03/28/2023: See the gift, ease the burden.

A few things 51 years have taught me:
1. Mean people suck
2. It’s easy to be nice
3. Everyone has at least one gift and one burden.
4. The greater the gift the heavier the burden is to bear.
5. You have no idea what burdens the people around you bear so don’t judge them.

— RandomWhiteGuy 📖 Heretic & Disheveled Misfit (@TheReelRandom) August 10, 2018

Everyone has at least one gift and one burden. It is hard to find the gift in some people. See the gift, ease the burden.

More Notions

03/14/2023: T.R. Barista

Another important contribution to history: presidents as wrestlers. Or, in Teddy Roosevelt’s case, a Brooklyn barista.

03/14/2023: Essay for our 3/13/23 Show

How it started: How it wound up: View this post on Instagram A post shared by Prime Time with John Dickerson (@dickersonprimetime)

03/14/2023: Tricky balance for presidents in a bank panic

Usually, I’d just post this to the Twitter thread connecting public events to the book The Hardest Job in the World, but this passage is too big:

03/07/2023: Quiet Hired

Quiet hired seems like a good new term for an old thing. That’s distinct from fad expressions to name things that don’t exist or that have existed forever but aren’t illuminated by the new phrase. A wave of the Quiet Hired might lead to a Quiet Riot.

03/07/2023: Getting off your Phone is just the first step

Thank you to The Dispatch for the link to this article by Rhiannon Williams in MIT Review: “The problem isn’t necessarily the amount of time you’re spending scrolling on the phone as much as what you’re looking at.” The piece touches on something I wrote about in this piece for The Atlantic, which is about […]

03/04/2023: Happy Birthday Time Magazine

Time magazine celebrated its 100th birthday on March 3rd. We’re coming up on the 30th anniversary of my first professional byline on March 22, 1993. Tanks to Joelle Attinger, John Stacks, Sam Gwynne, Jonathan Beaty and Jill Smolowe for that first shot: It was not for a few months that I’d get a top byline […]

03/04/2023: The Calvin Coolidge Colonic

Since every presidential candidate feels like they have to push a book first, the chance to be distinguished by doing so is limited. I expect this will encourage an innovative candidate to offer a branded juice cleanse soon as a first gambit.

— John Dickerson (@jdickerson) March 4, 2023

03/03/2023: Runaway Presidency

When you are president, things can get out of hand: This is from Jimmy Carter’s White House diary. It demonstrates something about Carter but also the benefit of a presidential retreat where a president can have a minor mishap like this and it won’t get blown out of proportion by the press. Think it wouldn’t? […]

03/02/2023: AI Rendering of Presidents with Mullets

This Twitter thread of presidents with mullets is hit or miss, but reminds that LBJ essentially grew a mullet at the end of his life: It kinda came to that: https://t.co/qoZwjxBF4i pic.twitter.com/vRCsu57Zgz — John Dickerson (@jdickerson) March 2, 2023

03/02/2023: The Most Rarefied Presidential List

The ranking of presidents provides hours of enjoyment for professionals and hobbyists alike. This ranking is perhaps the greatest of all: “…soon, remains of George Washington, Ronald Reagan, John F. Kennedy, and Dwight D. Eisenhower will join the DNA and cremated remains of many of the people who worked on Star Trek and be blasted into […]