‘This estrangement from death has beget euphemisms’

‘Halloween’s getting scarier. Is our view of death to blame?’

Stephen Mihm at Bloomberg

If “you venture out this Halloween, you’re more than likely to encounter a spectacularly macabre set of displays,” and it’s “easy to view these spectacles” as a “sign that we’ve become desensitized,” says Stephen Mihm. But “one reason for our Halloween fixation on death might come from how little we engage with it in real life.” It’s the “one night of the year when we seem to collectively invite the specter of death back to life before it disappears.”

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‘If Donald Trump can run for a third term, so can Barack Obama’

Laura Washington at the Chicago Tribune

If Donald Trump “does go down the third term road, a bevy of court challenges will take it to the U.S. Supreme Court,” says Laura Washington. But “if Trump can run for a third term, so can his ultimate nemesis,” as “former President Obama could mount a comeback to take Trump out and save our democracy.” That’s “why Trump has been attacking, demeaning and undermining Obama.” If “Trump wants to open the third-term door, bring on Obama.”

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‘Elon Musk should buy some small town centers’

Sumantra Maitra at The American Conservative

For a “generation that worships Gilded-Age American aesthetics, it appears that a simple lesson from those times is all but forgotten: start new businesses and create new opportunities by moving within the country,” says Sumantra Maitra. The “amount of growth” that billionaires “could fuel in a dozen smaller towns with already-established infrastructure and businesses spread out across the country is mathematically astonishing.” It’s “time to bring such work mobility back, and not let smaller American towns die.”

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‘It’s time to make the emerging local news ecosystem work for everyone’

Tracie Powell at the Poynter Institute

If “you’re running a small local news outlet right now, it can feel like help is everywhere — and nowhere at once,” says Tracie Powell. Over the “past decade, the network of organizations designed to support local journalism has exploded.” But “for many small and startup outlets — especially those serving communities of color, immigrants and rural regions — this new ecosystem can feel less like a support system and more like a maze.”

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