Category: Uncategorized

We open this week’s newsletter with a solemn appeal (seriously!): If you value MRN highly, then this week please click on one of the social media icons scattered through the newsletter and share either the whole newsletter or some subsection of it with your friends and/or followers on Facebook or Twitter. Our circulation has reached a thoroughly respectable 8,300, but subscription growth has slowed lately. That’s not shocking, since I haven’t had occasion lately to promote the newsletter to any big audiences. But since that condition could persist for awhile, we’d like to find out if there’s enough reader commitment to generate much of what people in the newsletter biz call “organic” growth. So if you really like MRN—or for that matter if you just like the word “organic”—and you spend much time on social media, please consider spending a sliver of it on MRN’s behalf. But if you’re an online introvert, that’s fine too; we value all our readers.

–Robert Wright

Continue reading Issue #37: Apr 22–Apr 28, 2018

Note: Due to foreseen circumstances, the newsletter won’t be published next week. But this past week had about 1.9 weeks’ worth of Trump-related news, so why don’t we call it even? Below you’ll find the usual stuff—TWIT, links, News You Can Use—plus my critique of the Steven Pinker book Enlightenment Now and the first known example of the Mindful Resistance Newsletter (and Project) getting serious attention from a philosopher! As for how you’ll spend your time next week, with no MRN to ponder: You can ponder the future of MRN and email us with any suggestions: feedback@mindfulresistance.net. We’ll be back on April 28.

–Robert Wright

Continue reading Issue #36: Apr 8–Apr 14, 2018

What do EPA administrator Scott Pruitt and now-famous high-end troll Kevin Williamson have in common? No, they haven’t both been fired (yet). They’re both featured in this week’s newsletter! Along with lots of Trump-related news, lots of background links, some reader emails, and some news you can use (or not, as you see fit).

–Robert Wright

Continue reading Issue #35: Apr 1–Apr 7, 2018

In this week’s newsletter we summarize a medium-intensity week of Trump-related news, then respond to some reader emails and share some reader-provided ideas (and our first-ever reader-authored koan!). Then lots of background links. But first, on this Easter/Passover weekend, we’d like to remind you of one of the most inspiring proverbs in the entire Judeo-Christian tradition: always use conveniently located Facebook and Twitter icons to spread the word about mindfulness-related newsletters.

–Robert Wright

Continue reading Issue #34: Mar 25–Mar 31, 2018

In this week’s newsletter, after briskly summarizing the week’s Trump-related news, we (1) worry some more about how the Resistance’s obsession with Russia may be taking our eye off the ball; (2) dare you to listen to a loathed podcast mindfully;  (3) hear from a persecuted minority (conservative MRN readers); (4) provide the usual far-flung array of background links; (5) in News You Can Use, offer some guidance on how you can complicate Trump’s latest construction project: building a “war cabinet.”

–Robert Wright

Continue reading Issue #33: Mar 18–Mar 24, 2018

In this week’s newsletter, after we summarize yet another high-intensity week, including a State Department personnel change that some fear makes war with Iran more likely, I look at how think tanks and media outlets have for some time been making war with Iran more likely. Then we examine a link between this newsletter and marijuana; bestow the Dubious Tweet of the Week Award to a well-known and worthy recipient; and offer background links on such subjects as the Democratic Party’s civil war, YouTube’s allegedly radicalizing tendencies, and the allegedly non-radical tendencies of college students.

–Robert Wright

Continue reading Issue #32: Mar 11–Mar 17, 2018

In this week’s newsletter, after providing everything you really need to know about the past seven days of Trump-related news, we look at the prospects for progress on the North Korea nuclear issue. (There’s hope!) Then, in the Local News section, we hear from a few MRN readers and unveil our first Pledge Week—which, unlike the NPR version, doesn’t involve separating you from your money. Then we connect you to articles on a bunch of topics (Bannon, Berlusconi—and that’s just the B’s!). We close with an outlet for your activist energy.

–Robert Wright

Continue reading Issue #31: Mar 4–Mar 10, 2018

In this issue of the newsletter, after trying to impose some order on the week’s Trump-related chaos, we relay one reader’s idea about how to foster communication across America’s tribal divide. Then we talk about being mindful on social media (no meditation required!), and then we steer you to background reading on, for example: the “culture war” that is the backdrop of the gun control debate; how “negative partisanship” is making politics worse; how trying to fight conspiracy theories can help spread them; overdone Russian-bot-ophobia; and other things.

–Robert Wright

Continue reading Issue #30: Feb 25–Mar 3, 2018

In this week’s newsletter, after boiling seven days down to ten paragraphs, we brag about the newsletter’s growing circulation, ponder the future of Mindful Resistance, and then put you in touch with resources ranging from analyses of gun violence to an epic think-tank study about “truth decay” to a piece about how a porn technology could degrade politics (or further degrade politics). And we close with some News You Can Use.

–Robert Wright

Continue reading Issue #29: Feb 18–Feb 24, 2018