Page 2 of 5

Travel notes: Helsinki in winter

Architecture in Helsinki.

In January I took a trip to Helsinki, Finland. This is kind of a weird choice for someone who lives in Portland, Oregon. We’re sun-deprived by that time of year and the beaches of Hawaii and Mexico are easy flights away, so why pick a place that’s even darker and grayer than here? I had a few reasons. One is that Finland is the only Nordic country I hadn’t visited yet (excluding the Faroe Islands, which I definitely do want to get to). Another is that as much as I love the Nordics, I felt like a bit of a poseur traveling there in every season except the winter. Scandinavia is easy to love in the summer; I wanted to get a sense of what Nordic daily life is like during the coldest, darkest time of year.

And lastly, flights and hotels were really cheap. Presumably because most people think there are much better places to go in January than Helsinki.

But honestly, it was a great trip. Yes, it’s cold and the days are short, but I had a very good time. Helsinki in winter is underrated. I was prepared for the cold with long thermal underwear, a heavy coat, waterproof boots with good traction, and touchscreen-friendly gloves. Dressed for the elements, walking around the city was pleasant and public transit is accessible.

I’d planned to travel solo but a friend ended up joining. Although hanging out alone in coffee shops is a perfectly good way to spend a vacation in my book, I was glad for the company since Finns are famously reserved. That said, everyone we talked to was friendly. Just perhaps don’t expect them to be the ones to initiate conversation.

We only had a few days in Helsinki, but packed them full enough to pick out some highlights. Some recommendations if you go:

Perfect weather for a cold sea plunge at Löyly.

Löyly — This contemporary sauna was a highlight of the trip. Saunas are a must-visit in Finland. This one is all-gender and clothed; from what I’ve read, expectations on mixing genders and nudity vary from sauna to sauna. Löyly is upscale but very reasonably priced, with two on-site saunas, outdoors decks, an indoor fire, and casual food and drink. Most importantly, it’s right on the water, so you can stroll outside for an invigorating cold sea plunge. Not to be missed! Make a reservation as it fills up quickly, and good luck on the pronunciation.

Kultá Kitchen and Bar — This Lappish restaurant was my first meal in Helsinki. They offer multi-course prix fixe dinners, which I’m sure are amazing, but we couldn’t resist ordering the reindeer burger instead. It was honestly one of the best burgers I’ve ever had. I would love to go back for a tasting menu.

Korvapuusti!

Café Esplanad — Korvapuusti, Finnish cinnamon rolls, were at the top of my list of food to seek out in Helsinki. A friend recommended Café Esplanad as her favorite in the city. I didn’t try them anywhere else in town because they were so wonderful here; I’d happily go every morning. Bonus: we were there for fastlagsbulle season, the traditional Fat Tuesday pastry better known as semla in Swedish.

Skiffer — This local chain makes what they call “liuska,” an oblong, very thin crust pizza. We got the surf and turf with chorizo and little shrimp. Paired with hearty salads and a selection of local beers, it’s a great place for a casual meal.

The famed salmon soup at Fisken på Disken.

Fisken på Disken — This restaurant on the top floor of a shopping mall is not one we would have found if not for a blog post acclaiming its salmon soup as the best in Helsinki. I’m in no position to compare, but it was deliciously rich with loads of dill and a hint of smoke. Absolutely worth going.

Coffee — Finland is said to boast the world’s highest per capita rate of coffee consumption. We barely scratched the surface of local coffee shops, but we loved Andante. Sprudge has a guide to the local scene.

Bars — Bars weren’t our top priority, but when it’s dark by 5 pm, what are you going to do? We liked Liberty or Death and Runar for cocktails, Juova Hanahuone for Finnish beer, and Beaky Basterd and Bar Llamas for hangouts.

Helsinki Distilling Company — Worth a visit to sample their extensive line of spirits; highlights for me were a rum barrel-aged whiskey, sea buckthorn snaps, and (of course) aquavit. The only downside is that if you want to take a bottle home, you’ll have to track it down at the state monopoly Alco shops. Request to Finland: legalize craft distillers selling directly to consumers!

Amos Rex — Our timing didn’t align with possibilities for many museum visits, but Amos Rex had an outstanding immersive exhibition by Belgian sculptor Hans Op de Beek.

Hattu — My friend lost his hat and so we ended up at this small, charming menswear shop to replace it. A great spot for hats and workwear from brands like Stetson and Pike Brothers.

Old town Tallinn, Estonia, a short ferry ride from Helsinki.

What else? Definitely take advantage of the ferry to Tallinn, Estonia, easily worth a couple days visit. We didn’t have much time in Tampere but I’ll vouch for the city’s blood sausage. On a future trip I would love to get way up north for an aurora borealis experience, but wasn’t able squeeze it in this time.

Mustamakkara, blood sausage in Tampere.

Recommended reading: the best books I read in 2022

In under the wire, here’s my annual list of the best books I read over the past year. In 2022 I finally figured out how to get paid for reading books, thanks to a consistent reviewing gig with the Washington Examiner, so some of these recommendations will link to reviews there or in my newsletter. I should probably also mention that I also published a book this year? Make sure Raising the Bar is on your stack too!

Non-fiction

Breathless, David Quammen — When the world shut down in March of 2020, I immediately reread Quammen’s prescient book Spillover. (See my 2020 post revisiting the book in that context.) His latest lacks, for obvious reasons, the adventurous travel of his earlier books. But it’s a very worthwhile read on the course of the pandemic and the origins of COVID, coming down on the side of natural spillover as the most likely explanation while fairly considering alternatives.

Return of the Artisan, Grant McCracken — One that appeals to me as an ex-barista! Reviewed here.

The Copenhagen Trilogy, Tove Ditlevsen — Literary memoir from a Danish writer, newly published as a trilogy in English. Illuminating portrait of working life in twentieth century Copenhagen, struggling as a female writer, and the grip of addiction. She was renowned as a poet and lines jump out from every chapter.

Firebrand, Joshua Knelman — A breezy but informative look at the cigarette business told from the perspective of a lawyer for Big Tobacco. Reviewed here.

Slouching Toward Bethlehem, Joan Didion — My first by Didion, a major gap in my reading.

Sex and Social Justice, Martha Nussbaum — Filling in another gap in my reading, I was especially interested in her conception of liberal feminism, defense of legalizing prostitution, and analysis of sexuality among the ancient Greeks.

How to Change Your Mind, Michael Pollan — With psilocybin therapy becoming legal in Oregon in 2023, I was interested in a good introduction to psychedelics. Pollan provides it.

So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, Jon Ronson — I read this as background for the startup I’m working on, Seabird, but it’s of wider interest. A sympathetic look at the victims of cascading shaming on social media, something we’re designing our platform to be less likely to enable. Recommended.

Mastering the VC Game, Jeffrey Bussgang — Of niche interest, but since I’m involved with a tech startup of my own, this was a helpful guide to the finance side of the business.

Fiction

No One Is Talking About This, Patricia Lockwood — One of my favorites this year. From April: “If you’re online enough to know what an allusion to someone not being sad about an alligator eating a kid refers to, this book is for you.”

Secret Identity, Alex Segura — Noir fiction with tie-ins to the history of superhero comics? Sign me up! Reviewed here.

Random, Penn Jillette — The funniest novel I’ve read in a long time, good-hearted yet very raunchy. Review coming soon.

Sea of Tranquility, Emily St. John Mandel — Excellent on its own, but even better to read Station Eleven and The Glass Hotel first.

A Visit from the Goon Squad, Jennifer Egan — Loved it, and Candy House is high on my to-read list now.

Aurora, Kim Stanley Robinson — A great sci-fi novel, pessimistic on human space travel with an environmental message that doesn’t cross over to being too didactic, though I like it best as an allegory about how to order one’s single life on earth.

The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro —Klara and the Sun was one of my favorite novels in 2021, setting me to reading these two. Deservedly acclaimed but I don’t think I’d have read so many of his novels recently if I hadn’t begun with Klara.

Crossroads, Jonathan Franzen — My verdict back in January: “There’s always someone else you could be reading, but ignore the haters. If you enjoy Franzen novels, Crossroads is worth your time.”

Mister Miracle, Tom King — King’s comics are hit or miss for me, but I appreciate that he so often tries for something ambitious. Mister Miracle is fully in hit category, with one issue in particular standing out as truly great.

Feedback on the Multnomah County ban on flavored tobacco and nicotine products

On December 15, the Multnomah County Board of Commissioners will vote on an ordinance that will ban the sale of flavored tobacco and nicotine products in the county (which includes Portland, Oregon). I testified in person against the ban, which you can view here. But since testimony was limited to just two minutes, I’ve also submitted the following written response below. If you would also like to submit a response, use this link. My comments:

I have previously testified in opposition to the proposed ban on flavored tobacco and nicotine products in Multnomah County. While I oppose the ban in its entirety, I’d like to suggest two modest reforms that the Board should consider if it is serious about having a positive impact on public health. I’ll conclude with a few other notes.

1. The ordinance as currently written will ban flavored nicotine products even if they are authorized by the Food and Drug Administration. The 2009 Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act created the FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products to determine which tobacco and nicotine products should be authorized for sale in the United States. The Center has an annual budget of more than $700 million and nearly 1,000 employees working on tobacco regulation. In contrast, the Multnomah County Board of Commissioners consists of five people with no specialist training in tobacco regulation and myriad other issues to consider.

It’s obvious that the FDA is in a better position to evaluate the health impact of various nicotine products than the Multnomah County Board of Commissioners. Novel products such as e-cigarettes must meet an extremely high bar to be authorized by the FDA, persuading regulators that allowing their sale will be “appropriate for the protection of public health” by weighing population-level impacts on both existing smokers and people who do not currently smoke or consume nicotine. To date, the FDA has not authorized any vapor products for sale in flavors other than tobacco, so exempting products that receive FDA authorization would not have an immediate impact on what vapor products are allowed in Multnomah County.

The Board should not substitute its judgment for that of the FDA. The ordinance should be amended so that if flavored vapor products are eventually authorized by the FDA, they will be exempted by the ban in Multnomah County.

2. The ordinance as currently written will ban flavored oral tobacco and nicotine pouches (the latter of which do not contain tobacco). The science is clear that these products are far safer than smoking and they have demonstrated great potential to reduce the harms of tobacco use. See, for example, Sweden, which has achieved the best tobacco-related health outcomes and lowest smoking rates among men in Europe thanks in large part to snus. 

The most recent data from the National Youth Tobacco Survey find that barely over 1% of youth report using oral tobacco. The FDA has authorized several oral tobacco products for sale noting their low appeal to youth and their much lower risk profile than cigarettes. Indeed, oral tobacco products from Swedish Match, including flavored varieties, are among the first products ever authorized by the FDA with modified risk orders permitting them to be labeled with truthful claims that they present much lower risks than smoking cigarettes. Specifically, the FDA determined that authorizing their sale “will significantly reduce harm and the risk of tobacco-related disease to individual tobacco users and benefit the health of the population as a whole.” Has the Board completed its own review of these products to conclude that the FDA is mistaken and should be overruled? It is doubtful that it would have any basis to do so.

Flavored oral tobacco and nicotine products are not popular with youth but can help adult smokers switch to safer alternatives than smoking. Indeed, I personally know someone here who has successfully stayed smokefree for more than a year thanks to flavored nicotine pouches. What will happen to adults such as him if these products are banned? Unfortunately, one likely outcome is that many will revert back to smoking. This would obviously be a bad outcome but it could be easily averted by exempting flavored oral products from the ban.

If the aim of the Board is to actually protect public health rather than to paternalistically forbid adults from consuming flavored nicotine products, regardless of their potential to save smokers’ lives, then both of these small reforms should be no-brainers. There is no justification for banning flavored products authorized by the FDA and oral products that are not popular with youth. Is anyone on the Board taking these matters seriously enough to consider these amendments? 

As I mentioned in my testimony at the recent public hearing, the evidence presented to the Board has been extremely one-sided in favor of prohibition, with arguments against the ban coming mostly from business owners. The Board has overlooked a massive scientific literature on the benefits of tobacco harm reduction. Opinion among experts is much more divided than the activists and health advisors speaking to the Board have indicated, so I’d like to recommend a few other sources that are worth your time.

First, public health officer Dr. Jennifer Vines testified that smokers should simply try FDA-regulated cessation products rather than switching to vaping. However, these products have a very high rate of failure and there is mounting evidence that e-cigarettes have a higher rate of success helping smokers quit and that smokers are more likely to try them in the first place. Making it illegal for adult smokers to access the vast majority of e-cigarettes, leaving them with only ineffective patches and gums, has a very “let them eat cake” quality to it. As a counterpoint, see this recent Cochrane Review drawing on 78 studies to conclude that there is high-certainty evidence that e-cigarettes are more effective than nicotine replacement therapies.

I also highly recommend reading this paper coauthored by fifteen past presidents of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco. These are some of the most esteemed figures in the field of tobacco science and they warn that policies such as the one proposed in Multnomah County fail to consider the potential benefits to adult smokers. “We believe the potential lifesaving benefits of e-cigarettes for adult smokers deserve attention equal to the risks to youths,” they write. The exclusive focus on youth vaping overlooks both the near- and long-term benefits of displacing the most dangerous tobacco products with safer alternatives. This perspective was completely lacking in testimony to the Board.

Lastly, I’ll bring a recent piece of my own to your attention. I am disappointed that the Board voted against an amendment to exempt hookah lounges from the ban. Only 1.1% of youth report using hookah and there are only three lounges remaining in Portland, so their impact on public health is negligible. Yet the impact on the owners and employees of these businesses is potentially devastating. One of these is Raed Dear, a deaf immigrant from Jordan whom I wrote about for Reason. Will you feel good about yourselves when you drive him out of business? You should not.

On its page about harm reduction, the Oregon Health Authority states:

Harm reduction is a set of practical strategies and ideas aimed at reducing negative consequences associated with substance use. Harm reduction meets people where they are and supports their agency in preventing overdose and adopting safer practices, on their own terms and with the respect and dignity they deserve.

This philosophy of harm reduction should not be limited to opioids. What would it mean to meet people who smoke where they are, support their agency, and treat them with the respect and dignity that they deserve? It would mean recognizing that many of them are addicted to smoking and that pharmaceutical options like patches and gums are insufficient to help many of them. It would mean not making it illegal for them to access safer products that are far less likely to kill them and that have a proven record of helping people stay off cigarettes. It would mean acknowledging that their choices are ultimately theirs to make, and that many of them will turn to illicit, unregulated sources if they cannot obtain them from legal retailers. In short, it would mean offering them something better than “quit or die,” which is essentially what the Board is saying to them with this poorly thought out ban.

It is madness to regulate products solely by their flavor and with zero regard for their capacity for harm. This ordinance will ban many of the safest sources of nicotine, leave deadly cigarettes on the market, trample on the rights of consenting adults, pointlessly destroy minority-owned businesses, and perpetuate the harms of smoking. Voting in favor of it will be a shameful and embarrassing mistake for a county that portrays itself as liberal and progressive.

Correcting the record on the Expat cocktail

It’s hard to pick out the most exciting part of releasing a new book but it’s easy to name the most dreadful part. That’s discovering the little errors that made it into print despite the many rounds of editing and proofreading that any good book goes through. We’ve picked up a few in our advance copies of Raising the Bar, most of them thankfully very minor, but there is one that’s significant enough to be worth noting.

In our bourbon chapter we include a wonderful cocktail from Lauren Schell and Vito Dieterle called the Expat. Due to a misreading and miscommunication on my part, we ended up omitting an ingredient. The book calls for just a mint leaf garnish on the cocktail. In fact, mint leaves are also supposed to be shaken with the drink, imparting flavor and aroma. (I’d thought that using a mint leaf as a garnish was a little random, and if I’d tugged on that thread I would have caught the mistake sooner. It makes more sense with mint in the drink!)

When we ask creators for permission to share their drinks in our book, they trust us to represent them correctly. I messed up on this one and so want to take the opportunity to apologize for the error and set the record straight. The next printings of the book will go out with the corrected recipe. Anyone getting an early copy, feel free to mark it up.

Hopefully by writing about the Expat here readers will catch the correction and more people will be introduced to this drink, which deserves wider recognition. It’s one of the few really good bourbon cocktails that calls for lime juice, which along with the mint and the spice notes of Angostura bitters gives it a slightly tropical slant. Do yourself a favor and make yourself an Expat. Here’s how to do it:

  • 2 oz bourbon
  • 1 oz fresh lime juice
  • 1/2 oz rich simple syrup (2:1 sugar to water)
  • 2 dashes Angostura bitters
  • small handful of mint leaves
  • mint leaf, for garnish

Shake all ingredients (including the mint!) with ice and strain into a chilled coupe. Garnish with a mint leaf.

(Fortunately, the recipe as erroneously printed still makes a balanced cocktail, but one that’s missing the added dimensionality of the correct version. We didn’t call for an absurd amount of any single ingredient, as I’ve seen happen before. And our recipe won’t make anyone sick, like the editors of a magazine in Sweden did by accidentally calling for twenty whole nutmegs instead of two pinches for a single cake. So things could definitely be worse. But still, we regret the error.)

Raising the Bar is officially released tomorrow and if you pre-ordered a copy it may have already arrived in your mailbox. We have a few events lined up, including a talk and signing at Powell’s, a party at Teardrop Lounge, and a virtual class with Milk Street. Get the details on those here. And if you’d like a copy for yourself or as a gift, order now from your favorite bookstore.

“Raising the Bar” out November 29th!

It’s a week to publication day, so I should probably mention on my blog that I have a new book coming out? It’s true! Back in late 2019, my friend Brett Adams and I mapped out a proposal for a book on home bartending. Three years later, it’s finally coming into print from Chronicle. Here’s the cover:

The book is intended for home bartenders but with more than 200 cocktail recipes, we’re confident there’s something in it for everyone. We’ve also organized it in a unique way, guiding the reader through stocking their home bar one bottle at a time. This means that rather than calling for one-off ingredients that will end up gathering dust on the shelf, every bottle we feature gets an entire chapter dedicated to putting it to use. I wrote a longer post on Substack about what to expect from the book, so check that out for more detail. It was a really fun project to work on and we’re excited to have it out in the world!

If you pre-order the book now, you’ll have it by publication day. Find it wherever good books are sold, including: Powell’sAmazonIndieBoundBarnes & NobleBooks-a-Million, and Bookshop.

We also have a few promotional events lined up with more to come. On release day, November 29th, Brett and I will be at the legendary Powell’s City of Books for a talk and signing at 7:00 pm. Following that, we’ve arranged for a celebratory cocktail party at Teardrop Lounge with a special menu of drinks from the book. We also have a members-only signing lined up at the Multnomah Whiskey Library on December 8th; currently just nine seats left!

For those not in Portland, we’ll be doing a virtual class with Milk Street on December 7th. Get your tickets for that here with code “THEBAR15” for 15% off.

Recent writing

It’s hard to believe that it’s mid-2022 and I’m still writing about the FDA’s COVID emergency hand sanitizer regulations, but here we are. Today at Reason I take a look at the seemingly never-ending regulatory drama distillers who made sanitizer are putting up with.

My biggest feature recently is a shared cover story for the May issue of Reason magazine on the new era of nicotine prohibition:

As tobacco, e-cigarettes, and e-liquids transition from legal to illicit, law enforcement agencies will more aggressively interfere with production, distribution, retail sales, and in some cases even individual use. Every such interaction carries with it the possibility of freedom lost, perhaps violently. There is a real risk that American tobacco policy will open a regressive new front in the war on drugs, just as the previous crackdown on psychoactive substances begins to wind down.

Relatedly, I have another piece at Reason covering some ongoing cases related to nicotine and tobacco prohibitions, asking the question, “Who will be the first person to go to prison for selling flavored tobacco or e-cigarettes?” At Liberal Currents, I look at this risk particularly how it applies to a federal ban on menthol cigarettes. And finally, at Slate I critique the FDA’s decision (now temporarily reversed) to ban Juul throughout the United States. Prefer video to text? We also cover a lot of this in a new video from Reason with myself, Natalie Dowzicky, and Ethan Nadelmann.

Over at my Substack, I offer up a longish essay on how how I’m currently thinking about belief polarization and social media, explaining why I no longer post about politics on Facebook, and dropping some hints about Seabird, a new project that I’m very excited about.

On a lighter note, I have a more book reviews up at the Examiner. My recent recommendations include Joshua Jay’s How Magicians Think, Alex Segura’s Secret Identity, and Camper English’s Doctors and Distillers.

One unexpected development this year is how much I’m writing about non-alcoholic drinks. For Inside Hook I wrote-up a tasting panel of non-alcoholic stouts and porters, a summery low-or-no ABV beer cocktail, and a new non-alcoholic spirit going big in Austin.

Recent writing

For the Washington Examiner, I reviewed Mark Shrad’s excellent new book on the global history of Prohibition and temperance movements:

Chapter one of Mark Schrad’s new book opens with a gut-wrenching episode of state brutality. It’s 1859 in Spassk, Russia, and the tsar himself has dispatched the military to put down a protest of rebellious serfs. Gen. Yegor Petrovich Tolstoy responds ruthlessly, ordering imprisonment, court-martial, hourslong beatings, running of the gantlet, forced labor, and exile to Siberia for the noncompliant. This violent abuse of serfs in the Russian empire is not surprising, but for modern readers, the motivation for their protest likely is. The act of civil disobedience that brought the wrath of the state upon them was their refusal to drink alcohol.

The incident is smartly chosen by Schrad, an assistant professor of political science at Villanova University, to startle readers out of their preconceptions about Prohibition. In Smashing the Liquor Machine: A Global History of Prohibition, he seeks to change the way we think about temperance movements by recognizing that they were neither exclusively American nor only the work of rural, white, busybody Protestants. Schrad reveals temperance as a global phenomenon and attempts to reclaim Prohibition, for better or worse, as a fundamentally progressive cause.

At Liberal Currents, reflecting on the policy disaster of the FDA banning or failing to authorize for sale nearly all e-cigarettes, I made a liberal case for respecting the agency of smokers:

Now that the fights over smoking bans have been won and given way to debates over harm reduction, I find that advocates of the latter don’t much like to talk about the former. They’d rather focus on the present and the deep divide in tobacco control between those who support harm reduction and those who pursue a more prohibitionist approach. But this divide didn’t arise by chance; it’s the inheritance of decades in which the field tolerated the publication of bad sciencepunishment of dissent, and stigmatization of the very people it supposedly sought to help, so long as doing so advanced its political aims. Unfortunately, those strategies were wildly successful. Thus today, when smokers and vapers desperately need someone to defend their liberties, their allies are unequipped to offer effective support.

I covered the FDA’s mishandling of this for Reason as well:

It should be obvious that this is an irrational way to regulate vaping given that the relevant comparison is to lethally dangerous cigarettes, which remain widely available and essentially unchanged after 12 years of FDA regulation. Yet because the anti-smoking lobby has spent years encouraging moral panic about vaping and decades denigrating the rights of tobacco and nicotine consumers to make their own decisions, the pointless prohibition of a wide swath of far safer nicotine products will likely proceed without much protest from anyone but the small minority of vapers themselves.

Also at Reason, I covered a fight about direct shipment of spirits in California, which turned out (at least in the short-run) in favor of consumers and distillers.

For the European magazine Cigar Journal, I explained the complicated challenges facing American cigar regulation (oddly missing paragraph breaks in the online version). Also on the topic of cigars, I visited Ybor City in Tampa for Inside Hook:

If you’ve been smoking cigars for a couple decades, chances are you’ve noticed that finding a place to light up is increasingly difficult. The first statewide smoking ban in bars arrived in California in 1998, and the trend has accelerated ever since. Twenty-eight states now have comprehensive indoor smoking bans on the books. So do more than a thousand American cities and counties. Want to smoke on an outdoor patio instead? There are more than 500 places that restrict that, too. What’s a leisurely cigar smoker to do? We don’t have the technology to travel back in time, but we do have the next best thing: a vacation to Tampa, Florida, where the atavistic pleasures of cigar culture live on.

Finally, I was fortunate to take a trip to the Bushmills Distillery in Northern Ireland this fall, which I also wrote about for Inside Hook.

Recommended reading: the best books I read in 2021

Here’s my annual list of the best books I read in the past year. A few themes that stand out are concern about threats to liberalism and democracy, ambivalence about social media and alcohol, and interest in the Nordic region. As always, this post is about books I read during the previous year, not the year in which they were published.

Children of Ash and Elm, Neil Price — Price’s history of the Vikings is vivid and beautifully written, smartly forgoing a strictly chronological ordering of events for conceptual chapters exploring the mindsets and experiences of Viking life: spirit, gender, death, freedom, and much more. Highly recommended.

Smashing the Liquor Machine, Mark Schrad — I’m planning to write more about this soon, but for now I’ll just say that this history recasting prohibition as a progressive cause is one of the best books I read all year (and that’s coming from a libertarian cocktail enthusiast). Schrad coincidentally has a piece in the Atlantic today summarizing the thesis, but get the book.

The Fabric of Civilization, Virginia Postrel — Virginia is one of the writers whose books I’ll pick up regardless of topic; her interdisciplinary look at the history and innovation of textiles is fascinating throughout.

Sustaining Democracy, Robert Talisse — Talisse’s Overdoing Democracy made my list last year and the two books are best read as a pair. I may write more about these too, but for now I’ll say that I find his diagnosis of people’s increasing tendencies toward polarization and political “mega-identities” as threats to democracy more and more convincing.

The Constitution of Knowledge, Jonathan Rauch — Thoughtful analysis of the liberal epistemic order, particularly insightful with regard to attacks from the Trump era right.

Twitter and Tear Gas, Zeynep Tufekci — The Portland protests, January 6 insurrection, and some personal projects put Zeynep’s book on technology and protest movements on my radar. Insightful on the uses of social media and the unintended consequences of attempting to control it.

Love and Trouble, Claire Dederer — This arrived in my stack a few years ago but I didn’t pick it up until recently. Sharp, funny, biting, sexy, a fantastic midlife memoir.

How Magicians Think, Joshua Jay — 52 short essays on magic, each framed as an answer to a question magicians are often asked or ask amongst themselves. There’s little discussion of specific methods here, as one would expect in a book for a lay audience, but if you’re interested in magic at an abstract level I think you’ll enjoy this.

How Iceland Changed the World, Egill Bjarnason — Very fun, journalistic take on Iceland’s history and the nation’s often surprising role in world affairs.

My Father Left Me Ireland, Michael Brendan Dougherty — I bought this when it came out for my Irish grandmother, who loved it, but didn’t pick it up myself until an unexpected trip to Ireland this fall. I often disagree with Michael politically, but I appreciate knowing where he’s coming from, and the man can write.

Pandemics, Christian W. McMillen — Part of Oxford’s “very short introduction” series, 121 pages on the history of pandemics. From 2016 but obviously relevant! “For very often history is forgotten or rediscovered only when we confront contemporary epidemics and pandemics, and thus patterns from the past are repeated thoughtlessly.”

Drink?, David Nutt — Nutt makes a case for approaching alcohol less as an inevitable feature of the social landscape and more as a drug to be used (or not used) responsibly. Recommended for background on the health effects of alcohol and for how to drink more mindfully.

The Oxford Companion to Spirits and Cocktails, David Wondrich and Noah Rothbaum — I’ve just begun to browse this mammoth 800-page beast, but I’d remiss not to mention it. It’s going to be an incredibly valuable resource if you’re interested in the subject. You’ll also find a few entries from me in here, on aquavit, Batavia-arrack, Scandinavia, and Indonesia.

Brief notes on fiction: I didn’t read a ton of fiction this year, in part because I tend to read novels more when traveling or on vacation, both of which were still cut back considerably from pre-COVID levels. I started the year with the last three books of Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels, which were perfect for becoming engrossed in during an isolated post-break-up, pre-vaccine winter. I coincidentally began Sally Rooney’s Beautiful World, Where Are You? before leaving for Ireland, and loved her stylistic adventures and portrait of millennial anxiety. Frank Herbert’s Dune never grabbed me in the past, despite enthusiasm for epic sci-fi, but I gave it another try in anticipation of the movie and can’t imagine why I didn’t love it before; I couldn’t put it down this time around. I enjoyed Dune Messiah too, but will likely end my reading in the series there absent a compelling case for continuing further. Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun, a story of a kind-natured AI seeking to understand the complexities of human loss and growth, is the novel that will stay with me most.

Have recommendations for me to read in the coming year? Leave them in the comments!

Catching up on writing

Whoa, I’ve fallen behind on keeping this site updated. Here’s a round-up of what I’ve been writing for the past few months…

Most recently, my latest Substack features an essay on how my sense of what to emphasize and whom to ally with in politics has changed during the Trump years. It’s been well-received by other thoughtful libertarians alarmed by the anti-democratic tendencies taking hold on the right:

Personally, this isn’t a renunciation of the libertarian label so much as it is a change in emphasis. Emphasizing a libertarian identity as a contrast to mainstream Democrats and Republicans makes sense when the worst that can happen is ending up with someone like Barack Obama or Mitt Romney as president. Right now it feels more important to emphasize the longer, wider tradition of liberalism relative to the narrower libertarian movement, even though I situate my own views within both of them. For now, I’m putting liberalism first.

For Arc Digital, I made the liberal case against expansive smoking bans:

While defending bodily autonomy and personal choice in many other contexts, much of the progressive left has adopted an insufferably illiberal prudishness when it comes to tobacco. Their attitude brings to mind judge Robert Bork’s defense of laws forbidding sexual behaviors: “Knowledge that an activity is taking place is a harm to those who find it profoundly immoral.”

For Reason, I explained why bans on menthol cigarettes are likely to lead to more confrontations with police:

Ban advocates gloss over these concerns by emphasizing that the law would be enforced against sellers, not consumers, of menthol cigarettes. But big tobacco companies have too much on the line to defy the FDA; illicit markets for menthol cigarettes would most likely be run by people within the communities the ban is intended to protect.

For Slate, I looked at what we do and don’t know about vaping and COVID, and how activists and media have pushed an alarmist narrative unjustified by the evidence:

Did you hear about the big new study on vaping and COVID-19? If you didn’t, that’s not surprising. The study didn’t find any association between the two—that is, it found no evidence suggesting that people who vape are more likely to be diagnosed with the disease. Research that leads to null results rarely gets much coverage in the media. In this instance, however, it upends the flood of stories throughout the pandemic that reported that vapers are at greater risk. 

Also for Reason, I examined how rigid adherence to COVID metrics can lead to absurd policy outcomes, like air conditioned restaurants in Portland being forced to turn away patrons in our historic heatwave two days before the state fully reopened:

That’s hotter than has ever been recorded in Atlanta or Houston, cities where buildings are designed for that kind of heat. The handful of Portland bars and restaurants with air conditioning up to the task would have been rewarded with booming business on these days if not for one thing: the state’s COVID restrictions, due to expire today, were still limiting their indoor spaces to half capacity. Few industries have been as hard hit by rigid and often-nonsensical pandemic policies over the last year as the service sector. This week’s failure to adjust at a time when it might have helped both businesses and patrons is just one more blow to the state’s struggling bar and restaurant scene.

Finally, I have a whole bunch of new lifestyle writing, mostly at Inside Hook. Click through for an introduction to genever, an interview about Texas whiskey, an exploration of spirits made with animal dung, an investigation into why non-alcoholic spirits cost so much, and the first cocktail sold as an NFT.

Where are the pro-vaccine protests?

That’s the topic of my newest column for Exponents, the online magazine of the Center for New Liberalism:

On Saturday, a group of 40-60 anti-vaccine protesters temporarily shut down a vaccination site at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. The disruption lasted for only about an hour, but the protesters were rightfully condemned for the outrageous presumption to stand between vulnerable people and the lifesaving drug they’d lined up to receive.

Meanwhile, there’s another group blocking access to vaccines far more effectively. Its delays last for months, take place on a national scale, and are far more damaging, potentially costing tens of thousands of lives. That group? The Food and Drug Administration.

Americans have protested all kinds of restrictions during the pandemic, from polite requests to wear masks to substantial social distancing restrictions that have contributed to the closure of tens of thousands of businesses. Yet one of the most consequential limitations on our freedom has sparked virtually no public protest at all: the denial of access to vaccines that can finally bring life back to normal, including one that has already been authorized for use in Europe and injected into millions of arms in the United Kingdom. When the FDA delays the authorization of vaccines, most of us just passively accept that we have to wait.

Read the whole thing here.

« Older posts Newer posts »