IT’LL NEVER FLY, ORVILLE:

How 3D printing is personalizing health care (Anne Schmitz & Daniel Freedman, 5/20/25, The Conversation)

Three-dimensional printing is transforming medical care, letting the health care field shift from mass-produced solutions to customized treatments tailored to each patient’s needs. For instance, researchers are developing 3D-printed prosthetic hands specifically designed for children, made with lightweight materials and adaptable control systems.

These continuing advancements in 3D-printed prosthetics demonstrate their increasing affordability and accessibility. Success stories like this one in personalized prosthetics highlight the benefits of 3D printing, in which a model of an object produced with computer-aided design software is transferred to a 3D printer and constructed layer by layer.

IF I CAN’T SEE IT, IT CAN’T SEE ME:

Stephen Fry: What Jeeves and PG Wodehouse taught me about life: The actor fell in love with stories about ‘silly asses in spats and monocles’ as a teenager. Fifty years after the author’s death, he celebrates his comic genius (Stephen Fry, 5/18/25, Times uk)

It is true that, on the surface, the world of Wodehouse seems trapped in time — a time we might very well think has passed its sell-by date. His cast of imperious aunts, stern and gooseberry-eyed butlers, disapproving uncles, sporty young girls, natty young men who throw bread rolls in club dining rooms yet blush and stammer in the presence of the opposite sex — all may be taken as evidence of a man stuck in a permanent childhood, a view attested by George Orwell primus inter pares. (If that’s the right phrase, Jeeves? “Perfectly correct, sir. Although the common English equivalent ‘first among equals’ would perhaps serve as well.” Thank you, Jeeves.) As many have pointed out, Wodehouse never grew up, making his world and outlook, as Waugh put it, “Eden before the Fall”.

European culture never really recovered from WWI, while he simply ignored it.

THE dEEP sTATE VS THE IDEOLOGUES:

151. The Supreme Court’s (Alien Enemies Act) Patience is Wearing Thin: A very quick breakdown of Friday afternoon’s quietly significant ruling slapping down the lower courts in the Northern District of Texas Alien Enemies Act litigation—and what it means going forward. (Steve Vladeck, May 16, 2025, “One First)

Is It Me, Or is the Majority Opinion … Unusually Pointed? It’s not you. There are at different passages in which the majority openly seems to be expressing … frustration … with the government; the lower courts; and Justice Alito (who wrote a dissenting opinion that was joined by Justice Thomas), respectively.

The Government: On page 2, the majority goes into detail about the slippery language the government used on April 18 re: whether any removals under the AEA were imminent, then notes that “evidence now in the record” appears to be inconsistent with the government’s representations, and concludes by underscoring the ongoing litigation in Abrego Garcia—and how difficult it has proven to get detainees back once they have been removed (indeed, Abrego Garcia is cited again on page 4). This is quite a subtle but significant dig at the government for the shell games it’s been playing with AEA detainees, especially for a majority opinion

The Lower Courts: The Court takes a rather healthy shot at the Fifth Circuit for not taking the gravity of the plaintiffs’ claims (and the district court’s delay in ruling on them) seriously enough—correcting the record in the process. As it writes, “Here the District Court’s inaction—not for 42 minutes but for 14 hours and 28 minutes—had the practical effect of refusing an injunction to detainees facing an imminent threat of severe, irreparable harm.” Indeed, that text inside the em-dashes is the majority correcting an erroneous portrayal of the timeline by both the lower courts and Justice Alito back in April. More generally, the opinion is all-but dripping with exasperation that the lower courts didn’t think these cases were serious enough, or the plaintiffs’ allegations of imminent harm plausible enough, to justify moving faster.

Justice Alito: Finally, in a portion of the opinion devoted entirely to responding to Justice Alito’s dissent, the majority begins by “reject[ing] the dissent’s characterization of the events that transpired on April 18.” That may seem tame by the standards of contemporary public discourse; it’s a pretty sharp elbow in a majority opinion by the Supreme Court. And, again, it appears to reflect real concern on the part of the justices in the majority that the dissenting justices seem so un-troubled by how events appeared to be transpiring back in April.

Why Did Justice Alito Dissent? The dissent effectively starts from the proposition that “the District Court had no good reason to think that either A. A. R. P. or W. M. M. was in imminent danger of removal” back on April 18, and reasons backwards from there. It argues that the Court itself lacks jurisdiction to grant the relief the plaintiffs sought (as I explained in response to Alito’s dissent from the April 19 order, this is clearly incorrect). It then argues that in any event, plaintiffs were unlikely to prevail on the merits because (1) class certification isn’t available in a habeas petition; and (2) it isn’t appropriate in this case. (Interestingly, Alito never explains why relief wouldn’t have been appropriate to at least the two named plaintiffs.) There’s not much new here beyond the stuff Alito got wrong back in April—with one exception: Alito goes out of his way to criticize the majority’s conclusion that federal courts can provisionally certify classes for the purposes of preliminary relief even without reaching a tentative judgment about whether a class will ultimately be certified (see, especially, the second paragraph of footnote 3 on page 8 of his dissent). Among other things, his unmissable frustration on this point has the (perhaps unintended) effect of making clear just how deliberate a holding this really is—and will provide powerful support in other cases when litigants point to the majority opinion as reasserting the availability of temporary relief to putative classes without having to decide whether formal class certification is likely.

Thomas and Alito are ideologues, not conservatives.

BEEN HERE/DONE THIS:

Surviving Bad Presidents: What the Constitution asks of us.: a review of The Presidents and the People: Five Leaders Who Threatened Democracy and the Citizens Who Fought to Defend It by Corey Brettschneider (George Thomas, May 16, 2025, The Bulwark)

Corey Brettschneider’s The Presidents and the People illuminates how John Adams, James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, Woodrow Wilson, and Richard Nixon all acted in ways that overtly challenged core features of constitutional democracy: using the power of the state to silence and punish political critics, acting against the clear purpose of the Civil War amendments and their promise of equal citizenship with regard to race, and disregarding the rule of law by refusing to recognize any limits on executive power. While they did not all threaten constitutional democracy in the same manner, let alone to the same extent—a vast gulf separates John Adams and Andrew Johnson—Brettschneider’s argument is a timely reminder that America’s most powerful political office has not only been occupied by the unworthy before, but that more than once in our history the immense power of that office has been wielded in a manner that imperiled American democracy.

Yet this power was resisted. Not always by courts or Congress, but by citizens acting, speaking, writing, and organizing to defend the Constitution. Ordinary citizens—or, more aptly, extraordinary citizens who held no official or prominent office—helped build political coalitions that worked to secure constitutional government against presidential overreach. Brettschneider’s five case studies are compulsively readable, bringing vividly to life some of the lower moments of America’s history, while offering hope by spotlighting the citizens who fought for constitutional democracy.

Always bet on the Deep State.

SHOULD HAVE SHOT OUR SHOT:

250 years since the start of the American Revolution, a look at Dartmouth’s ‘very strange corner’ of the conflict (Kent Friel, May 16, 2025, The Dartmouth)

Land in New Hampshire had only become available to New England settlers after the end of the French and Indian War, after the threat of French invasion had been removed, Calloway said. Within a decade or two, settlers poured into the area.

Between 1750 and 1764, New Hampshire Governor Benning Wentworth issued 124 township grants, including all the land between the Connecticut and Hudson rivers, according to Marini. The resulting mass influx of settlers was without parallel in American history.

“This massive encounter with the frontier was unprecedented in New England and American history, and it introduced grave problems of social and cultural fragmentation to a generation already bent on establishing national and regional autonomy,” Marini wrote.

Struggle with state governments

Because of the way the New Hampshire constitution worked before the Revolution, many of the towns on both sides of the Connecticut River weren’t really represented by the state government in Exeter, Musselwhite said.

“[The towns] are struggling with the state government throughout the revolutionary period,” he said. “In New Hampshire, the main resource that they’re squabbling over is land. But also, it’s trees. The big industry was ship masts, which were essential to the Royal Navy.”

This struggle would shape how the Upper Valley experienced the Revolutionary War and its aftermath.

Marini describes this conflict as representative of the “birth pangs of a new rural political stance deeply radical and democratic yet strongly loyalist and Antifederalist.”

“The development that caused the greatest disruption was the linkage of the ideology of national revolution to hill country demands for political autonomy,” Marini wrote.

There was also a question about secession, Musselwhite added. At one point — though it didn’t go far — the Upper Valley wanted to become its own state.

It’s not too late for nationhood.

ECONOMICS TRUMPS IDEOLOGY:

Has Maine learned how to make heat pumps lower electricity costs for all? (Sarah Shemkus, 14 May 2025, Canary Media)

Maine has been an aggressive adopter of home heat pumps in recent years. In 2019, the state set the goal of deploying 100,000 heat pumps by 2025, a target it blew by two years ahead of schedule. The state now aims to get another 175,000 heat pumps up and running by 2027. Maine is also a member of a five-state coalition that is collaborating to boost heat pump adoption, lower prices, and train installers throughout New England.

The state’s new energy-efficiency plan is geared toward continuing this progress. It is centered largely on the idea of ​“beneficial electrification,” a somewhat jargony term that refers to switching from fossil fuels to electricity wherever the move would save money and cut emissions. There are plenty of opportunities to make that swap in Maine, where roughly half of households keep warm with heating oil, which can be pricey and inefficient.

Over the next three years, the incentives in the plan are forecast to support 38,000 new whole-home residential heat pump systems — including 6,500 in low-income households — and weatherization for 9,900 houses. A low-income household can get rebates of up to $9,000 for heat pump installations, and homes at high income levels qualify for up to $3,000. The incentives do not offer any money for residential fossil-fuel-burning equipment.

This strategy should decrease annual heating costs by more than $1,000 each for homes that switch to heat pumps from oil, propane, or electric baseboard heat, but it is also expected to lower electricity prices across the board, Stoddard said. Efficiency Maine Trust estimates the plan will suppress electricity rates by more than $490 million over the long term.

THE RESTRAINT OF FREEDOM IS THE GENIUS OF REPUBLICAN LIBERTY:

The Horror of Unlimited Freedom: a review of The Lives of the Caesars By Suetonius, Translated by Tom Holland (John Byron Kuhner, May 12, 2025, Compass)

It is easy to feel that our era loves the Roman Empire too much, and the frugal, law-abiding, freedom-loving Roman Republic too little. I would rather see a new Hollywood movie about Scipio Africanus than another Gladiator retread. Yet the basic reason for having a republic at all is found on every page of the Lives. The emperors are powerful, but with this power comes no grace, no elevation of virtue or capacity to justify such power. In the very Caesars themselves, who have given their name to absolute power in the West for millennia, Suetonius can find no mystique. Here are no heroes, no mandate of heaven. They are caliphs of nobody. Just human beings, no more. He makes sure to describe them all as if naked: “potbellied,” “balding,” “speckled with birthmarks,” “with splayed feet and bandy legs.” In his introduction, Holland claims that “Suetonius was not, nor had any wish to be, a historian… He did not bother himself with the precise details of Caesar’s conquest of Gaul, nor of the ferociously complex political machinations that had accompanied Augustus’ rise to power, nor of the tortured relationship between Tiberius and his fellow aristocrats.” Perhaps he merely wrote a different type of history, and for different reasons. Historians tend to swaddle their subjects in great robes of historical dignity. Suetonius depicts what is under everyone’s clothes.

We tend to think of the arrival of Julius Caesar and the destruction of the Republic as the end of freedom. Suetonius, by focusing on the persons of the emperors, shows that this reading is incorrect. In fact, the arrival of the Empire meant unlimited freedom—for one individual. Indeed this book is primarily a study in such freedom. Caligula during a meal with two friends suddenly begins laughing, and when asked why, he answers, “Why, only that with a single nod I could have either of your throats cut here and now!” Augustus is dining with a friend when he gets up, takes the man’s wife away, has sex with her, and returns, “with her hair dishevelled and her face bright red from ear to ear.” He knew the husband and wife were powerless to oppose him.

This is a sobering thought for every republic, that freedom corrupted might well devolve in this way. The worst form of slavery is a society where the leaders feel themselves completely free. What is slavery itself, but someone else’s freedom over you?

KASHMIR IS A NATION:

The Kashmir Dilemma (Rashmee Roshan Lall, May 12, 2025, Persuasion)

In 1947, Kashmir, a Muslim-majority state with a Hindu king, wanted to be independent rather than join India or Pakistan. But when Pakistan sent in tribal fighters to help persuade Kashmir to reconsider, the king asked India for help and agreed to join the Indian union. Pakistan regarded this an injustice because it was founded as a homeland for South Asia’s Muslims. India saw it as reaffirmation of its secular credentials.

Within months they were at war over Kashmir—a war that was never properly resolved, with both sides merely stopping in their tracks. The line of control became the de facto border. India took the issue to the United Nations Security Council, which called for a plebiscite to let Kashmiris themselves decide which country they would rather join, but this was never held. The result has been a frozen conflict that—as we saw last week—periodically heats up (in the late 1980s, a violent separatist movement encouraged by Pakistan turned the beautiful valleys of the Indian part of Kashmir into killing fields.)

The subsequent decades saw a gradual building of tensions that brought the region to the latest round of conflict. In August 2019, following a campaign pledge by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, India revoked the special constitutional status afforded to the Indian-administered part of Kashmir (around two-thirds of the territory) and enfolded it more tightly within the embrace of the federal state. Jammu and Kashmir would no longer be a state but directly administered by Delhi. It would not have its own constitution and flag, nor the ability to remain demographically distinct because of restrictions on non-residents buying property there. In order to administer Kashmir from Delhi, Modi’s government installed a huge security presence, cracked down hard on dissent, and arbitrarily cut off internet and mobile networks for months on end. This has fueled profound local discontent.

There is no dilemma: the Kashmiri are entitled to determine their own fate.

HARD CASE:

The Enduring Influence of James M. Cain: How Cain’s work shifted the focus of crime fiction and passed on a legacy to new generations of authors. (Tom Milani, 5/12/25, Crime Reads)

When he got fed up with his job at The New Yorker, he finally accepted an offer from Paramount, believing that moving west would help him solidify his voice as an author. By 1931, Cain was indeed headed for Hollywood. Unlike some of the authors who preceded him there—Faulkner, Fitzgerald, et al.—Cain had limited success as a fiction writer before he arrived, and so the charge of being a sellout didn’t apply. In fact, the opposite occurred as his literary reputation began to expand, beginning with the short story “The Baby in the Icebox,” published in The American Mercury and then sold to Paramount.

With more confidence, Cain began writing a novel based loosely two news stories he’d read—one about a female gas station attendant who ended up killing her husband, the other about a woman and her lover who conspire to murder her husband before turning on each other afterwards. Because of its length (35,000 words) and perceived problems with the ending, the novel, titled “Bar-B-Que,” was conditionally accepted by Alfred A. Knopf. After considerable back-and-forth between Cain and the publisher, the book was finally published as is save for the title. “Bar-B-Que” became “The Postman Always Rings Twice.”

Upon its release in 1934, Postman went—and there is no other word to better describe it—viral, with rave reviews on both sides of the Atlantic and best seller status for hardcover and paperback editions, along with adaptations for serial, stage, and screen.

Cain’s next project was an eight-part serial, its title suggested by Jim Geller, his agent, and inspired by his own experience in the insurance industry. Titled “Double Indemnity,” the story was rejected by Redbook but eventually bought by Liberty. Like Postman, Double Indemnity went viral, if in a different way: people lined up to purchase the next issue of Liberty as soon as it was out.

BLOOD ON THE TRACKS:

I Nearly Died Drowning. Here’s What It’s Like to Survive.: On coming to terms with a near-death experience. (Maggie Slepian, April 2, 2024, Longreads)

I didn’t consider whether or not I was comfortable paddling that stretch. Along with the desire to keep up with my peers, my ability to assess risk was skewed after years of narrow backcountry escapes, a well-documented phenomenon where your risk perception shifts after successfully navigating unpredictable situations. From outrunning lightning storms to losing the trail to tackling climbs well above my grade, I’d encountered plenty of tenuous scenarios and always figured it out, scraping by without too much damage.

The Adventure Experience Paradigm describes this well; it uses a simple line graphic to show the interplay of risk and competence. When the risk is low and the skills are high, the person is toward the bottom of the chart in the “realm of exploration and experimentation.” When competence and risk are balanced, the participant is in the middle, and when risk exceeds competence, the outcome can be catastrophic. The more experience someone has with navigating risky situations, the more confident they become, skewing the variables. My boating experience was minimal and that section of river was not for beginners, but I had scraped by enough times that my risk assessment was dangerously off-kilter. It was a really, really bad combination.