United States v. Mackey

Editors | Harvard Law Review | 11th March 2024

Fraud or protected satire? In 2016, Douglass Mackey aka “Ricky Vaughn”, a far-right social media figure, posted memes claiming that voters could vote by text. He was charged and found guilty of conspiring to injure the rights of voters. The jury did not consider whether his memes were satire. The verdict has chilling implications for satirical content in the digital space, outweighing any dubious injury (2,300 words)

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The Placebo Effect’s Evil Twin

Michael Bernstein | Quillette | 11th March 2024

On the Nocebo effect — “when you expect to feel sick, you are more likely to feel sick”. Benjamin Franklin was an early identifier, while working with Franz Mesmer’s patients to “separate the effects of the imagination from those attributed to magnetism”. The test subjects had shivering and convulsions — negative side-effects they viewed as integral to the process, proof that something is working (1,800 words)

An Activist By Fate

Anushe Engineer | Dawn | 11th March 2024

Baloch women protesting enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings in Pakistan. Sammi Deen Baloch began activism at age ten when her father was abducted — taking bus rides alone from Karachi to Quetta for court cases to locate her father. “We completely rewrote the narrative they’ve held against Baloch people, that we’re “terrorists” who want to be separate from Pakistan” (2,100 words)

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The Boy Who Was King Of Vanilla

Elena Kazamia | Nautilus | 1st March 2024

Vanilla was notoriously hard to pollinate, befuddling botanists until 1841 — when Edmond Albius, a 12-year-old Réunion Island slave, invented a way. He used a needle or toothpick to puncture the slim membrane separating the male and female organs of the vanilla orchid — a technique growers use to this day. “Like many brilliant inventions, Edmond’s appears disarmingly simple, but only after the fact” (800 words)

Watching Bradley Cooper Chase An Oscar

Ariella Garmaise | Walrus | 8th March 2024

Cooper ticks all the boxes of a “serious actor” and yet, to date, has no Oscar to show for his twelve nominations. His latest attempt seems to demonstrate his yearning for victory — a biopic of Leonard Bernstein that he co-produced, co-wrote and directed as well as starred in. Cooper’s crime, to some, is that he visibly wants to win. “The only thing more embarrassing than trying is failing” (1,500 words)

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A Bigger World Is Better For Everyone

Jason Crawford | Roots Of Progress | 23rd February 2024

Not only should we not be aiming for a smaller global population, but there are good reasons to desire ever more people populating the world. The biggest one is progress: an expanding population means more researchers, which means more investment and specialisation, which results in better technology and problem-solving. An intriguing, if not completely successful, argument (1,600 words)

Heil Bukowski!

Abel Debritto | 3:AM Magazine | 8th March 2024

On the quest for the “Holy Grail” — at least for Charles Bukowski scholars. The poet was thought to have penned a series of pro-Nazi letters for right-wing newspapers in the early 1940s, but these were missing, if they ever existed. Then, in 2023, this writer found them in a digital database, misfiled thanks to a “tagging error”. The twist? The Nazi persona was fake, “a giant put-on” (3,900 words)

Lessons From The Cyber-Attack

British Library | 8th March 2024 | PDF

The British Library’s account of the ransomware attack that compromised its systems so utterly that readers could not consult the catalogue or access books for almost six months. Interesting throughout. Aside from the attack itself, the biggest problem in recovery has been hard-to-replace legacy software that cannot be restored because it is not compatible with better security measures (8,300 words)

History Of Universal Basic Income

Karl Widerquist | MIT Press Reader | 7th March 2024

Book extract. The idea of allowing “every individual to have access to the resources they need to survive without conditions imposed by others” stems from prehistoric societal dynamics, and is still seen in the “common land” maintained by small agrarian communities. Bertrand Russell and Virginia Woolf were fans. But rising nationalism could derail modern attempts to implement it (4,700 words)

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Rage, Waste And Corruption

David Runciman | Guardian | 7th March 2024

On the lingering effects of Covid-19. “The disease turns out to be its own metaphor. We are all suffering from political long Covid now. The early drama is over. A series of misfortunes has replaced it.” Lockdown solidarity has evaporated, in favour of depleted public finances, a mental health crisis and social stagnation. Although Covid was not a war, it feels as though we are recovering from one (4,700 words)

Can Literature Cure Law? Should It?

Robert Spoo | Public Books | 5th March 2024

What makes a law “a force wielded by persuadable decision-makers” as opposed to a collection of words on a page? Interesting attempt to answer this question via the work of W.H. Auden and Seamus Heaney. Literature can “cure” law, some believe, with legal material enhanced through contact with Kafka or Sophocles. But good writing exists for more than just improving our legal systems (2,800 words)

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When I Was A Hostage

Theo Padnos | Persuasion | 14th February 2024

Journalist on two years spent as a hostage in Syria after being captured in 2012 by a group of “amateur terrorists”. War hymns played in the background at all times. “We couldn’t leave those rooms and we couldn’t talk to one another. A peek at our daily calendars would have shown solitary darkness in the morning, followed by shouting at midday, followed by outbreaks of terror at night” (3,200 words)

Notes On Awe

David Gross | Less Wrong | 5th March 2024 | U

Children start off with a lot of natural awe, but adults become mired in ennui — an acquired defence against the mysterious. Some tips to rekindle awe: “take an awe walk, go somewhere new each week. With the right outlook, it can be found almost anywhere but most likely in places with vastness and novelty. Attend a spectacle — cathedrals and rock concerts have their own apparatuses of awe” (11,000 words)

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A Manual For Adversity

Darran Anderson | City Journal | 2nd March 2024 | U

Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations may have inspired the self-help genre, but the book endures for reasons beyond its maxims on life, war, and death: “a real person is there, in actual places and granular moments — examining bread or figs, staring into a fire, watching ears of corn bending toward the soil or waves crashing on headlands — intimacies which bring us within a breath or a thought of him” (3,800 words)

Logical Consistency Is A Social Burden

From Narrow To General AI | 1st March 2024 | U

“Why be consistent? What personal benefit does it bring, except to justify your thinking to others? Formal logic is behind the curve compared to common sense, and must play catch up. You must make decisions on scant information, your beliefs driven by spurious associations and flawed deductions. Maintaining logical consistency is restrictive when it is advantageous to fly by the seat of your pants” (2,100 words)

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In The Market For Embalmed Brain

The Threepenny Guignol | 3rd March 2024 | U

Scandal at Harvard Medical School prompts questions about the ethics surrounding the use of human cadavers. Despite evidence of corpse trafficking and abuse, the accused were charged with mail fraud and transportation of stolen property. The sale of human remains is legal under US law, unless they are Native American. Bodies donated to science are in a grey area with hazy oversight (2,300 words)

A Return To The Dismal 1980s

Michael Schaffer | Politico | 1st March 2024

After 25 years of municipal comeback, urban decay is again “the dominant civic storyline” in Washington DC. The homicide rate in 2023 was at its highest since 1998. Transport systems are crumbling and vacant shops are everywhere. Hybrid work at federal agencies is part of the issue. With 200,000 people no longer commuting full time to the city, tax revenues are down (2,300 words)

The Scientific Integrity Sleuth

Deborah Balthazar | Stat | 28th February 2024

Interview with Elisabeth Bik, a microbiologist and a full-time “science sleuth”. She specialises in finding cases where “image duplication” has been used to falsify results. So far, she has analysed over 100,000 papers and found about 8,000 with problems. “Of the three forms of misconduct — which are plagiarism, falsification, and fabrication — I feel plagiarism is the least bad” (2,200 words)