by Jesse Masinter | Jan 4, 2026 | Book Reflections, Educational Writing
Keeping Up With the Karamazovs: How Does Dostoevsky Justify Suffering? The other day, a woman saw me reading The Brothers Karamazov and told me Crime and Punishment was her favorite Dostoevsky novel. Respectfully, (I replied) I disagree. All that happens in Crime and...
by Jesse Masinter | Dec 10, 2025 | Book Reflections, Educational Writing
Will You Start the New Year as a Dreamer or a Doer? In last night’s virtual discussion of “Speech Sounds” by Octavia Butler, I argued that there is nothing intrinsic about human nature; we are a product of the community that raised us. Morality is not universal; it is...
by Jesse Masinter | Oct 30, 2025 | Educational Writing, Thoughts on Learning
Death by Doomscroll “They’re coming for every second of your life. That’s what these companies are coming for…It’s not because anyone is bad, it’s not because anyone in this company has evil plans or is trying to do this. They’re...
by Jesse Masinter | Oct 30, 2025 | Book Reflections, Educational Writing
The Lottery: or, why we let bad things happen to to other people When I was in the 6th grade, we put on a skit for Hispanic heritage month in which I was a human sacrifice to Huitzilopochtli, the sun god. I leapt over a cardboard cutout of flames and landed a pile of...
by Jesse Masinter | Oct 30, 2025 | Book Reflections, Educational Writing
“The Veldt” by Ray Bradbury: or, thoughts on letting technology live for us. Entertainment these days is so passive. You sit on the couch and watch a movie. You scroll on your phone (and fine, maybe your thumb presses a button every once and a while). You listen to a...
