There is a particular dead-eyed, mind-numbing exhaustion I feel at the end of every video meeting I’ve ever attended. Zoom is exhausting for many reasons, but the most important one is that it is missing a fundamental piece of social interaction—joint attention.

Loneliness isn't written about much by analytic philosophers. Nearly everything philosophical written about it is either theological, existentialist, or social psychological. The Shape of Water is a lovely movie for reflecting on loneliness and how it can be overcome in the lives of ordinary people.

Habermas believes that genuine democracy is rooted in the principles of communicative rationality. Though I think it is very much an open question whether rational argument can ever take place in a democracy—especially one like ours that seems very far from what Habermas envisions—I do hold out some hope that we may eventually be able to design a public sphere in which reason regularly wins out over power and propaganda.