Chinatown, Oxford, Profiles,, Persuasion, Nozick
How Has Chinatown Stayed Chinatown
Nick Tabor | New York Magazine | 24th September 2015
While other New York ethnic enclaves have been priced out of existence – as have Chinatowns in other cities – "one of the most desirable tracts of real estate in all of Manhattan" stays strongly Chinese. It's a story about property ownership, political organisation, and new waves of immigration. "The area is not that big," says a local council member. “It’s all right there. You’re able to speak the language and organize” (3,970 words)
I Was The Head Of The Piers Gaveston Society
Nick Richardson | London Review Of Books | 23rd September 2015
Life inside a debauched Oxford society, famous for hosting "jubilantly feral" parties. "At nightfall, the coaches arrived full of guests wearing drag, fetish outfits, superhero costumes, wedding dresses, ecclesiastical robes, Mexican wrestling masks.... People got wasted, danced and had sex. Even I had sex, in a non-exhibitionistic way, with a fellow human being. I thought it would reflect badly on the society if I didn’t" (1,470 words)
Meet The Prom Queen Of Instagram
Reeves Wiedeman | New York Magazine | 23rd September 2015
Bizarrely detailed profile of an unremarkable (if wealthy) New York teenager. The journalist seems determined to cast the subject as a celebrity, which (though it's hard to tell) the subject herself seems very aware she is not. Nothing happens, for thousands of words. Interesting as the distilled essence of the "profile" format: what happens when you apply its conventions, at length, to a perfectly unexciting teenage life? (4,600 words)
Will Black Lives Matter Be A Movement That Persuades?
Conor Friedersdorf | Atlantic | 24th September 2015
Conor Friedersdorf on two facets of the Black Lives Matter movement. Campaign Zero published ten specific policy solutions to police brutality which are "well-researched, supported with real-world evidence and ought to be seriously considered by policymakers"; student activists at Wesleyan University tried to strong-arm the student newspaper after it published a student's op-ed questioning the movement's tactics (2,480 words)
Why Do Intellectuals Oppose Capitalism?
Robert Nozick | Cato | 1st February 1998
"Wordsmith" intellectuals – in "academia, the media [and] government bureaucracy" – disproportionately oppose capitalism. Why? Perhaps because in school they "were judged against others and deemed superior," but feel less rewarded by the market. In school, rewards were "distributed by the central authority of the teacher," warming them towards a "centrally organized distributional mechanism" (PDF) (3,450 words)
Video of the day: Werner Herzog Reads Where's Waldo
What to expect: Parody of the German film director (2'34")
Thought for the day
Any idiot can face a crisis. It is this day-to-day living that wears you out
Anton Chekhov