This World and Me

Ruth Bader Ginsburg (1933–2020) The evening of Friday, September 18, 2020, began normally. I attended my virtual class on the history of German literature and had just finished dinner when my phone vibrated, indicating a new message from a friend. It was one of my roommates, who had just sent the following message to a group chat: "Wtf". For a moment, there was an air of confusion; my roommate wasn't sure if what he had just read on the Internet was accurate, and none of us were sure what he was talking about. Then, a few seconds later, the fog of doubt cleared away as my roommate sent three small yet devastating words: "RBG passed away". In her eulogy of a late colleague , Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg recounted how Justice Antonin Scalia was once asked how he and Ginsburg could be friends, given their nearly diametrical opposite opinions on the law. Scalia had answered: "I attack ideas. I don’t attack people." Her remarkable friendships with even those...

Just a few days ago, I finished a rewatch of Avatar: The Last Airbender with my sister. It is really quite a special show; countless observers have described it as one of the greatest American animated television series ever made. The first time I watched this series was not as a kid, but rather just last year in college with my roommate. Although I was aware of the series' existence as a kid growing up, I think the primary reason why it wasn't a direct part of my childhood was because of the arc-style structure of the story. The show would air episodes on Nickelodeon, but it's not really the kind of show that you can pick up in the middle, so if Nickelodeon aired a mid-season episode, I wouldn't have enough context of the broader story arc to appreciate what is going on. The shows I watched as a kid were ones whose premise was clear enough that I could still understand what was going on even if I watched an episode in the middle of the season without broader context,...

If there is anything that the COVID-19 pandemic has made clear, it is that we depend on reliable, high-speed access to the Internet as an essential utility to our lives, not unlike electricity and water. But even as millions of Americans have been forced to work from home or study from home, there are still millions of Americans who lack reliable access to the Internet, particularly in rural areas. The problem has been difficult to quantify because different studies have employed different measurement tactics, some of which are rather questionable. According to Ars Technica , a study conducted by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) indicated that "21.3 million Americans live in areas without access to fixed broadband with 25Mbps download and 3Mbps upload speeds". However, this is widely considered to be a gross underestimation because the FCC "counts an entire census block as served even if only one home in the census block can get service". Ars Technica re...