Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com
@drvox the problem is that to admit the political truth would topple a lot of people's affectation of non-partisan objectivity
— David Atkins (@DavidOAtkins) August 27, 2015
David Roberts’ latest piece for Vox, Tech nerds are smart. But they can’t seem to get their heads around politics. is a spectacular explication of the frustrating inability of a lot of otherwise smart people to grasp the U.S. political situation. He begins by describing his admiration for wicked-smart Tim Urban, who writes brilliant things on a site called Wait But Why:
One of the purest expressions of the nerd spirit is the site Wait But Why, started in 2013 by Tim Urban, a Harvard graduate and co-owner of a tutoring company but really, by his own testimony, just some dude.
Urban is a nerd. He gets interested in some complicated subject, digs into it until he feels like he really understands it, and he explains it. (To get a flavor, start with the one about procrastination and the epic series on artificial intelligence.) It’s a bit like the explanatory journalism that’s so popular these days, but in the case of WBW, it is completely untethered from the web-media demands for speed, volume, and topicality.
Urban originally promised to post twice a week. Then it was “every Tuesday.” Now it’s “every sometimes.” He takes his time. But the posts, when they come, are a delight — 3,000, 8,000, even 26,000 (seriously) words, complete with crude but hilarious illustrations, diagrams, and infographics, written in friendly, nontechnical language that still manages to honor the complexities of the subjects.