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Albert Camus: Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth. Peter Coviello: Maybe don’t talk to the New York Times about Zohran Mamdani For some time I’ve been saying that the storied choice between socialism and barbarism was made exquisitely clear a good many years ago in the United States, and both major parties chose barbarism. They are obviously and consequentially different barbarisms — one had reproductive freedom, vaccines, and trans health care in it, at least for a while — and I can tell you why I have sincerely preferred one to the other. But we oughtn’t to kid ourselves. From the perspective of a world of increasingly unimaginable maldistribution of resources, cascading ecological collapse, a genocide cheered on by a putatively liberal order, both are barbarisms. Mamdani seemed to me a small glimmering break in the wall of all that. A part of me wanted to do him a solid. ...

Two mini-stories: water-bottle In a library. Put my water bottle on the foutain stand and went into the restroom. Upon returning, my water bottle was gone. While I have left it this way many many times, the water bottle always stays there without leaving. Where is it? I went outside and saw a man leaving. Ran to him and saw my water bottle in his hand. “Excuse me, that water bottle is mine.” “Oh, I thought somebody lost it.” ...