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3 weeks ago | 
chroniclesmagazine.org | Pedro Gonzalez |Pedro González
Writing about politics these days is a challenge because things move nearly at the speed of social media. One day, the Trump administration announces some move that generates outrage on the left and cheers on the right, only for that decision to be reversed by tweet and then revived temporarily before it goes into cardiac arrest again for good. Max Weber called politics “a strong and slow boring of hard boards.” Today, it’s forceful and fast banging of one’s head against the timeline.
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3 weeks ago | 
readcontra.com | Aaron Everitt |Pedro Gonzalez |Pedro González |Jack Buckby
Back in 2023, ResumeBuilder asked 1,000 business leaders whether and how they surveil employees on a primarily remote or hybrid arrangement. More than a third said that they used webcams to monitor workers. The previous year, the New York Timesreported on the rise of the “worker credit score,” the new model of productivity enforcement in which bonuses and promotions are tied to mechanical inputs like keyboard swipes that are not necessarily reflective of real productivity or creativity.
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1 month ago | 
chroniclesmagazine.org | Pedro Gonzalez |Pedro González
Neill Blomkamp is going back to Planet P—back to Bug City—to hunt for something no one’s ever seen before: a faithful adaptation of Robert A. Heinlein’s Starship Troopers. Don’t get me wrong, I love Paul Verhoeven’s 1997 cut, not least because Verhoeven tried and failed to satirize the subject matter.
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1 month ago | 
readcontra.com | Leighton Woodhouse |Pedro Gonzalez |Pedro González
The first half of this episode is free. You can find Leighton’s work at on Substackand follow him on Twitter @lwoodhouse. “Morning in America.” That’s what comes to mind when we think of the heady 1980s. Departing from the “malaise era” for brighter shores with wind in the sails and dawn’s gentle rays on our faces. A nation strutting with swagger anew, convinced of its exceptional destiny, ineluctable as the tide.
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1 month ago | 
chroniclesmagazine.org | Pedro Gonzalez |Pedro González
One of President Donald Trump’s last moves during his first term was to sign the “Great American Outdoors Act,” which was aimed at supporting the stewardship of our nation’s natural beauty.
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2 months ago | 
chroniclesmagazine.org | Pedro Gonzalez |Pedro González
I’m not sure how it happened, but recently I found myself watching a Canadian musician on YouTube named Peter Pringle as he conducted a lament for Gilgamesh, the titular hero of the ancient epic. Wearing a yellow mock turtleneck, Pringle delivered the performance using a replica of the Gold Lyre of Ur that he commissioned. The original is considered one of the world’s oldest stringed instruments. He sang the entire thing in Sumerian, based on text that was rediscovered and translated by Westerners.
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2 months ago | 
mustreadalaska.com | Pedro Gonzalez |Pedro González
By PEDRO GONZALEZThe Mexican flag is something of a rare sight in Anchorage. But last week, protestors draped in its colors marched along snow-covered streets to protest President Donald Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration.
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2 months ago | 
readcontra.com | Pedro Gonzalez |Pedro González |Joe Ondrak |Katherine Dee |Helen Roy
This is a short newsletter, but I think you’ll enjoy it. Be sure to also check out the latest episode of the podcast. This week, I’ll be talking with the man behind . The Medium Is the MonsterFew pieces have left me so unsettled as this one by about what the internet is doing to people. I think I looked over my shoulder after reading it. In her foreword, explains that the “internet is a layer over reality” now.
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2 months ago | 
chroniclesmagazine.org | Pedro Gonzalez |Pedro González
Two things are true about Luddites. The first is that they are often vindicated in their concern about dramatic technological change, a process that often flies under the name of “progress.”The other is that they lose. No one can stop the future from arriving, any more than Xerxes’s men could punish the sea with whips and red-hot irons. “You may live to see man-made horrors beyond your comprehension,” as Nikola Tesla put it, and these you may also call progress.
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2 months ago | 
readcontra.com | Pedro Gonzalez |Pedro González |Ross Barkan
The politics of personal enmity have been a fact of life for so long that it’s sometimes hard to remember that it wasn’t always this way. We stopped being able to disagree without wanting to kill each other and forgot that it’s possible to consider someone else’s views without accepting them. It bled into everything and ruined all it touched, eradicating a cultural common ground.
