TLP Weekend Edition (June 29-30, 2024)
What we’re reading, watching, and listening to this weekend.
📖 Understanding America, on Substack. Oren Cass of American Compass has a new Substack, Understanding America. Cass is one of the most interesting and insightful thinkers on the heterodox right; what he writes is always worth reading. As he says, "If you’re someone who cares deeply about this country, if you want to stay up-to-date about the key economic and political developments that will most influence events, if you have noticed the remarkable emergence of a more responsive and worker-focused conservatism and want to know where that’s going, then Understanding America is for you." Recommended.
📊 Election Polls 2024, from The New York Times. The Times this week released its new poll tracker for the 2024 presidential election. In the early running, pre-debate, Biden and Trump are tied nationally at 46 percent apiece in a head-to-head race, while Trump leads Biden by just one point with RFK in the picture, representing an improvement for Biden compared to the last nine months. At the state level, Trump is running ahead of Biden in all seven major battleground states, though as the Times notes, Trump's margins in them are "more tenuous than most candidates’ polling advantages in past elections. In fact, today’s polling average shows a closer race than the final November polls did in any election in the last 20 years."
🎸 Solid Sound Festival, in North Adams, MA. One of the best music festivals in the country takes place this weekend at the MASS MoCa contemporary art museum. A biannual festival curated by Wilco, the festival includes an impressive array of musical genres and styles staged across indoor and outdoor spaces—rock, punk, country, indie, experimental, jazz, and folk. TLP is looking forward to sets from Soul Glo, Horse Lords, Etran de L’Aïr, Horsegirl, Dry Cleaning, Iris DeMent, Marc Ribot, and a deep cuts set from the hosts.
📺 “The Three Body Problem,” the good Chinese one. Did you watch (or try to watch) the Netflix adaptation of The Three Body Problem by Chinese science fiction writer, Cixin Liu? Dreadful. Embarrassing even. Ludicrous casting. Terrible script. Extremely poor acting. The soap opera-ization of a profound science fiction novel. But...if you want to watch an adaptation that's true to the book and gives this magnificent book the serious treatment it deserves, there is an alternative! That's the good news. The bad news is that this 30-episode Chinese series is only available on a streaming service called Rakuten Viki that specializes in Asian programs. But you might want to give Viki a try if only to see what a really good treatment of The Three Body Problem looks like.
🚴 Tour de France, from Florence, Italy, to Nice, France. The 111th Tour de France kicks off this Saturday, June 29. The race will take place over three weeks and 21 stages. Though it normally ends in Paris, the capital city is hosting the Summer Olympics this year, and the race will thus conclude in Nice. Among the biggest storylines is the budding rivalry between 27-year-old Jonas Vingegaard of Denmark and 25-year-old Tadej Pogačar of Slovenia. Vingegaard won each of the last two tours and came in second in 2021, while Pogačar finished first in 2020 and 2021 and came in second to Vingegaard the last two years. Both are contenders for another victory this summer. Other big names to watch include Primož Roglič of Slovenia and Remco Evenepoel of Belgium.
👊 “TV Party,” by Black Flag. If you're ready for some deep philosophy this weekend, check out this challenging cut from the seminal California punk rock band, Black Flag:
Here is their take on a life well-lived. Beautiful in its simplicity.
We've got nothing better to do
Than watch TV and have a couple of brewsEverybody's gonna hang out here tonight
All right!
We'll pass out on the couch, all right
Tonight!We've got nothing better to do
Than watch TV and have a couple of brewsDon't talk about anything else
We don't want to know
We're dedicated to our favorite shows...
And so on....Really, who needs Kant and Schopenhauer? Enjoy the weekend.