[{"id":311279,"date":"2026-09-13T10:29:19","date_gmt":"2026-09-13T14:29:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/?p=311279"},"modified":"2026-09-13T08:30:20","modified_gmt":"2026-09-13T12:30:20","slug":"edward-field-1924-2026-poet-and-novelist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/3quarksdaily\/2026\/09\/edward-field-1924-2026-poet-and-novelist.html","title":{"rendered":"Edward Field (1924 &#8211; 2026) Poet and Novelist"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Edward Field interview, 2010-06\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/1j7kCsW33yc?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>Enjoying the content on 3QD? Help keep us going by <a href=\"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/support-3qd\">donating now<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Enjoying the content on 3QD? Help keep us going by donating now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5918],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-311279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-recommended-reading","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/38"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=311279"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311279\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":311280,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311279\/revisions\/311280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=311279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=311279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=311279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":311277,"date":"2026-09-13T09:25:23","date_gmt":"2026-09-13T13:25:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/?p=311277"},"modified":"2026-09-13T08:28:38","modified_gmt":"2026-09-13T12:28:38","slug":"noel-godin-1945-2026-writer-critic-pie-terrorist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/3quarksdaily\/2026\/09\/noel-godin-1945-2026-writer-critic-pie-terrorist.html","title":{"rendered":"No\u00ebl Godin (1945 &#8211; 2026) Writer, Critic, Pie Terrorist"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Belgium - Custard-pie anarchist Noel Godin\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/GaSpHKc_vSc?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>Enjoying the content on 3QD? Help keep us going by <a href=\"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/support-3qd\">donating now<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Enjoying the content on 3QD? Help keep us going by donating now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5918],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-311277","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-recommended-reading","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311277","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/38"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=311277"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311277\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":311278,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311277\/revisions\/311278"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=311277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=311277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=311277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":311273,"date":"2026-09-13T08:23:43","date_gmt":"2026-09-13T12:23:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/?p=311273"},"modified":"2026-09-13T08:23:43","modified_gmt":"2026-09-13T12:23:43","slug":"sunday-poem-494","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/3quarksdaily\/2026\/09\/sunday-poem-494.html","title":{"rendered":"Sunday Poem"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2 style=\"padding-left: 40px\">My Friends the Pigeons<\/h2>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The American Experiment has entered<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">yet another critical phase.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">My friends the pigeons, who rent<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">a ledge in the nine hundredth block<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">of St. Louis, seem painfully aware of this.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">I hope I am not merely projecting<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">my own dread onto them, but if I am<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">I do it with trepidation,<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">for pigeons are, by their very nature,<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">conduits of urban grief, though if<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">studied with an open, critical mind,<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">refract anemic sentiments. Oh sage<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">pigeons of the nine hundredth block<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">of St, Louis Street! What next?<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Christian Right is gaining force.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Christians who march with placards<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">on Bourbon Street . . . Will the crowds<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">cease to laugh at them?<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">A blight on that day the happy crowds<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">no longer laugh at them?<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">A blight on the idiocy of the Christian right!<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">I have watched them on television<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">and shivered with grief.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">They are forcing me to embrace<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">what otherwise I might shun,<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">such as ugly, mite-infested pigeons,<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">surrogate angels for those<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">never told their bodies are evil,<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">and for laying a big, dirty feather<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">on my pillow on Christmas Eve.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><br \/>\n<\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">by Richard Katrovas<\/span><\/i><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><br \/>\n<\/span><\/i><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">from <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">New American Poets<\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><br \/>\n<\/span><\/i><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">David R, Godine Publisher Boston, 1991<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p><strong>Enjoying the content on 3QD? Help keep us going by<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/support-3qd\">donating now<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My Friends the Pigeons The American Experiment has entered yet another critical phase. My friends the pigeons, who rent a ledge in the nine hundredth block of St. Louis, seem painfully aware of this. I hope I am not merely projecting my own dread onto them, but if I am I do it with trepidation,&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5918],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-311273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-recommended-reading","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=311273"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311273\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":311276,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311273\/revisions\/311276"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=311273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=311273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=311273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":311272,"date":"2026-09-13T08:20:29","date_gmt":"2026-09-13T12:20:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/?p=311272"},"modified":"2026-09-13T08:20:29","modified_gmt":"2026-09-13T12:20:29","slug":"jay-maisel-1931-2026-photographer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/3quarksdaily\/2026\/09\/jay-maisel-1931-2026-photographer.html","title":{"rendered":"Jay Maisel (1931 &#8211; 2026) Photographer"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Inspiration from Jay Maisel\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/GzQUp02XfAM?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>Enjoying the content on 3QD? Help keep us going by <a href=\"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/support-3qd\">donating now<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Enjoying the content on 3QD? Help keep us going by donating now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5918],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-311272","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-recommended-reading","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311272","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/38"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=311272"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311272\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":311274,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311272\/revisions\/311274"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=311272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=311272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=311272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":311268,"date":"2026-09-13T08:13:10","date_gmt":"2026-09-13T12:13:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/?p=311268"},"modified":"2026-09-13T08:13:10","modified_gmt":"2026-09-13T12:13:10","slug":"the-imperial-icon-why-gloria-steinems-feminism-is-not-mine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/3quarksdaily\/2026\/09\/the-imperial-icon-why-gloria-steinems-feminism-is-not-mine.html","title":{"rendered":"The Imperial Icon: Why Gloria Steinem\u2019s Feminism is Not Mine"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Fawzia Afzal-Khan in\u00a0<em>CounterPunch:<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-311269 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Gloria_Steinem_by_Gage_Skidmore-360x240.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"360\" height=\"240\" srcset=\"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Gloria_Steinem_by_Gage_Skidmore-360x240.jpg 360w, https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Gloria_Steinem_by_Gage_Skidmore-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Gloria_Steinem_by_Gage_Skidmore-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Gloria_Steinem_by_Gage_Skidmore-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Gloria_Steinem_by_Gage_Skidmore-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Gloria_Steinem_by_Gage_Skidmore.jpg 1920w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 360px) 100vw, 360px\" \/>While many feminists\u2014across various theoretical orientations\u2014continue to wax lyrical about the neoliberal, imperialist-adjacent icon Gloria Steinem, I am sitting here astonished by the uncritical idol worship she still inspires.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px\">What is most puzzling is the refusal by mainstream feminists\u2014some of whom I otherwise admire\u2014to call Steinem out for the CIA-funded counter-insurgency work she directed between 1958 and 1962, which her defenders excuse as a youthful folly. But\u00a0this was not a passive association; it was a deliberate operation designed to create havoc at socialist World Youth Festivals in Vienna and Helsinki. And Steinem was nor only charged with directing it, she never expressed any regret at her role or affiliation with the CIA in later years.<\/p>\n<p>More <a href=\"https:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/2026\/09\/11\/the-imperial-icon-why-gloria-steinems-feminism-is-not-mine\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>the content on 3QD? Help keep us going by <a href=\"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/support-3qd\">donating now<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Fawzia Afzal-Khan in\u00a0CounterPunch: While many feminists\u2014across various theoretical orientations\u2014continue to wax lyrical about the neoliberal, imperialist-adjacent icon Gloria Steinem, I am sitting here astonished by the uncritical idol worship she still inspires. What is most puzzling is the refusal by mainstream feminists\u2014some of whom I otherwise admire\u2014to call Steinem out for the CIA-funded counter-insurgency work&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":37,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5918],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-311268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-recommended-reading","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/37"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=311268"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311268\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":311271,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311268\/revisions\/311271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=311268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=311268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=311268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":310894,"date":"2026-09-13T05:00:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-13T09:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/?p=310894"},"modified":"2026-09-07T02:26:04","modified_gmt":"2026-09-07T06:26:04","slug":"a-painless-wealth-tax","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/3quarksdaily\/2026\/09\/a-painless-wealth-tax.html","title":{"rendered":"A Painless Wealth Tax"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>by Jerry Cayford<\/strong><\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_310895\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-310895\" style=\"width: 360px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-310895 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Monopoly_Top_Hat-360x239.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"360\" height=\"239\" srcset=\"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Monopoly_Top_Hat-360x239.jpeg 360w, https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Monopoly_Top_Hat-768x511.jpeg 768w, https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Monopoly_Top_Hat-300x200.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Monopoly_Top_Hat.jpeg 1024w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 360px) 100vw, 360px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-310895\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Rich Brooks from Scarborough, ME, <a href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/2.0\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">CC BY 2.0<\/a>, via Wikimedia Commons<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The wealth tax was reintroduced a few months ago. Sponsors of the Ultra-Millionaire Tax Act are leading progressive Democrats Elizabeth Warren, Pramila Jayapal, and Brendan Boyle. The sixty or so co-sponsors are all Democrats (plus independent Bernie Sanders)\u2014hardly a surprise, since taxing wealth, rather than just income, is a progressive policy. But the wealth tax need not end in another long-shot partisan battle. I propose a different approach to the politics here.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Another big story in this political season is the national debt, which just passed <a href=\"https:\/\/www.crfb.org\/press-releases\/gross-national-debt-reaches-40-trillion\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">forty trillion dollars<\/a>. Forty trillion! Our debt is far bigger now than our country\u2019s gross domestic product. The interest on that debt is a quarter of the federal budget. Interest alone costs us more each year than we pay for social security, the military, or Medicare\u2014more for debt than for our comfort, our protection, our health, or anything else. Traditionally, fiscally conservative Republicans are the ones who worry about debt.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Put these two stories together. Progressive wealth taxation and conservative debt reduction could be surprisingly symbiotic. What if Democrats pledged half of any wealth tax directly to paying down the national debt?<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The politics of this proposal are what interest me. Arguments about the policy details of various wealth tax designs are easy to find. The figures generally put potential revenue at two to six trillion dollars (over ten years). Discussions of the <em>politics<\/em> of a wealth tax, though, seem to just presume a rigidly partisan and polarized battle ahead.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For example, the Ultra-Millionaire Tax Act (UMTA) <a href=\"https:\/\/www.warren.senate.gov\/newsroom\/press-releases\/warren-jayapal-boyle-45-lawmakers-renew-push-for-wealth-tax-on-ultra-millionaires-and-billionaires\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">press release<\/a> says the plan is \u201cto pay for investments like universal child care, free community college, Medicare expansion, and more.\u201d The \u201cmore\u201d includes schools, clean energy, new housing, and universal paid family leave. Bernie Sanders and Ro Khanna introduced <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sanders.senate.gov\/press-releases\/news-sanders-and-khanna-introduce-legislation-to-tax-billionaire-wealth-and-invest-in-working-families\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">their own wealth tax bill<\/a> expressly to \u201cuse this revenue to address some of the major crises facing working families, the children, the elderly, the sick and the most vulnerable.\u201d The wealth tax framing is indisputably partisan, and many discussions simply assume that Democrats therefore need a supermajority to pass one. But what if we approach the politics differently?<!--more--><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Our Dilemma<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The logic that got us forty trillion dollars into debt is similar to the logic of the current gerrymander wars: acting for the common good entails a huge competitive disadvantage; fair redistricting by one side means losing seats and losing political power, if the other side aggressively gerrymanders. Likewise, paying down debt means less money for the party in power to pursue its own agenda. Unless the other side will be equally restrained when it\u2019s back in power, both sides\u2019 incentive is to borrow and spend as much as they can when they can.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In the face of that logic, only a bipartisan solution is possible. A wealth tax could be that bipartisan solution to the debt. How would this work?<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Let\u2019s start by assuming cutthroat self-interest. The progressives want a wealth tax to fund their priorities. Fair enough. I would argue that they can maximize funding for their own priorities by giving half the money to debt reduction. Consider: the strong consensus is that national wealth taxes currently have zero chance of passing, due to opposition from some moderate Democrats and all Republicans. Explicitly devoting half the wealth tax revenue to deficit reduction would be good politics, even just as a wily, selfish tactic. It could bring all the moderates and some of the Republicans on board, and half of two-to-six trillion is a lot more than the zero we get if the bill never passes.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But can it really pass? Consider the politics of voting against a wealth tax. If only Democratic priorities will be served, it is easy for Republicans to vote against it, maybe even popular and beneficial for them. The whole Republican base will reflexively support their No vote. But if it is a serious debt-reduction tool, then the political dynamic shifts. The bottom 99.85 percent of Americans will pay no wealth tax (UMTA press release), so the Republican base has no actual stake in opposing this tax. But Republicans do have a stake in the ideology of fiscal responsibility, and they do have a stake in reducing the massive interest payments that every year eat up revenues that could be used for Republican priorities. It will be difficult for any politician to vote against a wealth tax that is half for debt reduction and half for current spending needs. It can pass.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I promised \u201ccutthroat self-interest,\u201d though, and I just gave away half our revenue to buy the other side\u2019s cooperation. Well, the numbers here are quite flexible. The UMTA starts at a threshold of $50 million and tops out at 3 percent above $1 billion, while the Sanders\/Khanna tax is 5 percent above $1 billion. That\u2019s a big difference. A wealth tax can bring in more money with a higher rate or a lower threshold. So, half the revenue from a tax that brings in twice as much as is projected for the current bill could equal that current projection. Psychologically, the tolerance for a larger tax will be a lot higher for a bipartisan one serving the common good than for a tax that serves the agenda of the victor in a bitter partisan battle. Besides, the amount of revenue raised is less important than the principle of taxing wealth. Also, a tax serving both sides through debt reduction will be much harder to repeal when the power shifts.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The alternative route to trillions in funding for Democratic priorities is huge electoral wins. Some progressives, perhaps giddy at the prospect of a blue wave this year, argue that we can and must change the country so that Democrats not only have sixty Senate seats but can confidently expect to keep them through the 2030 midterms (e.g. Adam Jentleson, \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/08\/19\/opinion\/democrats-midterms-supermajority.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Democrats Can\u2019t Fix This Mess Without a Supermajority<\/a>\u201d). I can\u2019t say it\u2019s impossible, but I want to argue that changing the political dynamic will be much better\u2014as well as much easier\u2014than winning a durable supermajority.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Becoming Less Cutthroat<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Reading political tea leaves is hard, and the meaning of electoral wins is not obvious. Two years ago, pundits thought the voters had lurched right. Lately, progressives have had an impressive string of electoral successes, and it might seem that voters have now lurched left. But I don\u2019t think the public lurches much at all, and both apparent movements have little to do with policy, left or right. What the public wants is good governance, which they can see requires big, bold changes to our current dysfunction. In both cases, the apparent movements really signal the public\u2019s willingness to vote for politicians they think will make those big changes.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Changing the politics of a wealth tax from partisan warfare to cooperative problem-solving has important psychological knock-on effects. Let\u2019s go back to that logic of gerrymandering. When Texas violated deeply-held norms of fair redistricting in pursuit of partisan advantage, virtually the whole country knew the Democrats had to respond in kind. Even ardent supporters of citizens redistricting commissions, such as Common Cause, accepted that California should set them aside and gerrymander the state. People intuitively understand the logic, and they will cut politicians a lot slack for taking the low road when taking the high road would make them into doormats. We cut politicians slack for getting us into debt because the public understands that neither side can sacrifice its priorities to pay down the debt on their own watch, if the other side is running up the debt to get whatever it wants.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But just as everyone turned on a dime against redistricting commissions, they\u2019ll turn again as quickly for a real solution. I\u2019ve <a href=\"https:\/\/expanddem.substack.com\/p\/resist-adapt-redistrict\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">written before<\/a> about what everyone has learned from the gerrymander wars: only a cooperative, bipartisan solution for gerrymandering can work. There is famous research in game theory on strategies of cooperation and conflict in the \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/heritage.umich.edu\/stories\/the-prisoners-dilemma\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Prisoner\u2019s Dilemma<\/a>,\u201d research that shows the best strategy over time is to strike back against aggression but then attempt cooperation as soon as possible. People intuitively get it, and they\u2019ll strike back as long as the battle is partisan, but cooperate when they won\u2019t be made doormats.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As long as taxes are just tokens in a partisan battle, America\u2019s debt problem is insoluble. Even the Ultra-Millionaire Tax Act\u2014which at $6.2 trillion is among the biggest bills in U.S. history\u2014even the UMTA would barely cover the expected increase in future yearly deficits. We have to go bigger, which means we have to change the dynamic around taxes. This is what making the wealth tax bipartisan can do, or at least start. If taxes are perceived by the base in both parties as really solving our problems, currently-unthinkable policies will become thinkable. When Ronald Reagan was elected president, income taxes topped out at 50 percent for earned income and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.urban.org\/sites\/default\/files\/publication\/59856\/1000459-A-Brief-History-of-the-Top-Tax-Rate.PDF\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">70 percent<\/a> for interest and dividends (compared to our current 37 percent for both). Rates like those today could take a big chunk out of the national debt. Many other sources of money that are currently untouchable could be tapped in a different political environment.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">From decades of massive tax cuts, the rich have gotten spectacularly richer while the rest of us haven\u2019t. That perception drives this new enthusiasm for a wealth tax: the rich didn\u2019t pay their share; we had to borrow to make ends meet; and now we pay the rich hundreds of billions per year in interest on money they lent us that they should have paid in taxes. Progressives find that story compelling and it justifies a wealth tax. A lot more people would find it compelling, though\u2014maybe even everybody\u2014if the revenue from the wealth tax leads to healing our country\u2019s fiscal wound, rather than just advancing progressive policies.<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It can feel like we can\u2019t afford to give an inch when the other side never does. But that isn\u2019t an attitude that wears well in the long run. And here is a crucial disanalogy with the gerrymander case: where redistricting is truly a zero-sum conflict carrying real risks of partisan electoral losses, allocating half the wealth tax revenue to debt reduction in a bipartisan bill carries little political downside, whether or not it succeeds. And the Democrats aren\u2019t likely to see any revenue as long as the issue stays partisan, anyway. But aside from that, the fact remains that the debt is Democrats\u2019 problem, too. Conservative or not, all of us are hurt by interest payments that dwarf everything else we value and spend money on. We need to solve this. If inequality has made the political moment ripe for a big move like a wealth tax, that big move can change our politics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Jerry Cayford The wealth tax was reintroduced a few months ago. Sponsors of the Ultra-Millionaire Tax Act are leading progressive Democrats Elizabeth Warren, Pramila Jayapal, and Brendan Boyle. The sixty or so co-sponsors are all Democrats (plus independent Bernie Sanders)\u2014hardly a surprise, since taxing wealth, rather than just income, is a progressive policy. But&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1593,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3260],"tags":[266,6472,7258,364,3595,7259,7257,7260,7255],"class_list":["post-310894","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mondaymagazine","tag-bernie-sanders","tag-billionaires","tag-bipartisanship","tag-elizabeth-warren","tag-gerrymandering","tag-prisoners-dilemma","tag-ro-khanna","tag-ultra-millionaire-tax-act","tag-wealth-tax","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310894","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1593"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=310894"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310894\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":311033,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310894\/revisions\/311033"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=310894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=310894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=310894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":310902,"date":"2026-09-13T04:00:34","date_gmt":"2026-09-13T08:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/?p=310902"},"modified":"2026-09-07T02:21:58","modified_gmt":"2026-09-07T06:21:58","slug":"beauty-and-no-thingness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/3quarksdaily\/2026\/09\/beauty-and-no-thingness.html","title":{"rendered":"Beauty And No-Thingness"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>by Mark R. DeLong<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-310925 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/bringley-beauty-cover-226x360.jpg\" alt=\"Cover of Patrick Bringley's book All the Beauty in the World. The cover show a museum guard standing before a large painting surrounded by a large arch. The colors of the book are bright and pastels The subtitle reads &quot;The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Me.&quot;\" width=\"226\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/bringley-beauty-cover-226x360.jpg 226w, https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/bringley-beauty-cover-643x1024.jpg 643w, https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/bringley-beauty-cover-768x1223.jpg 768w, https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/bringley-beauty-cover-188x300.jpg 188w, https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/bringley-beauty-cover.jpg 900w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 226px) 100vw, 226px\" \/>A few years ago I shared a draft of a sonnet sequence with a poet from the Northwest I had followed for a while. I asked him if he\u2019d give the piece a once-over and provide some critique, and his reading was perceptive and useful for me. One comment drew my attention in particular: \u201cI fall flat on \u2018beauty,\u2019 \u201d he wrote. \u201cThis is the one place in the poems the image turns outward into metaphor that cannot be touched \u2014 &#8216;beauty&#8217;s hidden folds&#8217; is a no-thing\u201d he wrote, pointing out at the last line of the second sonnet.<\/p>\n<p>I thought about it, wondering about beauty and no-thingness, and thinking that beauty must be something more than an empty word or a placeholder for some substantial thing that is a &#8220;better&#8221; thing. Then, I admitted and still do admit that I don\u2019t really know what beauty is, aside from maybe being something in the \u201ceye of the beholder,\u201d perhaps an evaporated no-thing, really.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Nell_Irvin_Painter\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Nell Painter<\/a> discusses her \u201clying twentieth-century eyes\u201d and how \u201c[t]hinking like a historian misled me as an artist\u201d not too far into her memoir <a href=\"https:\/\/nellpainter.com\/oias.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><i>Old in Art School<\/i><\/a> (2018), a book I picked up when I was thrashing through the first year or so of my retirement. For I had toyed with making a turn like Painter, who wrapped up an eventful career teaching and researching history at Princeton and leaped into undergraduate study of art at Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers and then an MFA at Rhode Island School of Design. She was finishing her sixties when she graduated with her MFA.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt took me years in art school to recognize my twentieth-century eyes as my major handicap as an artist, the real way I was old in art school,\u201d Painter observes. And then she begins to unwrap some of the intricacies of art that she earned at Mason Gross and RISD: \u201cart is fundamentally about taste, and tastes vary; tastes change.\u201d Newly formed tastes can mistakenly be \u201cdismissed as ephermeral fads,\u201d both in art and in scholarship; and she says that \u201cthis comforting belief remains widespread.\u201d More than in the twentieth century, in twenty-first century art, the division of art and life has blurred, \u201calmost like the erasure of the divide between public and private and the slender difference separating art and life in reality TV and webcams streaming people\u2019s everyday moments of what used to be private life.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And with that blurring and flattening of \u201ctastes\u201d and mistrust of one\u2019s eyes, I had to wonder as I read this section of Painter\u2019s memoir where the \u201cbeauty\u201d in art might reside. My own lying eyes had settled for rather two-dimensional notions of beauty and its power (or powerlessness), its truth (or lack of it), its transformative potency (or not). It would be easy to relegate beauty to quaintnesses \u2014 as in sighing nostalgia and pious reverence for antiquities \u2014 or to shuffle beauty over to the domain of kitsch and \u201cmere illustration,\u201d Bob Ross\u2019 happy little trees, and unicorns and rainbows.<\/p>\n<p>Now that techbros are trying to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fastcompany.com\/91591873\/the-remarkably-human-task-of-giving-ai-good-enough-taste\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">wedge taste into their AI models<\/a>, I think it is necessary to look at beauty more carefully (and I embrace the ambiguity of that phrasing). Today\u2019s humans need to seek the beautiful and defend the richness of its ambiguity and mystery \u2014 as something not reducible to digital data that can be tortured into submission on an Nvidia chip or data-fied at a gallery or auction into to another numerical format: The Almighty Dollar.<\/p>\n<p>How many of us today yearn to make beauty real and present again in our lives? Especially in this 2026 MAGA land of algal blooms, oil wars, a monstrous arch, a mud hole East Wing, UFC fights on the White House lawn, cruelties on American streets, betrayals of allies and friends, and a humiliating \u201cstate fair\u201d whose most promising achievement was that it was sparsely attended.<\/p>\n<h2>A guard in search of beauty and solace<\/h2>\n<p>That desire to rediscover meanings in beauty and art underlies <a href=\"https:\/\/www.patrickbringley.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Patrick Bringley<\/a>\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.simonandschuster.com\/books\/All-the-Beauty-in-the-World\/Patrick-Bringley\/9781982163310\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><i>All the Beauty in the World: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Me<\/i><\/a> (Simon &amp; Schuster, 2023). I read it the year it came out, and now three years later I find myself drawn back to the book. From a distance, you can see the book as a story about a guy whose job is to be watchfully present, but that quick take ignores the richness of Bringley\u2019s experience over the ten years he stood guard at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It also ignores the manifold layers of the narrative. His decision to quit his job at <i>The New Yorker<\/i> and put on the uniform of the Met guard was, after all, a response to a personal and family crisis. His older brother Tom\u2019s death by cancer forced the change, and a museum guard salary was hardly the attraction. The book itself tells of people working together, of the bumblings and elegance of people going through the Met for art and for paychecks.<\/p>\n<p>For Bringley, the attraction was the art and the paradoxical hold and liberation it offers. Shortly after Tom\u2019s death, Bringley and his mother retreated into the Philadelphia Museum of Art, \u201ceach to find our own sad, bright picture to be near.\u201d Bringley landed on a centuries-old Italian Adoration painted with tempera by an unknown artist. He later found his mother with the painting that captured her:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>When I spotted her, she was framed by a work more beautiful and even more truthful than the one I had found\u2026. Against a featureless gold background, it depicted a young man who was very beautiful but bluntly dead, supported bodily by his mother, who hugged her son as she would if he were living \u2014 a scene called a Lamentation or Piet\u00e0. My mother has always been a good one to cry \u2014 at weddings, at the movies, but this was different. She cupped her face, and her shoulders shook, and when I met her eyes, I saw she wept because her heart was full as well as breaking, because the picture inspired love in her, bringing both solace and pain. When we adore, we apprehend beauty.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<figure id=\"attachment_310919\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-310919\" style=\"width: 297px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-310919\" src=\"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Christ-in-the-Tomb-and-the-Virgin-1200-297x360.jpg\" alt=\"The background is gold, and the shape of the picture is like a domed window, arched at the top with squared sides and bottom. A grieiving mother, draped in dark blue, holds her dead sons body, which leans against her.\" width=\"297\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Christ-in-the-Tomb-and-the-Virgin-1200-297x360.jpg 297w, https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Christ-in-the-Tomb-and-the-Virgin-1200-845x1024.jpg 845w, https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Christ-in-the-Tomb-and-the-Virgin-1200-768x931.jpg 768w, https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Christ-in-the-Tomb-and-the-Virgin-1200-247x300.jpg 247w, https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Christ-in-the-Tomb-and-the-Virgin-1200.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 297px) 100vw, 297px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-310919\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Niccol\u00f2 di Pietro Gerini, <em>Christ in the Tomb and the Virgin<\/em>. c 1377. Tempera and tooled gold on panel with vertical grain, 40 5\/16 x 33 9\/16 inches (102.4 x 85.2 cm). Philadelphia Museum of Art, Cat. 8. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.philamuseum.org\/objects\/102619\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">https:\/\/www.philamuseum.org\/objects\/102619<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>And we grasp <em>more<\/em> than beauty; we can fall into a way forward after the devastation of loss. His mother and father and sister headed back to their home in Chicago after the museum visit. As Bringley headed to his new home in New York, he decided he would not return to his desk job at <em>The New Yorker<\/em>. \u201cIn the Philadelphia Museum of Art,\u201d he recalled on the train back to New York, \u201cI had been allowed to dwell in silence, circling, pacing, returning, communing, lifting my eyes up to beautiful things and feeling sadness and sweetness only.\u201d The realization set him on his way to guard the beauty of the Met. Back home in Brooklyn, \u201cit all felt remarkably simple. In the fall of 2008, I took up my post in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>You could, I suppose, consider <em>All the Beauty in the World<\/em> as a memoir of Patrick Bringley\u2019s growth and recovery from the loss of his brother. But that would be far too simple a take on this book. Bringley recounts his fateful visit to the Philadelphia Museum of Art and his decision to become a museum guard only at the end of the third chapter, well after he brings his reader into the life of the Met from his new perspective as an employee. Indeed, the first chapter opens with his first workday at the Met, and that sets the foundational story: the living history and operation of the Met as an institution and how it draws from and multiplies the vitality of the city and its people. Bringley shows how he first stepped into his role \u2014 and the Met\u2019s vibrant and sometimes unruly life \u2014 both literally and figuratively; and the final chapter chronicles his final day as a guard. First day and last day bookend this memoir, seeded as the career was by the tragedy and pain of a lost brother. This is a book of work, told by a worker.<\/p>\n<h2>A book of work, by a worker<\/h2>\n<p>In the first pages, Bringley marches\u00a0us readers along as Aada, his first-day guide \u201cwhisks\u201d him to his first post in \u201cthe old master paintings,\u201d which Aada says is lucky. \u201cWhen you are here,\u201d she tells him in her slightly accented (Finnish?) speech as she stamps her foot, \u201cwood floors, easy on the feet\u2026 A twelve-hour day on wood is like an eight-hour day on marble. An eight-hour day on wood is like nothing.\u201d Even feet are part of the story, and Bringley is amused to find that after surviving his four-month probationary period, he is welcomed into the union and is granted an $80-a-year \u201chose allowance.\u201d That is, money for socks, one of the many details about life inside the Met that seasons the narrative.<\/p>\n<p>Bringley\u2019s first hours present a bewilderment of contraptions and workers who museums keep behind the scenes, which he says \u201cis all very interesting, but I can\u2019t help but notice we are chatting just feet away from the <i>Madonna and Child<\/i> by Duccio, from about 1300. All morning, I haven\u2019t faced up to a painting, and I wonder if I might swing Aada\u2019s attention its way by making a reference to its reported $45 million price tag.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Big mistake. \u201cAada is only saddened I would say such a vulgar thing,\u201d Bringley recalls.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>She pulls me in close to the diminutive panel and all but whispers, \u201cYou see the blackened singed bits at the bottom of the frame. Burn marks from votive candles. It\u2019s a beautiful picture, isn\u2019t it? These are beautiful pictures, aren\u2019t they? \u2026 You and I, we work with masters. Duccio. Vermeer. Vel\u00e1zquez. Caravaggio. Compared to what?\u201d She looks over at our American Wing neighbors. \u201cSome picture of George Washington? I mean oh come on now. Be serious.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<figure id=\"attachment_310920\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-310920\" style=\"width: 274px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-310920 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/madonna_and_child-met-1200-274x360.jpg\" alt=\"A rectangular frame surround a blue draped woman (Mary) holding a small child. He hold out his arm to her face as she gazes at him. The figures are in front of a gold background. The frame has burn marks on the bottom where votive candles once burned.\" width=\"274\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/madonna_and_child-met-1200-274x360.jpg 274w, https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/madonna_and_child-met-1200-780x1024.jpg 780w, https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/madonna_and_child-met-1200-768x1009.jpg 768w, https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/madonna_and_child-met-1200-1170x1536.jpg 1170w, https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/madonna_and_child-met-1200-228x300.jpg 228w, https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/madonna_and_child-met-1200.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 274px) 100vw, 274px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-310920\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Duccio di Buoninsegna. <em>Madonna and Child<\/em>. ca. 1290-1300. Tempera and gold on wood, Overall, with engaged frame, 11 x 8 1\/4 in. (27.9 x 21 cm); painted surface 9 3\/8 x 6 1\/2 in. (23.8 x 16.5 cm). https:\/\/www.metmuseum.org\/art\/collection\/search\/438754.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Aada redirects attention. Even to a museum guard paid for attending to things, the weight of beauty and history comes to bear, making some monetary quantity of value mere fog and noise, mere miserly stuff. The votives that burnt the frame hundreds of years ago reflect a stronger witness to the art\u2019s value than a carefully engineered sale through a London art dealer. Aada leaves him at his \u201cC post\u201d in the old masters. All he has to do, Bringley says, is \u201clet my hands remain empty and my eyes stay wide while my inner life grows all mixed up with beautiful works of art and the life that swirls around them.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Through the contrast of his own monetary \u201cvulgarity\u201d and Aada\u2019s gentle correction Bringley introduces his first ways of seeing and balancing the value and purpose of art. (If, indeed, it makes sense to consider art as purposeful; I have my doubts). It is one of many ways of seeing the art of the Met that Bringley presents, and he was able to gather evidence of these ways over a decade.<\/p>\n<h2>The chapter of flesh and blood<\/h2>\n<p>The guard\u2019s life in a museum is not merely watching out for the art, not just looking at art. It is also watching other people look at art and interact with it in their own, sometimes inappropriate, ways. Chapter six \u201cFlesh and Blood\u201d begins with entertaining accounts of mishaps (after a careless bump, \u201cthe painting swings once, twice, three times on the copper wires anchored just below the ceiling\u2026. It\u2019s hard to feel that all is well when you\u2019ve just seen a swinging Picasso.\u201d), heists at the Met and elsewhere (\u201cKnow how he [Hermes, a statue\u2019s head] ended up in a storage locker at Grand Central Station?\u201d), and sundry and amusing thefts. In their criminal or oddly bumbling ways, the stories implicitly nod to the value of art in raw cash or perhaps, in the case of Hermes\u2019 head, wooing a girl.<\/p>\n<p>After such exotic escapades, Bringley turns to the law-abiding, though sometimes clumsy, typical Met visitor, some seven million of them a year. The crowd is \u201ca pageant for whom I\u2019m the steadfast audience,\u201d Bringley says. Over the decade he served as a guard, he classified the visitors: Sightseer; Dinosaur Hunter (\u201cpanicked by each new piece of evidence that this museum <i>only<\/i> has art\u201d); \u201cthree distinct kinds of Lovers\u201d (Art Lover, Lover of the Met itself, and \u201cLovebirds,\u201d who flutter around, \u201calighting in spaces where silences aren\u2019t awkward and strong emotions feel natural\u201d); the people who just can\u2019t resist touching highly polished ancient marble. And, of course, the single stand-outs: elderly gentlemen bent over their walkers, white-haired ladies who happen to be twins, mothers with children in tow, \u201clisteners,\u201d \u201ctalkers,\u201d and (my favorite, I\u2019ll admit), the \u201cbaffled.\u201d For the baffled, Bringley sought to \u201clearn not only to choke back any snobbish impulses I might have, but to dismiss them as stupid and absurd. None of us know much of anything about this subject \u2014 the world and all of its beauty. I might know the dates of Michelangelo\u2019s birth and death, but imagine how overwhelmed by ignorance I would be in his workshop\u2026.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Bringley\u2019s \u201cpageant\u201d of visitors reveals the elusive power of beauty, showing how the presence of beauty doesn\u2019t reside within works themselves or even in \u201cthe eyes of the beholder\u201d but in their relation: in the relation of lookers themselves, looker-to-looker, and the relation of beheld works, the lively pageant of artworks. Beauty emerges from the culture of things by the interaction of things \u2014 their echoes, their indebtednesses, their conflicts and arguments \u2014 and the trends and fashions that emerge from people sharing space and time. It is no wonder that a museum like the Met has emerged as a monument to artistic achievements; it hosts daily pageants that express and refine all the beauty in the world.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFlesh and Blood\u201d stood out to me because Bringley first pulls together the rascal, the lover, the clueless, the connoisseur, the tourist and shows them as they behold and, yes, judge the works in the Met. But the chapter closes with his trip home after a work day, and there we see a change arising from the pageant of Met visitors and the Met\u2019s works of art.<\/p>\n<p>Bringley feels the <i>extension<\/i> of the experience of things in the museum into the experience of the world. Beauty sticks with human experience, transforming it.<\/p>\n<p>Bringley recalls working at the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.metmuseum.org\/exhibitions\/listings\/2010\/stieglitz-steichen-strand\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><i>Stieglitz, Steichen, Strand<\/i><\/a> exhibition among Stieglitz\u2019s many portraits of his lover and later his wife Georgia O\u2019Keefe. He sees a gentleman taking a photo of a Stieglitz portrait. \u201cWe want possession, something to put in our pocket, so to speak, and carry away,\u201d Bringley writes. \u201cExcept what if nothing very beautiful fits in our pockets, and only the tiniest sliver of what we see or experience can be possessed?\u201d And with that thought, that <i>doubt<\/i>, his experience of beauty shifts as the Met\u2019s human pageant itself transforms into a work of art:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>With this thought, suddenly the strangers in the room appear to be wildly beautiful. They have good faces. They have eloquent walks. They\u2019re emotive; their eyebrows jump about. They are daughters who look like their mothers\u2019 pasts, fathers who look like their sons\u2019 futures. They are young, old, blooming, decaying, and in every sense they are real. I strain to use my eye as an investigatory tool, as a pencil, with my mind the sketch pad\u2026. I look for meaning in the way people wear their clothes and carry their weight, hold hands with their boyfriends and girlfriends or don\u2019t, style their hair, cut their beards, meet or avoid my eye\u2026. And when I find I can discover no definite meaning in most of what I see\u2014nothing I could put into words\u2014I take pleasure in the flash and sparkle of the scene.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Thus, the chapter ends with Bringley\u2019s world transformed from art on the walls to a work of art swarming within them.<\/p>\n<h2>Beauty and no-thingness<\/h2>\n<p>Beauty is a \u201cno-thing\u201d because no thing can completely contain it, not even language, however poetic or expressive, nor paint, wood, or marble.<\/p>\n<p>Beauty is not a matter of possession, not something to be \u201cfit into our pockets,\u201d or even something to be revered. It is\u2014if a no-thing can be anything at all\u2014a matter of experience, of preference, of haphazard luck, and of acquired perspectives or taste. For the artist sees differently from others, and her job (if it can be called a job) is to reveal that difference\u2014a difference that draws not only from the beautiful things that exist in the world but from the beauty that they exist <i>at all<\/i>. Doing art is to embrace beauty\u2019s power without possessing it; the artist swims in an environment, sometimes is transformed in the process, sometimes able to retain and reveal a glimmer for us all. Bringley looks back at his decade working as a guard and concludes that the place is \u201cwhere, with your own eyes, you can see what fellow fallible humans have made of the world that you live in.\u201d Which is true, and that I would expand to say that the Met as an institution, with its bustle and bumbling, is another attempt by a host of fallible humans to gather a collection of things that help a pageant of visitors make sense of their worlds and experience a no-thingness of beauty, in all its sometimes difficult comfort and inexplicable depth.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn art, I can delve into what I can\u2019t know as an historian,\u201d Nell Painter said in an interview in the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bostonreview.net\/articles\/walter-johnson-nell-irvin-painter-old-in-art-school\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><i>Boston Review<\/i><\/a>. \u201cThat\u2019s a freedom that artist Nell Painter can exploit, but historian Nell Irvin Painter must back away from.\u201d As participants in looking for beauty, we, too, discover a form of artist&#8217;s freedom.<\/p>\n<p>Its no-thingness certainly makes beauty a challenge, but it also makes beauty an exceptionally <em>human<\/em> no-thing. A no-thing that leaps beyond the reach of datasets, computer chips, and AI models. Beauty resides in human experience and in human community.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><i>For the bibliographically curious:<\/i> The images: Niccol\u00f2 di Pietro Gerini, <i>Christ in the Tomb and the Virgin<\/i>. c 1377. Tempera and tooled gold on panel with vertical grain, 40 5\/16 x 33 9\/16 inches (102.4 x 85.2 cm). Philadelphia Museum of Art, Cat. 8. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.philamuseum.org\/objects\/102619\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">https:\/\/www.philamuseum.org\/objects\/102619<\/a>;\u00a0Duccio di Buoninsegna, <i>Madonna and Child<\/i>, ca.\u00a0 \u20131300 1290, Tempera and gold on wood, Overall, with engaged frame, 11 x 8 1\/4 in. (27.9 x 21 cm); painted surface 9 3\/8 x 6 1\/2 in. (23.8 x 16.5 cm), <a href=\"https:\/\/www.metmuseum.org\/art\/collection\/search\/438754\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">https:\/\/www.metmuseum.org\/art\/collection\/search\/438754<\/a>. Patrick Bringley acted, too, but again is writing: Jane Levere, \u201c\u2018All The Beauty In The World\u2019 Author To Write Again After Acting Stint.\u201d <i>Forbes<\/i>, May 22, 2025. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/janelevere\/2025\/05\/22\/all-the-beauty-in-the-world-author-to-write-again-after-acting-stint\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/janelevere\/2025\/05\/22\/all-the-beauty-in-the-world-author-to-write-again-after-acting-stint\/<\/a>. Two pieces of mine tht touch on Bringley&#8217;s book and its connection with &#8220;hanging out&#8221; and with the powers of doing and making: \u201cBook Review: Sheila Liming\u2019s <i>Hanging Out: The Radical Power of Killing Time<\/i>,\u201d <i>READER<\/i>, July 28, 2023, <a href=\"https:\/\/read.markdelong.me\/2023\/07\/28\/book-review-hanging-out-the-radical-power-of-killing-time\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">https:\/\/read.markdelong.me\/2023\/07\/28\/book-review-hanging-out-the-radical-power-of-killing-time\/<\/a> and \u201cHanging out with Artists in The Ark,\u201d <i>READER<\/i>, May 4, 2023, <a href=\"https:\/\/read.markdelong.me\/2023\/05\/04\/hanging-out-with-artists-in-the-ark\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">https:\/\/read.markdelong.me\/2023\/05\/04\/hanging-out-with-artists-in-the-ark\/<\/a>. Roku has a 100% AI channel. But can it be beautiful? From the article: &#8220;Fairground AI stands out as a pioneering offering dedicated entirely to AI-generated content. The channel features a continuous stream of films, short series, and creative works produced through artificial intelligence tools, highlighting emerging talent in the growing field of AI cinema. It provides a 24-hour rotation designed to introduce mainstream audiences to this new form of storytelling that blends traditional production values with generative technology.&#8221;\u00a0Luke Bouma, \u201cRoku Adds 4 New Free Channels to Roku TVs &amp; Roku Players in August 2026,\u201d <i>Cord Cutters News<\/i>, August 3, 2026, <a href=\"https:\/\/cordcuttersnews.com\/roku-adds-4-new-free-channels-to-roku-tvs-roku-players-in-august-2026\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">https:\/\/cordcuttersnews.com\/roku-adds-4-new-free-channels-to-roku-tvs-roku-players-in-august-2026\/<\/a>. &#8220;<span class=\"ld-dropcap\">A<\/span>rt alone puts us in touch with certain kinds of truth and beauty. And in that way, art restores us to reality. For it to succeed, however, it must be left to its own devices (or lack thereof). It must be free to eschew the logic of utility and to embody the freedom we stifle under the pressures of means-and-ends thinking<span class=\"ld-nowrap\">&#8220;: J. F. <\/span>Martel, \u201cHumans Did Not Invent Art. It Was the Other Way Around.\u201d <em>Aeon<\/em>, July 30, 2026. <a href=\"https:\/\/aeon.co\/essays\/humans-did-not-invent-art-it-was-the-other-way-around\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">https:\/\/aeon.co\/essays\/humans-did-not-invent-art-it-was-the-other-way-around<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Enjoying the content on 3QD? Help keep us going by <a href=\"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/support-3qd\">donating now<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Mark R. DeLong A few years ago I shared a draft of a sonnet sequence with a poet from the Northwest I had followed for a while. I asked him if he\u2019d give the piece a once-over and provide some critique, and his reading was perceptive and useful for me. One comment drew my&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1732,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3260],"tags":[187,186,7261,7262],"class_list":["post-310902","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mondaymagazine","tag-art","tag-beauty","tag-museum","tag-the-met","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310902","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1732"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=310902"}],"version-history":[{"count":25,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310902\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":311035,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310902\/revisions\/311035"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=310902"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=310902"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=310902"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":311202,"date":"2026-09-11T14:45:03","date_gmt":"2026-09-11T18:45:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/?p=311202"},"modified":"2026-09-11T08:00:37","modified_gmt":"2026-09-11T12:00:37","slug":"looking-back-at-what-i-wrote-about-the-9-11-attacks-20-years-ago-how-we-became-important","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/3quarksdaily\/2026\/09\/looking-back-at-what-i-wrote-about-the-9-11-attacks-20-years-ago-how-we-became-important.html","title":{"rendered":"Looking back at what I wrote about the 9\/11 attacks 20 years ago: &#8220;How we became important&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><strong>Note:<\/strong> This was published at 3QD twenty years ago. You can also read 15 other contributions on this subject from the 5th anniversary of the attacks <a href=\"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/3quarksdaily\/2006\/09\/five_years_late.html\">here<\/a>. I thought these accounts were worth revisiting now that 25 years have passed since that horrific day.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>S. Abbas Raza at <em>3 Quarks Daily<\/em>:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-311203\" src=\"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Screenshot-2026-09-11-135653-243x360.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"243\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Screenshot-2026-09-11-135653-243x360.png 243w, https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Screenshot-2026-09-11-135653-692x1024.png 692w, https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Screenshot-2026-09-11-135653-768x1137.png 768w, https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Screenshot-2026-09-11-135653-203x300.png 203w, https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Screenshot-2026-09-11-135653.png 912w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 243px) 100vw, 243px\" \/>For days afterwards one went around as if in a dream. Nothing felt real. The atmosphere in New York City took a long time to return to anything like normal, and during that period one\u2019s emotions remained unpredictable and turbulent. September 11th itself was, of course, the worst. By afternoon of that bright autumn day, my uptown apartment had become a makeshift refugee camp for a number of friends who lived near the World Trade Center, and who could no longer go home. At some point on that day, we all went out\u00a0<em>en masse<\/em>\u00a0to try and get a late lunch, only to find an eerie silence on Broadway. All traffic had been stopped in Manhattan. For some odd reason, the few people present were whispering to each other, if speaking at all. After a while, armored personnel carriers with uniformed soldiers began slowly rolling down the streets, while F-14 Tomcats circled overhead. People in civilian dress carrying submachine guns quietly appeared on the street corners. (Later, I learned they were FBI agents.) It was not clear then if there would be further attacks. One felt like one was in a war zone, and I was reminded of my recurring childhood nightmares after Pakistan\u2019s 1971 war with India. Every little while, someone in our group would suddenly break into tears.<\/p>\n<p>More <a href=\"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/3quarksdaily\/2006\/09\/how_we_became_i.html\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Enjoying the content on 3QD? Help keep us going by <a href=\"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/support-3qd\">donating now<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Note: This was published at 3QD twenty years ago. You can also read 15 other contributions on this subject from the 5th anniversary of the attacks here. I thought these accounts were worth revisiting now that 25 years have passed since that horrific day. S. Abbas Raza at 3 Quarks Daily: For days afterwards one&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5918],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-311202","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-recommended-reading","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311202","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=311202"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311202\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":311206,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311202\/revisions\/311206"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=311202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=311202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=311202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":311198,"date":"2026-09-11T13:45:15","date_gmt":"2026-09-11T17:45:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/?p=311198"},"modified":"2026-09-11T07:47:35","modified_gmt":"2026-09-11T11:47:35","slug":"harvard-study-predicts-most-suicide-attempts-a-week-in-advance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/3quarksdaily\/2026\/09\/harvard-study-predicts-most-suicide-attempts-a-week-in-advance.html","title":{"rendered":"Harvard study predicts most suicide attempts a week in advance"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Eric Moskowitz at the Harvard website, <em>The FAS Current<\/em>:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-311199\" src=\"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Screenshot-2026-09-11-134657-224x360.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"224\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Screenshot-2026-09-11-134657-224x360.png 224w, https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Screenshot-2026-09-11-134657-638x1024.png 638w, https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Screenshot-2026-09-11-134657-187x300.png 187w, https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Screenshot-2026-09-11-134657.png 742w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 224px) 100vw, 224px\" \/>As a leading researcher on suicide,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/nocklab.fas.harvard.edu\/people\/matthew-k-nock-phd\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Matthew K. Nock<\/a>\u00a0knows the subject\u2019s grim statistics by heart. Suicide is the second-leading cause of death for Americans aged 10 to 34, trailing only accidents. It claims more lives around the world each year than war, genocide, homicide, and all other violence combined. And 50 percent of people who died by suicide saw a clinician in their final month, according to multiple studies in recent decades, including\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/psycnet.apa.org\/record\/2017-12488-008\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Nock\u2019s own research<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">For Nock, that last statistic is both agonizing and motivating. Some might take it to mean that the warning signs of suicide are imperceptible or think that suicide is somehow inevitable for those in the grips of extreme suffering. Nock, who is both a researcher and a licensed clinician, reads the statistic as a tragic gap in a clinical-care system rooted in scheduled therapy appointments, which can fail to detect the highly variable\u00a0\u2014\u00a0and fleeting\u00a0\u2014\u00a0nature of suicidal thoughts.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\">But two new statistics make Nock, the Edgar Pierce Professor of Psychology, cautiously optimistic: In a multiyear study of 600-plus high-risk adults and adolescents, his lab predicted 75 percent of suicide attempts and 87 percent of suicide-related events in the week before they occurred.<\/p>\n<p>More <a href=\"https:\/\/current.fas.harvard.edu\/stories\/harvard-study-predicts-most-suicide-attempts-week-advance\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Enjoying the content on 3QD? Help keep us going by <a href=\"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/support-3qd\">donating now<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Eric Moskowitz at the Harvard website, The FAS Current: As a leading researcher on suicide,\u00a0Matthew K. Nock\u00a0knows the subject\u2019s grim statistics by heart. Suicide is the second-leading cause of death for Americans aged 10 to 34, trailing only accidents. It claims more lives around the world each year than war, genocide, homicide, and all other&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5918],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-311198","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-recommended-reading","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311198","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=311198"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311198\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":311201,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311198\/revisions\/311201"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=311198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=311198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=311198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":311193,"date":"2026-09-11T12:45:53","date_gmt":"2026-09-11T16:45:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/?p=311193"},"modified":"2026-09-11T07:42:19","modified_gmt":"2026-09-11T11:42:19","slug":"how-ai-is-transforming-weather-prediction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/3quarksdaily\/2026\/09\/how-ai-is-transforming-weather-prediction.html","title":{"rendered":"How AI is transforming weather prediction"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/O_EWbnkjXdk?si=DItZNJEl5LBhHCrA\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><span data-mce-type=\"bookmark\" style=\"display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;\" class=\"mce_SELRES_start\">\ufeff<\/span><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong>Enjoying the content on 3QD? Help keep us going by <a href=\"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/support-3qd\">donating now<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\ufeff Enjoying the content on 3QD? Help keep us going by donating now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5918],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-311193","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-recommended-reading","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311193","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=311193"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311193\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":311195,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311193\/revisions\/311195"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=311193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=311193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=311193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}]