Clearing the Backlog - May 18, 2021

• The Asset Economy 
• Authors:  Lisa Adkins, Melinda Cooper, Martijn Konings
• Source: LA Review of Books
• Summary: A short excerpt from the book of the same name by the above authors.  Terribly written, with a main thesis that should be a surprise to nobody.
• How One Man Turned The Busiest International Border Crossing In North America Into The Centerpiece Of His Empire
  
• Author: Erin Marquis
• Source: Jalopnik
• Summary: An overview of the Ambassador Bridge, the busiest border crossing in North America for trucks, which links Detroit and Ontario. The article's focus is on the bridge's now-deceased owner and the difficulties he has caused for the region due to his unwillingness to maintain the bridge or build a new span, while preventing the construction of a publicly-owned alternative.
• Impressions: This was an interesting article, but could have been so much more.  I'd like to hear more about how a private bridge was built in the first place, and how the ultimate owner managed to gain control (and buy out Warren Buffett!) of what was once a public company.
•  Memories of Mauritania
• Author: Claire Berlinski
• Source: The Cosmopolitan Globalist
• Summary: Excellent travelogue of a trip to Mauritania.
• Quotes:
• "It isn’t a “developing” country, it’s a completely primitive society: There’s no art, no architecture, no decorative arts, no written literature."
• "But there is a rich tradition of Hassaniya oral poetry, or so they told me—and one to which the people are so attached, Ali Sheikh said, that it accounts for Mauritania’s lack of doctors and engineers. Men can’t be persuaded to study practical things if they go to college: All they want to study is poetry. Poetry, love, the desert, and camels; poems about camels, the desert, and love—this is what Mauritanians are about."
• "The desert lifestyle is conducive to mental health. A Western lifestyle isn’t. I’m not romancing poverty here; I’m not saying this about life in the slums of Nouakchott. On returning from Mauritania, I noticed it, though. At least half of Paris is suffering acute mental torment. You can see it on everyone’s faces. The demands of modern life are no longer merely a source of discontent and neurosis, as Freud observed, but of outright insanity—the kind that makes you think you’re a unicorn, so you should cut off your ears and have a horn implanted in your forehead; the kind that makes you think it would be fun to shoot up a FedEx."
• "As the week progressed, my attention returned. In the afternoons, when it was too hot to walk, we made camp under the acacia trees and napped, or chatted, or read. About six days in, I began reading a novel. I would never have read it, or even heard of it, otherwise. I realized that I hadn’t read a novel that way in years: I was completely sucked into the world the author created. I can’t do it anymore. I’m too distracted. In the desert, I couldn’t put it down. I kept turning the pages—even on the flight back to Paris. But it’s still sitting on my desk now, half-finished. The second I got back, I couldn’t read anymore. I had to go to the middle of the Sahara to get enough peace of mind to read a novel."