the fact that I struggle to call anyone who dies with $50 billion in his pockets particularly generous, philanthropy doesn’t absolve how their money was made, or what other damage was wrought in their lifetime.

In David Koch’s case, he and his brother used their money to advance their staunch libertarian beliefs, which also conveniently protected their enormous personal wealth. The Kochs used their giving extremely effectively in this regard, turning away from the fringe Libertarian Party in the 1980s and realizing they could elevate their extreme ideas in the mainstream (they were well to the right of Reagan) by building a massive network of donors to bankroll lobbying, think tanks, local advocacy, and dark money political donations.  

Some of the Kochs’ greatest hits include funding to slash the social safety net and health care access, weaken unions, scuttle gun laws, and undo campaign finance rules. But I’d say their worst offenses involve their denial of climate change and gutting of environmental regulations. As Jane Mayer and Christopher Leonard have reported, the Kochs were some of the country’s worst polluters through their chemical and fossil fuel businesses, and much of their opposition to regulation directly protected their own profits. Fearing a costly crackdown on the fossil fuel industry, they spent decades opposing any regulation of greenhouse gases and any moderate Republican who was open to it, while sowing doubt about the scientific consensus on climate change. They helped to create a Republican orthodoxy that still blocks federal policy today. David Koch is gone, but we will all be suffering the consequences of his efforts for many years to come. 

One more quick David Koch is horrible story, but with this one has a happy ending. A cool trick they picked up in the 2010s was to swoop into communities considering public transit investments—things like tunnels, new bus routes, light rail expansions, real scary stuff—and pump money into the opposition, tanking once-popular proposals on the basis that taxes and public transit are attacks on liberty. 

But (as we saw with you know who’s takeover of the party) there are limits to the Kochs’ influence. Their most recent transit battle was in my hometown of Phoenix, Arizona (OK I’m actually from Mesa). On Tuesday, a Koch-funded effort to ban any new light rail or streetcar construction in the city lost in a landslide. Good job Phoenix. The Koch legacy casts a long and ugly shadow, but it is not all powerful.

Links

  • London will begin piping heat from the subway into homes and businesses to conserve energy. Another “wasted heat” project diverts it from a sugar factory into a greenhouse that grows weed.  
  • “Call me a bedbug to my face.”
  • The Southwest got a lot of snow, but the Colorado River and the people who depend on it are still in trouble. “You can put an ice cube — even an excellent ice cube — in a cup of hot coffee, but eventually it’s going to disappear.”
  • Due to a scheduling oddity, Fenway charged just $5 for what turned out to be a single 12-minute inning. It was a fun/sad window into how accessible Fenway must have been at some point, and certainly no longer is. 
  • Facial recognition tools are “dangerous when they fail and harmful when they work.” Calling for a moratorium (actually how about we just make it illegal).
  • There are, it turns out, laws when you are drinking Claws. My favorite flavor is black cherry. 
  • Surprising nobody, there are laws when drinking nutcracker, and New York cops are blitzing vendors of the summer drink popular in Black communities.
  • And for the summer public drinking trifecta, there’s a war on partying gentrifiers on Southie Beach. “On the weekend, they stand there with their drinks and their phones and their glasses and they just pee.”  

More Bacchus by Eddie Campbell. This is how you feel when you get this newsletter.

Watching

The second season of Mindhunter (or, The Murder Boys, as I call it) is just as gripping as the first. It occurred to me that the FBI agents behind the Behavioral Science Unit have been portrayed so often in fiction that they are basically folklore at this point, like Batman or Sherlock Holmes. This is a Roxy Music song used in the first episode’s cold open, but in the show it cuts off right before one of the best payoffs in rock history so you can listen to it here at around 3:00 and do like stupid fake guitar motions or whatever you feel like.

I also watched Us which was scary as shit and also really funny and the artistic use of I Got 5 On It and N.W.A. will go down in film history if there is any good in this world.

Reading

In the middle of The Power, by Naomi Alderman and it is great so far. I’ll probably write more about it later but it imagines a world in which all young women develop an electricity-based power that can basically fuck up anyone who messes with them. It’s a real page-turner but also a cutting look at the mechanics of all forms of power. 

I read some stuff about how using Google navigation is making us all stupid and I cannot afford to get stupider I’m not trying to go to Jupiter over here. So I started driving in Boston without Google and it is a real adventure. It wasn’t pretty but I made it home from Brookline today. So if I’m late for something, cut me some slack at least I will be smart when I get there.

I hope all of your navigations on the road and in life are successful.

Tate

2: We could be heroes

by

Humidity can be difficult. 

Usagi Yojimbo, Stan Sakai, 1987

Someone asked me recently who some of the leaders are in the climate change field and it was hard to think off the top of my head. I was like, oh, I don’t know and named some scientists, a couple donors, and some writers I like. Then I kind of snapped out of it and remembered all these amazing people like Rhiana Gunn-Wright, Varshini Prakash at Sunrise, Angela Adrar at Climate Justice Alliance. 

But ever since that phone call, the idea of who our climate heroes are has been really bugging me. It struck me as part of a major problem in the climate movement especially pre maybe 2015?—that people were struggling to see themselves in the issue or in the people working to solve it. 

This seemed like a good topic to touch on in the week that Jay Inslee dropped out of the Democratic primary, and yet, Tom Steyer remains. I really like Jay Inslee—he’s a public servant who’s been walking the walk for years, and his campaign was a noble effort as he had little chance of winning but saw an opportunity to elevate climate in the race. 

On the other hand, when hedge fund billionaire and major climate donor Steyer joined the race, I had the similar close my eyes and exhale slowly while shaking my head response that most people did. A lot of people were pointing out all of the different ways he could use $100 million in campaign money on climate solutions instead, while having gut reactions that billionaires are basically the worst. Which both are certainly true, but I was also thinking ah shit what if it actually sort of works and he becomes this big billionaire climate guy jumping into the national spotlight. 

I tweeted something about this and someone responded, yeah but he should do this other stuff with his money instead, so I guess I didn’t do a very good job of explaining it. But the thing I’m getting at is, even if these wealthy and/or powerful dudes are coming out strong and railing against the climate crisis and even having an impact, I feel like we lose something important based on the sheer fact of billionaires taking center stage as climate heroes.

This is kind of a similar idea to what I was saying in the last newsletter about the importance of all of us having buy-in, but in this case it’s way more important because of the level of societal change needed on this issue. I’ve also written some stuff about Mike Bloomberg and how even though he’s given like a billion dollars to climate action, he’s also trashed climate activists and championed natural gas, which was it turns out surprise not such an awesome idea, all while elevating his own personal status as a climate leader. It’s not that donors or other elites for that matter don’t have an important role to play in climate change, but it has to be in service of a movement beyond them. 

Because the danger is that billionaires as climate heroes not only run the risk of undermining more ambitious and democratic climate action, they also reinforce the idea that fighting climate change is a matter for people in suits or maybe patagonia vests and khakis sitting down behind closed doors. When nothing could be further from the truth. 

All it takes to realize this is one conversation with someone fighting a pipeline on tribal land, or Latinx and Native workers in New Mexico organizing for renewable energy instead of oil drilling, or an 18-year-old getting arrested in DC, or people working on just disaster recovery in the South. Not to mention farmers, fishers, pretty much anyone feeling climate change in their daily lives. 

I think these people are finally getting the spotlight as climate heroes, and it’s overdue. Their stories are where climate change lives and breathes, and hopefully, where people can finally start to see themselves. 

Podcasts

That is actually a good segue into a podcast I wanted to recommend this week, which is called Mothers of Invention. It’s hosted by former president of Ireland Mary Robinson and writer/comedian Maeve Higgins as they talk to climate justice leaders such as Gunn-Wright, policy lead on the Green New Deal, Navajo climate activist Wahleah Johns, or Siwatu-Salama Ra, a formerly incarcerated environmental and racial justice advocate from Detroit. The show is surprisingly funny of all things and spotlights people on the frontlines of climate change in ways you rarely see. 

My dog has been pretty savage toward this lambchop toy I’m starting to feel bad for it.

Links

  • I’m making my way through the first wave of articles in the incredible 1619 Project. Aside from the fact that it covers history rarely taught in high schools and sometimes colleges, the stories are remarkable and remarkably told. You can buy a paper copy here for 6 bucks if you want to let the NYT know you like it when they do good stuff and not dumb stuff. 
  • A standout is Nikole Hannah-Jones’ powerful article about the history of black Americans fighting and often dying for the ideals of American democracy. “What if America understood, finally, in this 400th year, that we have never been the problem but the solution?”
  • A history of American Chinese food by way of the Crab Rangoon. 
  • There’s a bunch of colleges and biotech startups in Cambridge but also the factory that makes the world’s supply of Junior Mints. “A spokeswoman for the company, which rarely communicates with the media or candy industry analysts, declined comment.”
  • As days get hotter in Phoenix, people are doing more things at night. And a writer laments the loss of cool summer nights to climate change. 

Watching

Blown Away is this captivating reality show about glass blowers. Now and then someone’s sculpture in progress breaks and I like to imagine if I were on the show and that happened to me I would run around to all the other people’s sculptures and smash them and then run away.  

Listening

I was going to write about this emo band I like but I don’t feel like it now and earlier today I was listening to this other band from Belgium that I guess is kind of emo still called Brutus. Brutus is badass and fronted by a drummer who sings which is always a good time. You can watch them play this good song here. 

Reading

I read this book a couple years ago but I heard someone talking about it on a podcast yesterday and I was thinking about how good it was and wanted to recommend it. It’s called What is Populism? by Jan-Werner Müller and it’s about the wave of elected authoritarians like Trump, Berlusconi, and Marine Le Pen, who redefine “the people” in a one-sided way (not on my side, not the people) that secures their corrupt power. Short and accessible, it offers clarity on a global phenomenon that our own political hellscape is a part of.

The weather has been awful here and I told my therapist, “Yesterday I fell into a complete rage just because it was so humid and some flies got into the house.” He kind of nodded and said, “Well, humidity can be difficult,” which I appreciated. 

Whatever your own personal version of humidity is, I wish you the best in overcoming it. Remember, it usually doesn’t last forever. 

Tate

1. A sick Gilded Age burn

by

Won’t you come and wash away the rain

The Invisibles, Grant Morrison

We have some really special billionaire villains these days, but our rising disdain toward wealthy donors is more of a return to form than many might realize. I love this quote from John D. Rockefeller’s first failed attempt to charter his foundation at the start of the 20th century, a response from labor leader Samuel Gompers: 

“The one thing the world would gratefully accept from Mr. Rockefeller now would be the establishment of a great endowment of research and education to help other people see in time how they can keep from being like him.”

That is a sick Gilded Age burn, and honestly kind of a good idea, but it also shows how our warm Bono feelings toward philanthropy during the late 20th are an aberration. And yet, Rockefeller eventually established his foundation, and throughout much of history some kind of philanthropy has played part in providing public good. One smart framework for how to parse this conflict comes from the same book I got that quote from, Philanthropy in Democratic Societies. In a later chapter, authors pose a split between what they call disruptive philanthropy, when wealthy donors undermine and compete with the public sector, and contributory philanthropy, which complements the public sector and ultimately enlarges the public goods provided by the state. Charter school philanthropy is one example they give of the disruptive kind which is bad fyi.

But I actually wanted to talk about black holes today. I recently interviewed Avery Broderick, a theoretical physicist who played a role in producing that metal as hell black hole picture everyone loves: 

I talked to him for an article about the Perimeter Institute, the research center he works at in Ontario. Perimeter was initially funded by the guy behind BlackBerry who just really wanted to start an independent center focused entirely on theoretical physics which is not otherwise really a thing as far as I can tell. It has all kinds of cool features that make it unique and it’s pretty famous now, but what interested me in it is the involvement of the Canadian and Ontario governments. Between half and two thirds of its funding comes from government these days, and as a result goes through all sorts of regular review and oversight, and also maintains several partnerships with universities and does a bunch of outreach with K12 schools. It strikes me as a good example of contributory philanthropy in the sense that, even though a donor with a specific interest started it up, it’s now grounded in the public sector and larger scientific community. 

My favorite part of working on this article (aside from getting to talk to Canadians, which is always a joy, they say zed instead of z) was toward the end of my conversation with Avery, who is a brilliant scientist, and got almost sentimental about funding for a minute. 

The private funding allows the flexibility that makes a place like Perimeter unique, but the public support “provides an imprimatur from our community that we are doing good things.”

He says, “It kind of prevents us from believing our own hype too much, right? You go out and you get a reality check from your peers.”

There’s also something grounding about funding coming from members of the public, who might otherwise spend that money on a movie with their kids, he says. 

“I think that realization imbues a duty to do something worthwhile, that when we receive public monies, we are beholden now to everybody to justify why that was a useful expenditure,” he says. “I do reflect on that. I hope my colleagues reflect on that. I think they do.”

Scrutiny of wealthy donors is important for many reasons, including the harms of wealth concentration, reputation laundering, and billionaire influence. But beyond that, it offers us a chance to think about the more intrinsic importance of how we pay for the things we care about.

Yes there’s the danger of tainted funding, like Epstein and Sackler money. But we also gain something kind of beautiful when we all have a stake, even in work like astrophysics. As an international project, lots of people all over the world paid to get that picture of a black hole, including you probably. And to the scientists behind it, it matters that people, not just a person, are invested in their work. 

Links

Reading

I’ve been on a 1980s black and white indie comics kick lately, and I’ve cracked the Bacchus omnibus, volume one, by Eddie Campbell. Bacchus is the long-running pet project of the writer and artist probably best known for drawing From Hell.  

This is you when you get this newsletter.

Watching

Westworld Season 2. I read someone call this show HBO’s Lost and that is a good way of putting it. They really make you work for it but there are some good payoffs, like a brutal scene featuring this feudal Japan version of Wu-Tang’s C.R.E.A.M. 

Last night, Jamie (borat voice my wife) and some friends organized a fundraiser and night of action for immigrant justice. Turnout was great and Jamie presented a moving overview of the abuses happening at the southern border. It’s totally fine that you couldn’t make it don’t sweat it but if this is something you are concerned about, consider giving to the following groups that benefitted from the event.

Boston Immigrant Justice Accompaniment Network (BIJAN/Beyond)

Border Kindness/Bondad Frontera

National Immigration Law Center (NILC)

And that’s all for this week good luck out there. Take care of your loved ones. Go for a nice walk maybe with a dog. Be kind to yourself.

Tate

0: Welcome to Crisis Palace

by

I am the last person in the world to start a newsletter and now we all have them, congratulations we did it.

So the short version of why I decided to start a newsletter goes like this. I missed having a direct, unbranded platform, twitter is very bad, and nobody really reads blogs anymore. I wanted to start something up that would allow me to pull together the different threads of my work and thoughts, while providing folks with similar interests some information and hopefully enjoyment.

The long version is best summed up by two freelance writers’ newsletters that I have found inspiring. 

First, I’ve been reading the Ann Friedman Weekly since 2014 (!) and I’ve always loved the way that Ann uses it to connect what she’s working on, what she’s taken an interest in, and some mildly personal stuff, all into one coherent package. All this, despite the fact that she doesn’t have what you might think of as clearly defined beat or brand. It’s just Ann’s unique perspective written in her voice, and there’s something very rewarding about organically engaging with news and ideas presented in that way. I also read once that she started it as kind of a check-in on what she’s done every week, which I find appealing—to mark and process the passage of time in an outward-facing way. 

Second, there’s Welcome to Hell World by Luke O’Neil, the long-suffering punk journalist who’s been shitcanned from various publications, burned bridges with others, and clearly has to tone down his um intense writing style for most outlets. So he started Hell World, and it’s one of the best examples of honest, unflinching prose you’ll come across. It’s entirely on his terms and is just the best. This newsletter won’t be very much like his, but I was inspired by his approach to it, and came to think all freelance journalists ought to have some kind of conduit where we can write fully on our own terms, an unfiltered channel. That might have been blogging in another era, but now I think it’s a newsletter. 

Concrete by Paul Chadwick, 1988

So what might subscribers expect in Crisis Palace? 

I plan to write about and link to what I’m working on, what I’ve published, what I’m reading or watching, some stuff happening in my life, and various things going on in the world that are on my mind. Maybe I’ll ask other people to contribute sometimes. 

One thing I can promise you—these will never be very long and I won’t send very many. That’s the Crisis Palace guarantee.

What topics are you going to write about? 

The things I write about and the things I am interested in, which are roughly the same, include: 

Climate Change. Especially cities, transportation, and climate justice.  

Philanthropy and nonprofits. I worked in progressive nonprofits and fundraising for years and I’m interested in the influence this weird sector has on the world, and whether it can actually shift power.

Activism. As above, this is about the different levers we use to advance change and their outcomes and consequences.

Media. Comic books, television, books, genre fiction, other comic books. 

And I guess that’s pretty much it. We’ll see though. Sometimes I write about bugs or dead people or water. 

What does Crisis Palace mean? 

Crisis Palace means actually nothing. It was the result from a twitter meme where the letters in my name determined what my Sonic the Hedgehog world would be called. I have a hard time naming things. 

Hang on who even are you? 

I’m a freelance writer, my work has appeared in a bunch of places but I write regularly for Inside Philanthropy, where I cover climate change and the weird realm of people influencing the world with tax-deductible allocations of wealth. But I’m interested in all kinds of stuff and have had bylines in the Atlantic, Curbed, Boston Magazine, and more. 

Can I go now? 

Sure. Future emails will have more stuff but you know I’m just working this out right now so get off my back.