Six Ideas That Made Us Think

1. The Defenestration of Hu Jintao

Sinologists have been mesmerized by the sudden, chilling moment when former Chinese leader Hu Jintao was blindsided by forced escort out of the Communist Party Congress. On Twitter, Byron Wan shares the “best videos so far showing us what happened.”

Joseph Torigan, an expert on authoritarianism and power struggles therein, insists this event was no coup:

Chinese politics is a knife fight, but it's not typical for the leader to act in a way that more obviously contravenes norms than is really useful...Although Leninist leaders are not usually purged at formal meetings (with the exception of Beria), they have gotten very sick...So, it's always possible Hu Jintao wanted to act like Chen Shaomin, the only person that did not raise their hand at the 12th Plenum of the 8th Party Congress when Liu Shaoqi was condemned. If so, that would be truly stunning given historical continuities.

Torigan’s interpretation is met by criticism in the responding comments.

2. At Work in the Metaverse

Microsoft and Facebook have teamed up to bring the Metaverse to the workplace. Ben Thompson, on his blog Stratechery, interviews both Nadella and Zuckerberg, with the Facebook chief offering a vivid picture of how augmented reality will change remote work:

You put on your Quest Pro or eventually your AR glasses and you just kind of snap your fingers and you have three huge monitors up in front of you no matter where you are. It doesn’t have to actually be your desk setup. It could be Starbucks or you’re sitting on a bus somewhere… [and you] have your kind of perfect workstation, which by the way will probably be a better workstation than most people can get physically anyway. But you have it not only there, but anywhere you go.

3. Down and Out in Los Angeles

Was John Train the world’s most interesting man? The philanthropist, who died this month, was a Wall Street titan, a biographer of Warren Buffet, a founder of the literary journal The Paris Review, an expert in oriental rugs, a historian of olive trees, a leading organizer of Afghanistan relief, and a dollar-a-year consultant for the Pentagon and CIA. But perhaps his most memorable habit, writes Philip Terzian, was collecting anecdotes about people with funny names:

Ezra Klein’s blistering critique of LA’s failed policies for housing the homeless is eye-opening – and depressing. In LA, a single unit of housing is about $600,000. Worse, the sensible solutions are bound to fail:

Yes, micro units and dormitories and prefabricated homes can be cheaper, but if anything, they face heavier community opposition. That’s even truer for large shelter developments, which communities go to war to stop. On the margin, the choice of what to build matters. But the inability to build cheaply or swiftly is endemic.

4. Grade Inflation Warrior

Harvey Mansfield – a political philosophy scholar with a reputation for difficult courses on Machiavelli and Tocqueville – has been on the Harvard faculty since 1962. Known for fighting grade inflation, contrarian opinions, and public engagement, he remains both loved and feared at age 90. In National Review, Jay Nordlinger’s tribute captures why Mansfield’s reputation continues to grow:

For years, Mansfield had the reputation of an exceptionally hard grader. Harvey C. Mansfield was known as “Harvey C-minus.” Is he still a hard grader? Harder than his peers? “Not much,” he says. “I’ve had to surrender to grade inflation — for the obvious reason that I don’t want to punish students for taking my course.” You might think that grade inflation makes students more relaxed. The opposite is true, says Mansfield. Any blemish on the transcript — even an A-minus! — could spell trouble. Why are you less than perfect, huh? What’s wrong with you? Students worry about their admission to grad school, and their employment prospects.

5. Dead Ends

In the midst of the Netflix-fueled fascination with the lives of serial killers, Elizabeth Bruenig sees the trend as nothing more than an “exercise in finding explanations where none exist”:

The experience of watching serial-killer shows or documentaries is almost always identical: One now knows more about the grisly nature of what took place, but without the satisfaction of understanding why it had to happen or what to think of a world in which such things occasionally transpire. The viewers—and the victims’ families—pay the price for investigating the problem, but they are swindled out of a verdict. This is because there is no reason, and no meaning, in wanton destruction. It is exactly what it appears to be. It does not entail a greater theory, purpose, or truth of some kind that we could use to our benefit, for prevention or healing, if only we could discover it.

6. Crime School at the Office

Adrian Wooldridge looks at how American businesses are adapting to rising street crime:

Noodles & Company is training its workers on how to respond if they discover casual drug use in their bathrooms. MOD Pizza is installing panic buttons in stores and offering emotional support resources to employees after an incident. Employees are instructed never to leave the back doors of restaurants open. Fresh Market Place in Chicago’s Bucktown neighborhood gives all employees safety training and coaches them to avoid confrontations and defuse conflicts. This columnist was surprised when, as part of his training as a “new hire” at Bloomberg Opinion, he was asked to watch a video on what to do if an armed assailant invades the office.

Websites Worth Reading

Grande Flânerieg: Architecture and history

Steve Jobs Archive: Essays, speeches, and ephemera

Slow Roads: Free video game for pleasant drives

Feeds We Follow

@pmarca: What Marc Andreesen is reading

@LHSummers: Larry Summers on inflation

@DecisionDeskHQ: Best source for mid-term election results