TLP Weekend Edition (September 21-22, 2024)

What we're reading, watching, and listening to this weekend.

The Harvest Moon rises behind the Statue of Liberty one day before turning full on September 16, 2024. (Photo: Gary Hershorn/Getty Images)

📖 "Will North Carolina vote to the left of Georgia?" by Patrick Ruffini. The sixth piece in a series of pre-election battleground previews, Echelon Insights pollster and TLP friend, Patrick Ruffini, offers a detailed look at how the Tar Heel State has changed demographically and electorally over the past decade—and what it might portend for 2024. The question he sets out to resolve: Will North Carolina, a state that is often just out of reach for Democrats at the presidential level, support the party at a higher rate this year than Georgia, which flipped to Biden in 2020? Ruffini writes:

I was initially dismissive that it might, thinking that trends in the Atlanta metro might keep Georgia moving to the left of North Carolina. But now I’m not so sure. And it’s a question that hinges more on Georgia than North Carolina.

If you find this piece informative, be sure to check out those he has done for Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Nevada, and Wisconsin.

📰 “What Undecided Voters Might Be Thinking,” by Ross Douthat. Excellent column in The New York Times on the cross-pressures affecting America’s undecided voters and, indeed, many voters who have made up their minds but still aren’t very happy with the choices they were given. Douthat observes:

Since the populist surge that gave us Brexit and the rise of Donald Trump, politics in the Western world has polarized into a distinctive stalemate—an inconclusive struggle between a credentialed elite that keeps failing at basic tasks of governing and a populist rebellion that’s too chaotic and paranoid to be trusted with authority instead.

📚 Made by the Revolution: Mao’s Right Hand, book review by Perry Anderson. Erudition, thy name is Perry Anderson! Incredibly detailed and characteristically insightful review of Chen Jian’s new biography of Zhou Enlai by Anderson. You’ll learn a lot, and not just about Zhou, by reading this tour-de-force.

📺 Blue Lights, on BritBox. An excellent BBC series about young police recruits in post-Troubles Belfast. Season one gets deep into the drug trade in the city and season two deals with leftover sectarian violence from Northern Ireland’s past. Great characters and interesting plots—you’ll enjoy seeing these “peelers” develop over both seasons.

🎧 “Ambient Audiophile #35: Hungary Freaks, Daddy—European Pastoral Psychedelia, New Japanese New Age, Mountain Ambient,” on Jeff Conklin’s Substack. Jeff Conklin is a serious live music and record lover who puts out a choice weekly podcast/radio show called The Trailhead. His newsletter Ambient Audiophile is filled with tons of recommendations for new music including this week’s edition focused on good listening loot from Hungary and Japan:

Hungary may not be the first place to come to mind when thinking about psychedelic rock collectives but clearly it’s a country conducive to it as the catalog of Psychedelic Source Records can attest. I discovered this crew a couple years ago and have not been able to keep up with all the output since then. Occasionally they’ll release really stoner-y, heavy stuff that doesn’t interest me as much as the looser, more hippy and folky outings they will drop. I’ve yet top pick up any physical media from this crew, every release is “pay what you want” on Bandcamp, so that is extremely cool for those of us with limited music budgets. 

Check it out and subscribe!