Leah Libresco's Blog, page 23

7QT: Agreement Theorems and Exponential Suprises

— 1 — I loved this NYT piece on an Italian street whose residents created a private facebook group to get to know each other better. Mr. Bastiani took a chance and posted a flier along his street, Via Fondazza, explaining that he had created a closed group on Facebook just for the people who lived there. He [Read More...]

Gateway Drugs to More Ethical Lives

A while ago, I mentioned that I’d found [X]-adjacent to be a helpful category when the X in question was bad.  E.g. rape-adjacent sex (unclear consent) may not break any laws or result in anyone feeling violated, but it makes it harder to identify predators, and it’s good to avoid sex that falls in this grey [Read More...]

The Beguine Model for the Benedict Option

  After reading Laura Swan’s The Wisdom of the Beguines, I’m tempted to tell Rod Dreher that the best name for Christians trying to find ways to live in community, inspired by monasteries but outside them, is probably the Beguine Option, not the Benedict Option. It’s hard to do too much better than this as [Read More...]

Starting Conversations During Francis’s Visit

Last week, I was a guest on EWTN News Nightly to talk about ways to have good conversations with non-Catholics that might be sparked by Pope Francis’s visit (plus a bit on the perennially popular topic of comparing the two most recent popes)     As usual, my general rule is to start conversations in [Read More...]

Dissenting Catholics Expect The Church Will Change

Pew has a big report out on American Catholicism, and I’ve got a piece up at FiveThirtyEight about the optimism of Catholic dissenters: Although dissenters are often tarred as “Cafeteria Catholics” who pick and choose from among the church’s teachings, without much thought for the whole, the dissenting Catholics that Pew surveyed seemed fairly confident [Read More...]

7QT: Math Haikus and Deaf Musicals

— 1 — When I was googling things like “two people looking at each other,” trying to find a picture for my post on why “You’re perfect!” and “I love you!” aren’t the same sentiment, I wound up discovering this word. Mamihlapinatapai: a look shared by two people, each wishing that the other will offer something [Read More...]

A Good Marriage Isn’t A Mutual Admiration Society

In the middle of a column on married couples ineptly supporting single friends, Sara Eckel had a weird model of what happy and healthy relationships look like: Couples are weird. Relationships — happy ones, anyway — put you a strange bubble, a closed loop of positive reinforcement. “I love you!” “I love you, too!” “You’re [Read More...]

Workplaces Make Terrible Monasteries

I’m a little late to the discussion of Amazon’s treatment of its white collar workers (I’ve been on vacation in CA), but I really liked Matthew Schmitz’s take on the company at First Things. It sounds like Amazon works really hard to filter its employees for people who are willing to give most of their life [Read More...]

Donating to Women Prisoners Denied Medical Supplies

Prisons price tampons and pads out of the range of what some women prisoners can afford.  Forcing indigent prisoners to bleed into their clothes can pose health/sanitary problems, but, even if it were no problem, medically, it would still be a terrible situation to force prisoners into simply because it is humiliating. And, as far [Read More...]

Eve Tushnet’s Great New Novel On Forgiveness And Addiction

Eve Tushnet, the author of Gay and Catholic, just released her second book!  Amends is a novel about addiction and forgiveness (and how both aren’t things you can finish dealing with).  I just finished it myself, and I can’t wait to be back in D.C. to convene my friends to talk about it (and read aloud [Read More...]