This week's news: Ezra Klein, "Charlie Kirk was Practicing Politics the Right Way." Richard Hanania, "'The Left" Did Not Kill Charlie Kirk." Noah Smith, "Civil War is for Idiots and Losers"
Here's something to cheer you up: "Afghanistan reports the lowest well-being in recorded history. . . . Two-thirds of respondents rate their life satisfaction below 2, which is generally considered to be the point at which a life is no longer worth living." Life under the Taliban doesn't just suck, it sucks at a world record level. Via Scott Siskind.
Chinese censorship around the anniversary of Tiananmen Square.
Short science fiction story about AI and the future, Knockout Mouse by Louis Evans.
The pomegranate in history and myth.
Pretty good essay on how modern anthropologists view "shamanism," with notes on how the practice is changing in the modern world: "One veteran shaman, returning from his first experience performing at a top-dollar eco-lodge, asked the ayahuasca researcher Stephan Beyer why these people had come halfway round the world to see him when they weren’t sick. And why do they all hate their parents?"
I've fallen in love with a Bach Cantata I can't remember ever hearing until this week, Christ lag in Todesbanden.
Crazy multimedia installations by Song Dong.
Rebuilding Kowloon Walled City in Minecraft. (On the original Kowloon here.)
If you have any curiosity about the Frankfurt School and their critique of post-WW II capitalism, I found this 45-minute lecture on Jürgen Habermas quite interesting, emphasizing his ties to Kant.
Famous 1964 interview with Tolkien about LOTR is on YouTube. As a fantasy writer I was struck by his assertion that it would have been too silly to have his characters worship pagan gods. In some of my writing I have used the classical formulation and had my characters swear by "the gods" or "all the gods," which feels un-silly to me. I have also used the now widespread fantasy convention of having people worship a generic pantheon consisting of The Mother, The Father, The Warrior, and so on, but this convention did not exist in the 1940s.
Discussion on Twitter/X of the weird fact that immigration to Britain, the US, Canada, and Australia all surged in 2021. People in each country blame local political decisions but does that make sense?
Avocado ripeness scanners.
Creating AI reviewers to speed up the process of peer review.
A call to unbundle the university. Many European universities don't have campuses or any kind of exracurricular activities, and people often ask why American and British schools need all that rigamarole. But studies of US universities have found that graduation rates for urban schools without campuses are dramatically lower, so I am not sure the model will transfer.
Study asking whether it is better to be over- or underqualified for your first job with an organization: "Combined, these patterns suggest that overqualified individuals are less motivated, but still outperform others in their same job." The over-qualified get promoted much faster.
The former peace negotiators who have given up on a two-state solution for Israel/Palestine, but without any real alternative. (NY Times)
People are thirsting so hard for signs of alien life that we have news stories because the Webb telescope "has not ruled out" a nitrogen-rich atmospher around Trappist-1e. (NY Times, Space.com)
Robin Hanson wants middle-aged activist movements to counter dumb youth activists.
A former leader of New College in Florida realizes that the plan to make it a conservative bastion is insecure so long as the school depends so heavily on state funding, so he is floating a plan to take the college private. Has that ever been done before in America?
Big plans for seawater desalination in Morocco, powered by renewable energy: Reuters, company brag sheet, longer article laying out the long-range plan.
The complications of "free speech" from the 1600s to the present. The nearly absolute doctrine defended by American liberals is rare in the world and has been contested throughout its history by people who think that lying, slander, blasphemy, instigation to hatred, and so on should not be protected.
Interesting translation by Simon Armitrage of "Deor", the Anglo-Saxon poem from which half of my online avatars are taken. If you run into somebody online who calls himself "Deor(something)", it might well be me. Wēlund him be wurman, wræces cunnade. . .
New York Times piece on parents using their children in their art, taking off from the new wave of memoirs by people who grew up starring in their parents' vlogs. I regard that as a truly heinous thing to do to a child.
The Trump administration forces US Steel to keep paying workers to show up at an idled steel plant.
2 comments:
Famous 1964 interview with Tolkien about LOTR is on YouTube. As a fantasy writer I was struck by his assertion that it would have been too silly to have his characters worship pagan gods.
Britain in the 60s? In the early 60s? Honestly, yeah - I think he might have been correct.
I think if he had done that, many people at the time would have treated his works not as literature, but as junk, and he wouldn't have been considered a serious writer. He still would have found an audience of primarily young people, but perhaps a somewhat smaller one - and The Establishment would have written him off entirely as a reflex.
Oh, just hit me - the interview was the 60s, the books were written well before that. So definitely, pagan gods would have been laughed at at best.
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