Wednesday Required Reading

The Making of Cooper Kupp. More love stories like this please.

Woman’s diary goes viral as lockdown in China forces her to stay with blind date. Proof that your experience of ‘rona could be worse. A lot worse.

Inside Jerry Falwell Jr.’s Unlikely Rise and Precipitous Fall At Liberty University. Heaven forbid, if you understand Falwell’s family history, his public pathologies start to make a little sense.

Buy Things, Not Experiences. The exact opposite of positive psychology’s conventional wisdom.

Meet the auto repair professor pivoting to EVs. Imagine a (dis)United States with genuine vocational education options like EV Auto Repair and Battery Restoration in high schools.

A Glimmer of Hope at (Anti)Liberty University

Calum Best, 22, who graduated from Liberty in May and who has spoken out against Mr. Falwell’s political activity, called the move ‘a victory.’

‘It feels like they did it more because they were embarrassed, more than because it was the correct thing to do,’ he said. But, he said, ‘it’s great that he is gone.’

‘He is the one who holds up Liberty’s culture of focus on money, material well-being, political nationalism,’ he said. ‘Without Falwell gone, we can’t really change any of that.’

Ruth Graham’s last piece for Slate, Why That Falwell Jr. Yacht Photo Was the Final Straw before she moves to the New York Times. Graham quotes Marybeth Davis Bagget who taught English at Liberty for 17 years and resigned this spring after publishing an op-ed calling for Falwell Jr.’s removal based on his handling of the coronavirus crisis.

“One man cannot act this way without many enablers, and any meaningful reform of the school will require a thorough and brutally honest inquiry into the LU culture.”

Amen to that.

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Wednesday Required Reading

1. Canceled Races Aren’t Stopping Endurance Athletes From Setting Wild New Records. I’ve been lethargic lately, postponing and/or bagging workouts altogether. Maybe I should try to take one of these records down, but which one? Wonderland in 18 hours? With the help of an electric mtb.

2. Is Your Blood Sugar Undermining Your Workouts? Uh, maybe that’s my problem seeing that I’ve been hitting Costco’s cakes hard all summer.

3. Garmin reportedly paid multimillion-dollar ransom after suffering cyberattack.

4A. Liberty University Poured Millions Into Sports. Now Its Black Athletes Are Leaving. 4B. Photo appears to show Jerry Falwell Jr. with zipper down and arm around a woman. I recommend college presidents, to the best of their abilities, keep their zippers out of the news.

5. Shira Haas of ‘Unorthodox’ on Sharing the Joys of Her First Emmy Nod. I dare you to try to watch Unorthodox’s four episodes over four days.

6. Make Pizza … On Your Grill. Then invite me over.