As I wrote earlier, traffic declines during the summer? Why? I don’t know. Maybe everyone’s on vacation or just enjoying the sun. I hope you had a good time, but that’s not the point.

The point is you might be wondering what you missed? Well, I’m here to let you know. Here are some summer highlights.

Folderol

Let’s start with the folderol. I celebrated the one year anniversary of this blog with an FAQ post. Along the way, I included some tips on how to read this blog and some of the major posts from the first year.

Summer Reading

Everyone’s got a summer reading list, right? I laid out some of the fiction and nonfiction I’ve been reading lately.

Presidential Candidates

The presidential candidates and their campaigns are all over Iowa. The Booker, O’Rourke, and Warren campaigns have all knocked on my door. I see one of the local Warren campaign leaders every Wednesday in a coffee shop. And I made my first ever political donation this summer: $27 to Bernie Sanders.

In terms of thoughts on the race, I devised a system for figuring out which candidate is the worst, gave some tips on how to evaluate the candidates, and speculated on whether Sanders or Warren should drop out. The answer? No, neither should! At least, not yet.

Immigration and Socialism

How should socialists think about immigration? And how should we think about socialism? I took on both of these topics. On the former, I wrote about a leftist argument in favor of open borders. And on the latter, I wrote about a recent book on building socialism in the US.

White Privilege

In a longer post I hope to expand on soon, I wrote about white privilege. Specifically, I pointed out that current social justice concepts of privilege significantly differ from older socialist concepts. Those differences change the way we build coalitions and movements.

Culture and Co-Ops

I’ll finish with a couple of very popular posts I wrote. One is on the best films of the year so far. I’ll have to do another for the second half of the year. And the other, which is my most widely read post this year, is on housing co-ops. Specifically, it’s about why I don’t want to live in one, and the features a housing co-op I’d like would need to have.

“So what’s next?”

OK, now that you’re back there’s probably more material on the way, right? Of course there is! I’m working on a few things. Not going to tell all, but here’s a preview. I’ve got some stuff on the way about corporate higher education, science fiction accounts of labor issues in the 1950s, and, for release in December, some thoughts on that Admiral Holdo-Poe Dameron conflict from The Last Jedi.

Why not stick around, read, and invite some friends?