A month ago I began working in midtown Manhattan. This has long been a dream of mine – at least since 1999, when I finished law school and moved back up north – but things kept getting in the way.

First, after law school I didn’t have a job lined up. I eventually wound up working for a family friend in central New Jersey, so I moved down there; it took over an hour to get to Manhattan by commuter train. After a year, I got a legal clerkship in Newark, but it was a state job that required New Jersey residency, so I stayed in New Jersey but moved as close to Manhattan as possible: Jersey City, right across the river via PATH train.

I stayed in Jersey City for five years. During that time I met Matt, and eventually we moved in together in Manhattan — but I was still working in New Jersey, as a lawyer for the state.

I looked forward to my next job being in Manhattan, but: no. My next job – my current job – was also based in Newark. I couldn’t seem to escape the Garden State. Eventually that job moved even further into New Jersey; I had to commute an hour and 40 minutes out to the suburbs (via subway, New Jersey Transit train, and company van), but only twice a week; the rest of the time I could telecommute from home.

That was my schedule until a month ago. Our Manhattan office moved to a new space, and it has room for people from my division. My division has no assigned cubicles here, and I still have to go to the New Jersey suburbs once a week, but the rest of the week I’ve been working in the Manhattan office – and it’s been terrific.

My commute is 25-30 minutes by subway. I don’t have to sync my schedule to a New Jersey Transit train that leaves once an hour. There are people around. Lunch options abound — and since a lot of people I know work in midtown, maybe I can be more social, both during lunch and after work. When the theater season starts up in the fall, I’ll be able to meet Matt at the theaters nearby.

The office is newly renovated. It has a nice color scheme. It’s environmentally friendly. It has a coffee machine that grinds Starbucks beans for you. One side has a great view up Park Avenue. All the cubicles are within viewing distance of windows.

It’s so nice to have an alternative to either schlepping out to the suburbs or working from home. Telecommuting could be great, but it was isolating. I could sleep in, but then I’d sit at my laptop in my sleep clothes until noon, when I’d finally realize I should shower and get dressed.

I’m 40 years old and I’ve wanted to work in this neighborhood since I was 25 or younger. I’m so glad I can finally do it.

Better late than never.

I like using Twitter, but I never post on Facebook. In fact, I dislike Facebook. There are a few reasons why I prefer Twitter.

One, I’m a news junkie. Other than the New York Times, I get most of my news from Twitter. People do post links on Facebook, but they’re usually just links to viral quizzes or Upworthy-style listicles, and I’m not interested in those. Twitter has a higher substance-to-fluff ratio than Facebook.

I rarely go to Facebook just to see what random people in my feed are saying. If I go there, it’s to check up on a particular person. I type the person’s name into the search box, bring up the feed, and see what he or she’s been up to. Of course, that requires going to the Facebook homepage first, and I usually see a few status updates from other people that catch my eye. But I rarely go there just to pass the time. I use Twitter for that.

Two, I feel like Twitter approximates the community that used to exist around blogging. I miss that community; I met lots of interesting people back in the ’00s, all because of blogging. (Including my husband!) Many former bloggers are now on Twitter, especially the gay blogging circle that existed 8-12 years ago. People who took the time to maintain blogs back then had interesting things to say, and now those interesting people on Twitter.

Meanwhile, Facebook is what AOL used to be. Everyone is there: family members, distant relatives, New York friends I haven’t seen in ages, random acquaintances from high school and college. If I were more of an extrovert, perhaps I’d be be more interested in knowing about the random facts of all these people’s lives. But I really only want to know what’s going on with my closest friends. If you want me to know something, you should tell me directly.

That’s one reason I follow only about 100 people on Twitter. I would probably feel overwhelmed if I followed, say, 200 people. But maybe that’s because I’m sensitive to information overload; I’m an addictive link-clicker, but I’m also very wary of getting too sucked in to the internet and falling into a timesink. A shorter feed keeps me from drowning in internet stuff.

Three, I feel silly posting Facebook status updates. Unless it’s about something major, like getting married, or posting my thoughts about a college reunion where the people who will want to read it are fellow alumni who will only find it via Facebook, I don’t know why everyone in my life could possibly care about my thoughts or actions. Because of the larger, unfilted audience on Facebook, status updates feel too much like self-conscious performance. Tweeting feels a litlte bit like that, but not nearly as much. I can avoid all the awkardness by not posting on Facebook at all.

On the other hand, at least Facebook users are nicer about giving you feedback and gratification when you write something. On Twitter, I’ve written countless tweets that I think are funny or interesting only to get completely ignored by my followers. No favorites or retweets or anything. I guess I must have a weird sense of humor, or a weird sense of what’s interesting. I should probably be more thick-skinned about being ignored, but it’s hard.

The final reason I don’t like Facebook is because I don’t trust it. I know that Facebook basically exists to mine my data for advertisers. That makes me uncomfortable. On Twitter I don’t even have to use my real name.

We live in weird, weird world.

I spent the last few weeks reading Richard J. Evans’s masterful trilogy on the history of the Third Reich.

The first volume (which I had previously read a few years ago but decided to reread), The Coming of the Third Reich, covers the origins and causes of Nazism, culminating in Hitler’s rise to power in 1933. The second, The Third Reich in Power, covers Nazi Germany from 1933 to the onset of war in 1939. The last, The Third Reich at War, covers Nazi Germany from the invasion of Poland to the end of the war, with a little bit of what happened after.

This was almost 2,000 pages of reading. Here is a short summary, for my own benefit, of what I took away from these books. Some of this I already knew, but it was useful to see it all connected together in book form.

Volume 1, on the origins of Nazism:

Nazism was not inherent in German history or philosophy or in the German people. In fact, historically there was a strain of human rights in German thought. But we can’t escape the fact that Nazism happened in Germany, not elsewhere. Why? It wasn’t until the late 19th century that the ingredients really began to take shape under Bismarck; militarism, German nationalism, an overheated political atmosphere, the rise of science and a “scientific” approach to racial hygiene, antisemitism not just as a religious concept (which could be avoided by religious conversion) but as a “modern” racial concept (something inextricable from one’s identity). Hitler grew up in this milieu, absorbed it, and synthesized it into something that could appeal to people as a unified concept, and it came at a time when people were looking for a solution to their problems. Would Nazism have happened without Hitler? Perhaps or perhaps not, but all the ingredients were already there. He didn’t create them.

The post-WWI Weimar Republic never had much of a chance; few people truly loved it, and it was actively undermined by communists on the left and by conservative German nationalists on the right. Once the Depression began, any hope for its success disappeared; the political center disintegrated, leaving the Nazis and the Communists to fight each other for power. The Nazis won through shrewd use of propaganda and the political system, although interestingly, they never actually received majority support in any popular election; but they received pluralities, which was enough. Once Hitler gained power, he ended elections, and eventually most people were willing to accept Nazi dictatorship if it meant German economic improvement and success. Much of the population was actively pro-Nazi, but many were just going along, not fanatically in support or opposed. (And there were those who were quietly opposed, or even not so quietly – and some who were not outright opposed but at least uncomfortable with them.)

Volume 2, on Nazi Germany before the war:

What was Nazism about, once in power? Quite simply, it was about the alleged superiority of the German “race,” and about preparing for war in order to achieve “living space” (lebensraum) for the German race; and it was also about hatred of Jews more than any other group of people. While other racial groups, such as Slavs and gypsies, were seen as racially inferior and wholly dispensable, the Jews were seen as worse: not just racially inferior, but dangerous villains bent on subversive and insidious world domination, the “Jewish bacillus.” The Slavs, the gypsies, the mentally and physically handicapped, and the homosexuals were seen as obstacles to the propagation of the superior German race, but the Jews were seen as terrible villains bent on world conquest.

Later in the twentieth century some political scientists tried to categorize Nazism as anti-communist and pro-capitalist; but Nazis saw Jews as controlling both the communists and the capitalists. Hitler purposely appealed to (non-Jewish) business leaders to win their political and financial support, but Nazi Germany was not philosophically a pro-capitalist free-market economy; big business and industry was useful only as a way to build up armaments for war. When government control and direction of industry became necessary to further the military buildup, so be it. The ultimate goal, again, was war in order to achieve living space for the superior German race. The overriding philosophy of Nazi Germany was not about the role of government; it was about race.

Volume 3, on the Third Reich at war:

The Nazis went to war in 1939, but they had essentially lost by 1943. At first Germany had the advantage of surprise (in the blitzkrieg), but ultimately Germany never had a chance against the industrial and demographic power of the United States, Britain, and — importantly, as we in the West often forget — the Soviet Union. The last two years were a slow, but expected, German defeat. As Germany began to lose, and the Western allies began to bomb German cities, German morale deteriorated and Nazi Germany collapsed, but not before millions of Jews, and smaller but still substantial numbers of others, were horrifically murdered. The book goes into grim detail about the Holocaust, which makes for difficult reading at times.

We must always remember Nazi Germany, but there will never be a Fourth Reich; if Nazism revives, it will more likely happen elsewhere. The Nazis are a cautionary lesson not just for Germany, but for humanity.