Here are four good articles on this fourth day of the week:

• The pharma industry from Paul Janssen to today: why drugs got harder to develop and what we can do about it
• The State of Culture, 2024
• A Decade Later, ‘The Leftovers’ Seems Almost Like Prophecy
• “ugly” drawings from korea

I’m a fan of Chris Arnade’s newsletter, but the latest post about the (stalled) American Dream just didn’t sit right with me. He travels through the rural US (Wheeling WV, Belmont OH, Bristol TN) and, surprise surprise, finds only disillusioned people who think the Dream is dead. His takeaway is that:

We have an ugly, selfish, winner-take-all culture — devoid of community, meaning, and the majestic — and almost all our policy is built around the notion that individual liberty, with the most stuff at the cheapest price, is the ultimate good.

The article reads like a travelogue of a man shocked, just completely shocked, to find so much snow and little if any sunlight on his July trip to Antarctica. Now I can’t speak to the collective American “we” for I am a mere green card holder — and a recent one at that — but this has not been my experience living in the US these past dozen and some years. I can think of many (large, populous) parts of the the country where the most stuff at the cheapest price has not been deemed the ultimate good, where there is still a sense of community, and where things still can be majestic.

The cheapest-price mentality is a consequence of being poor, not its cause. If it still prevailed everywhere, how could we explain the rise of the farmers' market, of the local bookstore, of Etsy? If none of those had a presence in places that Arnade had visited, well, maybe it’s because they are not compatible with poverty whereas the Dollar General and other discount store chains are. And to be clear — there is nothing wrong with cheap-as-affordable (in contrast to cheep-as-poor-quality): Costco is, unironically, up there with the Internet and 1970s Hollywood as one of the non-material Wonders of the Modern World.

There is also community for those willing to look. Just yesterday I accompanied our rising second-grader to a playdate-slash-class reunion held at a community garden cared for and maintained by 20-some year-old volunteers who donate all the produce. In a few weeks the parents and the kids will meet up to for a neighborhood cleanup. At the tween’s middle school we’ve collected money so that all the classmate can go to the annual field trip, and we’ll be doing the same this year. Our ANC meetings are well-attended, if occasionally contentious, and I consider myself an introvert living in one of the less communal neighborhoods in the city.

I also can’t wrap my head around the accusation that the United States are no longer aiming for the majestic. The new World War I memorial seems like it will be majestic. On the other end of the spectrum, the Sphere certainly is. So is the Olympic medal count. And the most majestic of all is America’s awe-inspiring natural beauty, which it still protects more than most other countries.

But these things aren’t everywhere — you need to travel around to get to the place that’s the right fit for you. Most people Arnade encountered were wizened old souls with not much spirit left in the tank. This is the tradeoff: other places he recently visited, whether in Europe or Africa, were gentler to the people who stayed — because they are the majority! But that is not the American Dream, which promises a safe and comfortable life for those of hard work and determination. Next time Arnade is in the area, may I suggest he visit Pittsburgh and talk to anyone who’s left Wheeling, West Virginia? It is telling that the only person Arnade spoke to who still believed in the Dream was a recent transplant to the area, going from a horrible situation to a slightly less bad one. I can only hope she will continue the journey.

“Street hoodlums” is a good phrase that fell out off fashion. Or am I just getting old?

Back in Serbia today after 7 years of absence. Fun times lie ahead…

What can I say, it’s cheese heaven.

Fries the way they were meant to be made: golden brown and with a side of mayo. Why does the Netherlands have so much better fast food than America, my kid asked, and I didn’t know the answer.

The Dutch have some interesting water sports going on.

On the day Boeing’s incompetence was headline news our family of five boarded a 787 to Amsterdam that was delayed by 90 minutes for repairs. Good thing I don’t read the news, or it would’ve made for an anxious trip. #newsnoise

It was a packed coast-to-coast flight a few days ago and I was flying economy. But even then, the social anxiety of being “that guy” ultimately stopped me from putting on the goggles. The series of events before that decision was this: I had opened a book as soon as I got into my seat, then the plan took off, then drinks and snacks were served and before I knew it we were an hour and a half into a five-hour flight. Fiddling with AVP’s battery and jamming the charger in between the seats felt like too much.

Still, there were a few emails in my inbox that needed long, thoughtful responses that referenced a few different files so as soon as the flight attendant cleaned out the drinks I got my laptop out, set it on the tray and started typing. Not a minute later, the person in front of me — about 6' 8", can’t say I blame them — reclined their seat all the way down.

I had never dug into my backpack so quickly, and it turns out that setting up AVP doesn’t take all that long, considering.

A few minutes later I was in Joshua Tree National Park, my Mac’s large virtual display in front of me, typing away on the MacBook Air’s keyboard that was just barely visible from the screen that was being pushed by the reclining seat. A seat that I didn’t see and wasn’t bothered by one bit.

My friends, it was glorious. I spent the next three hours Doing Important Things, messaging apps on one side, documents on the other, and I could easily have spent three more but before I knew it the pilot announced that the trays should go up so I packed all the electronics — again, quite quickly, considering — and went back to my book.

The flight back was not nearly as full — I had the row for myself — which made the experience even better: with all three trays to myself I could position the apps all around me from the middle seat. Better yet, I was ready for landing, flipping the tray up and setting the laptop back into my backpack but continuing to work with AVP on and Apple’s tiniest keyboard in my lap. I liked this set up so much that I was wondering whether Screens has a VisionOS version (it does), and whether I could ditch the MacBook altogether and stream my Mac Mini — or, in the future, a Mac Studio — for the heavier work.

So that was good.

But of course AVP is still very much an 0.1 product. It couldn’t remember app position or different setups: of all of Apple’s platforms, VisionOS needs Stage Manager the most. It often couldn’t decide whether to use the virtual or hardware keyboard. Using on-flight WiFi made things laggy at times — which is why the Screens setup probably wouldn’t work — and I had a feeling that some of the legginess was from unoptimized software more than anything else, particularly from the iPad apps. But if people don’t use it, what is the developers' motivation to improve their apps?

Which ties to what will most likely kill AVP, if something does kill it: Apple’s inexplicable inertia. Environments that were “Coming Soon” on launch still haven’t arrived. All but one immersive show are still in the Season 1 Episode 1 stage. There haven’t been any new Apple apps since launch even though the iPad event would have been a pretty good time to highlight them.

This is important: unless you use AVP as a personal TV — which I don’t, movie and TV watching should be a communal experience — or travel almost daily, your only incentive to put it on frequently is to see what’s new. And not using AVP frequently brings it into the empty battery — wait to recharge — wait to start up — wait to update death loop that has been the bane of many household gadgets, most of them, admittedly, costing much less than $3,500 plus tax.

Bud I digress; I do travel often enough for AVP to see frequent-enough use, and for the scenario I described at the beginning it is well worth the price. Conditional, of course, on what you actually do with the freedom it grants you.

My hometown highway exit the last time I was there, seven years ago. And in a few short months I’ll be back for another visit!