To the Victors, Go the Spoils: Part I

November 24, 2024

I didn’t write last week. It wasn’t because I didn’t have anything to say, but that I don’t think anyone wanted to hear where my head was. Midday Sunday Hope...

We Need to Be Pragmatic

November 10, 2024

General Francisco Franco and Benito Mussolini are two historical figures on my mind this week Boy, has this been a week! Don't worry. This is not a...

A Foul Wind

November 3, 2024

Numbers have always had this weird grip on me—they just stick. I think it traces back to my days playing fantasy baseball in the '90s. By now, “Nate’s into...

Readers Have Their Say

October 27, 2024

Happy Sunday, This week's newsletter is largely going to be a reader mailbag of responses to the piece last week. In that edition, I wrote about feeling out...

Feeling Out Of Step

October 20, 2024

Hey folks, this week was Fall Break here in the Gulf. Hope and I spent a long weekend in Yerevan, Armenia. If that sounds familiar it’s because we did the...

Foreign Policy, Fighting Bad Guys, and Stories from Lebanon

October 6, 2024

Hope and I cast our ballots electronically on September 26th, so, mercifully for us, the election is over. I know it’s not actually over, but it is for me....

Rebel Ridge: Civil Asset Forfeiture and Policing for Profit

October 2, 2024

Happy Wednesday, This week’s newsletter is arriving later than usual because Hope and I returned late Sunday from a weekend trip to Doha. Because we moved to...

Getting Back at Scammers & News of the Moment

September 22, 2024

There are at least half a dozen topics that I considered writing about at various points this week. I often joke that we live in absurd times, but it feels...

Are We Allergic to Data?

September 15, 2024

Pardon me in advance for the brevity of today's newsletter. I opened last week by wishing my mother a happy 84th. On the eighteenth, I'll be celebrating my...

Changing Your Mind is a Virtue

September 8, 2024

First off, happy 84th birthday mom. I hope your tea celebration is a success today and you feel loved and celebrated. Thanks for being the best parent...

November Can’t Come Soon Enough

September 1, 2024

After weeks of being pestered by her rivals, Vice President Harris finally sat down with the press for her first interview as the Democratic front-runner....

Starting Well

August 25, 2024

School in the Gulf gets underway earlier than it does back home. Schools on the West Coast (and New York) seem to have the latest start times in the US, so...

Teaching is Easier and Harder than Ever

August 18, 2024

Let’s talk a bit about back to school. I remember telling someone during my first week of grad school, “I’m going to try this teaching thing for a minute,...

Protect Ya Neck

August 11, 2024

After spending nights in roughly ten different beds this summer, I finally bring you greetings from Abu Dhabi once again. We’re gonna open with two quick...

We're Back, Baby

August 6, 2024

I almost broke down and became a bucket hat guy today. Almost. I bring you greetings from Larnaca, the sun drenched coastal capital of Cyprus. We are closing...

A History of Violence

July 18, 2024

The recent assassination attempt on Donald Trump is dominating headlines, raising questions about the potential for further political violence. There are...

Biden’s Fitness for Office and Siddharth Kara’s “Cobalt Red”

July 7, 2024

VP Biden speaking to the State Teachers of the Year in 2016 | Photo by Me Greetings friends & enemies, this is the first summer edition of the newsletter. I...

Read With Me: Summer 2024

June 16, 2024

Greetings from lovely and wet North Tacoma. Just a heads up that after today, the newsletter will shift to an irregular summer rhythm. In the Gulf my...

Grappling with Red Pilling: Part II and Reflections on “Chip War”

June 9, 2024

Photo by Sausyn Happy Sunday and may God forever show favor on my beloved Seattle Sounders, who somehow lost to last place Sporting KC earlier today, and are...

Grappling with Red Pilling

June 2, 2024

Friday evening, I had the privilege of watching my fifth group of seniors cross the stage in a very boisterous auditorium at the Emirates Palace. They were...

AI Tools are Getting Better and AI Companies are Getting Worse

May 26, 2024

Photo by Jernej Furman The great shortcoming of the American system in our time is the inability of Congress to legislate, especially when the proposed laws...

Chip War and Doppelganger -- Two Lenses into Threats Facing the US

May 19, 2024

This week I want to talk about two books. One I am in the process of reading and one that I just finished. A few newsletters back, I raved about Chip War by...

The Terrible Movie Everyone Seems to Love

May 12, 2024

Warning: This film is not worth your time This weekend, I experienced two cultural events at opposite ends of the quality spectrum. An awe inspiring concert...

Militarized Police Aren’t the Answer to Gaza Protests

May 5, 2024

Police in LA arrest protestors after raiding a protest encampment | Matt Baretto I was half-tempted to make this week’s newsletter a recap of the Kendrick...

Campus Protests: Failing the Leadership Test

April 28, 2024

Police presence the University of Texas-Austin | Irisoptical If you find yourself summoning the police to beat and tear gas your own students you've lost the...

The Case of the Missing $64,000 Homes

April 21, 2024

An ad for a mid-century Sears Kit House I want to open with a silly data point. The most clicked link in last week's newsletter was to the WrestleMania...

Cairo's Soccer Data Farms, Zoom Cashiers, and Holes in the Job Market

April 14, 2024

Soccer fans in Cairo | Muhammad Ghafari After a brief health scare, mom is home from the hospital. The Sounders got their first win of the season (although...

The View from Below

April 7, 2024

A woman working in her "Sari-Sari" store | John Martin Perry Last week's newsletter pissed-off the kind of readers who hate when Black people talk about...

The Easter Bunny, Santa Claus, and American Meritocracy

March 31, 2024

First Officer Carole Hopson, one of the Black pilots at United Airlines | Karston Tannis. It’s spring break here in the Gulf and Hope and I are headed to the...

Experiencing Ramadan in the Gulf

March 24, 2024

Iftar is the meal where Muslims break their fast at dusk | Whaton.ae Ramadan is a holy month, marked by communal fasting and deepened devotion to the Islamic...

Traveling through History in Uzbekistan

March 17, 2024

The Registan, a 1400-1600s era Madrasah complex in Samarkand, Uzbekistan The Republic of Uzbekistan was born in August 1991. It was one of the 15 states that...

A Spoiler-Free Appreciation of Dune Part II

March 3, 2024

Warner Bros Promo Photo for "Dune Part II" As a nerd and a homer, I am contractually obligated to dig Dune. Frank Herbert, the author of Dune, grew up in...

Reader Mailbag on the Demise of Utopianism

February 29, 2024

WWI started with dudes from the French countryside, riding horses in Napoleonic uniforms into battle and ended with rat infested trenches, aerial bombing,...

A Requiem for Vice

February 25, 2024

Dearly beloved, we gather here today to say farewell to "Vice" On Friday, Vice closed up shop. That morning, employees found themselves locked out of company...

Where Did All the Utopians Go?

February 18, 2024

Over 65,000 workers took part in the Seattle General Strike of 1919, shutting down the city for five days - University of Washington On Friday, I wrapped up...

The Mortality of Black Men

February 11, 2024

Photo by Rickie Crouch My father died when I was a sophomore in high school. My Vice Principal called me to the office and told me there had been an incident...

The Time Lost to Commuting

February 4, 2024

Photo by Robert So There are a handful of peculiar American institutions: overdraft fees, health insurance tied to your employer, and my topic today—the...

Learning to Not Believe Your Eyes

January 28, 2024

Photo by Cottonbro Studios It feels like deep fakes hit the mainstream this week, with disastrous results. A deepfake is a “video of a person in which their...

Scam AI Deep Fakes are More Popular than that Katt Williams Interview

January 21, 2024

A stressed Phylicia Rashad facing off with online scammers in the film “The Beekeeper” I never thought that a Jason Statham movie could give a fit of...

How I Fell in Love with a Bagel

January 14, 2024

Photo by Lucie Liz Getting eight hours of sleep is extremely underrated. Welcome to perhaps the most jet-lagged edition of the newsletter. I am fully in that...

The Bastardization of Colorblindness

January 7, 2024

Former President of Harvard University, Claudine Gay Greetings from lovely, snowy, and brick cold New York City. I'm in my third timezone this week and...

Merry Christmas, America — I Don’t Know What Else to Say

December 24, 2023

Photo by Rosemary Ketchum Welcome to the first edition of Takes & Typos hosted on Buttondown. If you missed the update midweek about the switch from...

I Refuse To Share Space With Neo Nazis And White Supremacists

December 23, 2023

It's time for me to exit Substack I don't have a lot of redlines in my life. But one redline I do have is that if an institution or business says that “Nazis...

The Bear is the Best Thing on TV this Year and Nothing is Really Close

December 17, 2023

FX’s “The Bear” is the most important thing on television and nothing is particularly close Here in Takes & Typo-stan, we’ve been winding down 2023 with a...

The Most Important Thing I Heard to This Year — Slow Burn, Season 8: Becoming Justice Thomas

December 10, 2023

Clarence Thomas is the longest-serving and arguably most influential member of the United States Supreme Court I am 44 years old. Clarence Thomas has been on...

The Most Important Book I Read This Year: “Poverty, By America” by Matthew Desmond

December 3, 2023

Roughly 1500 US families face eviction each week We live in a neoliberal world. In Thursday’s class, we had a seminar discussion about the concluding chapter...

Napoleon: The Lamentations of a New-ish History Teacher

November 27, 2023

Joaquin Phoenix as Napoleon in Egypt This week’s newsletter is coming to you on Monday. We hosted Friendsgiving this weekend and my basketball team had a...

One Year Take-iversary

November 19, 2023

Photo by Elizaveta Kushnirenko on Unsplash Smarter people than me have written volumes about the antics of Elon Musk and the decline of Twitter. However, it...

Rejecting Brain-Dead Neutrality and Censorship

November 12, 2023

Photo by Şeyma D. As I mentioned last week, this upcoming Sunday will be the first anniversary of Takes & Typos. I am planning to publish a reader mailbag to...

No, Markets Aren't Self-Correcting — Corporate Consolidation Part III

November 5, 2023

Photo by Suzy Hazelwood From time-to-time, the newsletter does an unintentional or unplanned series. We are in one such triplet (see: here and here) about...