As more become victims of the city’s fantasies of walling itself off from the climate crisis, what is increasingly obvious is the city’s willingness to sacrifice the older and more decrepit areas—those spaces occupied by the poor and undocumented—to benefit the growth of new and more “resilient” spaces for the wealthy. - The Baffler
It used to be thought that forgetting anything — from minor things like the name of a casual acquaintance to the more painful loss of cherished memories experienced by my patients — was caused, to varying degrees, by a failure of the brain’s memory mechanisms. But new developments in neuroscience over the past decade or so refute this simple...
The processes of intelligence are so intricate, so multilayered and baroque, no wonder some people might be tempted by stories about a top-down Creator. But we know evolution must have been able to come up with intelligence on its own, from the bottom up. - Aeon
So is a country’s level of media literacy anything more than a measure of the wealth and the education of its population? How can we tell if a country’s disinformation curriculum is the reason its population is relatively protected against online falsehoods? - The New York Times
A common mistake is to confuse a country with its inhabitants with its government. This leads to statements that are strictly meaningless at best and deeply misleading at worst because they are category errors on the order of ‘Green ideas sleep furiously’. - 3 Quarks Daily
The Italian communist Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937) would argue that it was precisely through the proliferation of such norms in our culture—wherein the inequalities of capitalism appear natural, as “senso comune” (common sense)—that the ruling classes stay as such. - BookForum
For years now, each day has brought a torrent of new TV shows to watch, movies to see, albums to listen to, podcasts and YouTube videos and now Substack newsletters to check out. Living in the digital era has meant existing in a perpetual state of “How can I possibly get to it all?” - Boston Globe
Tourism is attractive because it underwrites a desire that, when we go overseas, stuff doesn’t get too strange, risky or foreign. Increasingly, we travel not to decentre our worldviews or challenge our sensibilities, but to chillax and populate our Instagrams. - The Guardian
The maturity of the subscription market varies by industry, but in some of the categories best known for these kinds of services, there are indicators that the ceiling is close, at least in the United States. - The Atlantic
"Westerns aren’t about gunfights or stagecoaches. They’re about how an extreme landscape boils human storytelling down to the essentials. ... The Western is Greek tragedy for America’s rugged individualism—and also for its machismo." - The Atlantic
One PhD student at Queens University recorded it all. "Like many cities throughout the UK, Belfast had previously been dominated by the sound of human activity. During lockdown, these were replaced by subtle industrial, urban and natural sounds." - BBC
And, as a matter of fact, if the Academy can't fully respect them, get them their own show. Yes, their own awards show - focused on craft skill. - Variety
The main character is "directing a multilingual production of Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya with a cast composed of actors who speak English, Chinese, Tagalog, Japanese, and Korean Sign Language." The actors' - and the audience's - task is to trust the rhythm and emotional response. - The Atlantic
In the most jaw-dropping Kickstarter ever, the fantasy author has taken in (at the time of posting) $24 million for a year of special publishing perks for his fans. Some writers seem annoyed. But this is a one-time kind of thing, right? Right? - Slate
