Letters, the New Testament, and Fred Hampton
Well, I’m not sure how useful these new email addresses will be. They all seem to have much stricter limits on how many messages you can send or recipients you can bcc than Gmail does. However, I’m going to keep trying.
My next letter will celebrate an Australian company getting approval to sell cultivated quail meat in Singapore, before arguing the United States needs to increase public funding for cellular-agriculture research. If you’d like to send your own letters, take a look at these email lists I’ve compiled: https://slaughterfreeamerica.substack.com/p/how-to-write-letters-to-newspapers-6eb
Anyway, let’s do (Cell) Culture Talk. Here’s what I’ve been reading, watching and listening to lately.
Book — The New Testament: A Translation by David Bentley Hart. I was unsure what version of the Christian text to read. In the end, I decided on this one, mostly because I knew Hart was sympathetic to socialism. He describes his work here as very literal.
Movie — Looper. That was a really good science-fiction film. Joseph Gordon-Levitt stars as a man whose job is to kill people sent from the future by a criminal syndicate. He does this until his future self, played by Bruce Willis, is sent to him.
Movie — Judas and the Black Messiah. I recall columnist Jamelle Bouie saying his most significant criticism of the film was Daniel Kaluuya and LaKeith Stanfield were too old to play Fred Hampton and Bill O’Neal. I agree the casting doesn’t give an accurate sense of how young the real-life figures were. Otherwise, the film was excellent.
Podcast — Business for Good Podcast. Recently, Paul Shapiro has been doing a series of interviews with big names in the cultivated-meat space, like Mark Post and Isha Datar. Many of the conversations are responding to the New York Times obituary for the sector, published in February. They might interest readers of this bog.
Sports — Knicks beat Bucks, 122-109. That was a great road win against one of the best teams in the eastern conference. Jalen Brunson had a monster game, scoring 43 points. I’m hopeful another star will want to join the team this summer.
Sports — Knicks beat Bulls, 128-117. Brunson led the squad with 45 points. It’s hard not to take his level of play for granted. He’s just so consistently good. Brunson didn’t get much rest, as New York couldn’t separate from Chicago.
Sports — Knicks beat Celtics, 118-109. Boston pulled their starters at the end of the third quarter, when New York was up by 29. Admittedly, the Celtics didn’t have anything to play for, with the best record in the league locked up. Still, it was encouraging.
Sports— Knicks beat Nets, 111-107. It was close down the stretch. Brooklyn was deliberately fouling Mitchell Robinson, knowing he struggles at the line. Thankfully, the big man made enough of his free throws the Nets had to give up that strategy.