Feb reads, week two

Yesterday was Valentine's Day, and this was a lovely meditation on domesticity from Ruth Graham in Slate: I’ll Tell You What, Nothing Is More Romantic Than Talking About Trash Cans and Towels With My Husband

It was also Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent. Tish Harrison Warren wrote about this conjunction for CT: God's Message on 'Ash Valentine's Day': True Love Dies

And here are several other pieces about Lenten practice:
Tara Isabella Burton, Vox, Why "Secular Lent" Misses the Point
Kevin P Emmert, CT, A Lent That's Not For Your Spiritual Improvement
Aaron Damiani, CT, Introducing Lent to Your Congregation

This isn't about Lent specifically, but it is about mortality and the ephemeral nature of life, and of art, and it's simply a great piece:
Justin Lee, The Smart Set, Graffiti These Bones

Also not about Lent, but about suffering and seeing God in it:

Kate Bowler, CT, God Came to Me in My Cancer

Trillia Newbell, TableTalk Magazine, Suffering and the Joy Before Us

They talk more about Advent than Lent:
David George Moore & Fleming Rutledge, Patheos, Interview with Fleming Rutledge

Tech stuff (the first piece is a stellar bit of reporting):

Nicholas Thompson & Fred Vogelstein, Wired, Inside the Two Years that Shook Facebook – and the World
Sarah Aswell, Splitsider, How Facebook is Killing Comedy

Naomi Schaeffer Riley, NYT, America's Real Digital Divide

This has been on my mind a lot, and now I can't not think about it when analyzing what authors I read:
Ed Yong, The Atlantic, I Spent Two Years Trying to Fix the Gender Imbalance in My Stories

I'm not sold on the "sciency" part of this (and I really hate this sort of headline formulation), but this seems somewhat intuitively true, or at least likely, and remembering this is probably crucial to using social media well: 

Amy Ellis Nutt, WaPo, Science shows why it's important to speak — not write — to people who disagree with you

Pornography is a scourge; this isn't mere Puritan scoldery, but it seems evident that, like social media, young generations are being shaped by forces we've never thought to control, and the damage seems virtually incalculable. God have mercy on us. Glad to see these takes in response to the heartbreaking piece on teenagers and porn last week:

Ross Douthat, NYT, Let's Ban Porn
Matthew Schmitz, WaPo, The case for banning pornography

After listening to a fascinating podcast with James Davison Hunter, I read Andy Crouch's Books & Culture (RIP) review of his book: How Not to Change the World

Also Andy Crouch related, this is a good summary of a recent talk he gave on how we should steward our resources in favor of others:

Joseph Sunde, Acton Institute Blog, Beyond mere affluence: Embracing Isaiah's posterity gospel

On the subject of economics: can Christians work in any job with a clear conscience? Is all work sanctified by God, or do the realities of modern capitalism render some professions more morally murky than others? Charlie Clark examines at Mere Orthodoxy: Conscientious Producerism

Some national Bmore coverage, of things bad and good:
Timothy Williams, NYT, In Baltimore, Brazen Officers Took Every Chance to Rob and Cheat
Andrea Appleton, Citylab, What Should Grow in a Vacant Lot?

Quincy Jones is nuts. The second piece was so crazy I had to read some follow-ups with the interview to see how he navigated the stream of consciousness so deftly:

Chris Heath, GQ, Quincy Jones Has a Story About That
David Marchese, Vulture, In Conversation: Quincy Jones
Lauren Stark, NY Mag, Vulture’s David Marchese on His Quincy Jones Interview, How He Prepares, and His Dream Subject
Meg Dalton, Columbia Journalism Review, Q&A: New York magazine’s David Marchese on viral Quincy Jones interview

Some other pieces on various culture-related things. Extra points to K B Hoyle's excellent and nostalgic take on spiritual discipline and formation via Super Nintendo:
Tom Carter, Spectator, How going on pilgrimage cured my millenial malaise
James K A Smith, LA Review of Books, How to Find God (on Youtube)
K B Hoyle, Christ & Pop Culture, Super Nintendo and the Spiritual Life
Cameron McAllister, Christ & Pop Culture, Of Jordan Peterson and Cultural Action Heroes
M V Bergen, Christ & Pop Culture, Telling Stories of Strange Worlds: Remembering Ursula K LeGuin
Tyler Braun, TGC, The Beauty of Lament in Sandra McCracken's New Album