When Ads Generate Themselves

John Herrman | Intelligencer | 27th October 2023

Amazon has overturned "truth in advertising" as a business norm and an ethical norm by offering AI tools enabling advertisers to create generic copy and faked images. Presumably Amazon has concluded that consumers will still be swayed by advertisements and images which they know to be fictional; and Amazon's interest is in maximising quantity of transactions, not quality of transactions (1,500 words)

Real Play

Devon Brody | Paris Review | 19th October 2023

Reflecting on The Sims, a video game that enabled children to simulate adult life through their on-screen avatars. "It seemed both boring and exhausting, the way she tried to take care of herself while also maintaining a social life, not to mention a creative practice. None of her art was very good, and I didn’t get to read her writing, which she didn’t like to work on. She was always so tired" (2,200 words)

What I Saw At The Revolution

Michael Kazin | Dissent | 1st November 2023

Diary of a half-hearted American revolutionary. As a Harvard undergraduate in 1968-1970 Kazin joined SDS and Weather Underground. He smashed windows, occupied buildings, dodged the draft and stumped for Castro. All of which makes here for an atmospheric and highly readable memoir. But I do wish that Kazin had troubled to explain his actions instead of simply recounting them (8,500 words)

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Of What Is Linguistics The Science?

Ermanno Bencivenga | Epoché | 28th October 2023

Of language, obviously. But what is language? Some linguists insist that language is what gets said; the job of linguistics is to aggregate and analyse usage. Others insist that language is a mental model to which usage merely conforms; it cannot be studied it directly. "Each party’s conception of the subject-matter of linguistics would have us conclude that the other party’s is no science at all" (4,700 words)

No Exit For Dictators

Branko Milanovic | Global Inequality | 28th October 2023

Game theory. Why tyrants rarely go quietly. "Assume the ruler plays an annual game in which he asks himself: 'Am I better off if I retire now, or if I commit another crime which will make my retirement next year more difficult but my rule this year safer?' The answer is simple. He is better off committing another crime in the expectation that this will make his overthrow less likely" (1,300 words)

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A Werewolf On The Moon

Phil Plait | Scientific American | 27th October 2023

Given that werewolves present as wolves when the moon is full, i.e., fully lit by the sun, what happens to a werewolf on the moon, or in lunar orbit? A lunar day lasts two Earth-weeks — lots of wolf-time. A lunar satellite orbit takes two hours, half in light and half in dark. A lycanthrope would transform every hour. "In the enclosed volume of a small station, this would undoubtedly lead to mayhem" (1,670 words)

How To Fall Down A Rabbit Hole

Alden Burke | Syllabus Project | 31st October 2023

Practical guide to how to indulge curiosity and become sidetracked more often. "The beauty of the rabbit hole, and the warren you create by falling down it, is how it activates your curiosity to generate new, reflective pockets of information and knowledge. And the better you become at 'finding', the more portals emerge, and the farther you get from a complete sense of having found" (1,620 words)

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How Often Do You Lie?

Christian B. Miller | Conversation | 26th October 2023

Research has shown that people on average tell 1.08 lies per day, but that figure is likely skewed by "frequent liars". The studies cited here paint a surprisingly honest picture of their participants, with "the small number of rampant liars" accounting for the majority of deception. Still, the medium makes a difference: lying on video chat is more common than lying face to face, for instance (1,130 words)

Ever-Enduring Dürer

Warren Frye | New Criterion | 30th October 2023

Book review. There is a case to be made that Albrecht Dürer was the first modern artist, as well as the earliest example of the "notable narcissism" we now take for granted in highly successful creatives. "He may have been melancholic and vain, but his enduring fame is not the product of distinctive personality, but rather the quality of the art that character created" (1,000 words)

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The Silent Treatment

Jane Brox | Public Domain Review | 25th October 2023

The origins of solitary confinement were not punitive but therapeutic. It evolved in opposition to the corporal punishments common in the late 18C. Quakerism informed the idea of time alone in "active, searching silence" as a more effective means of reformation than inflicting bodily suffering. Solitude became a punishment once cramped conditions forced cell-sharing in prisons (3,900 words)

Lessons From China's Conquest Of Taiwan

Scott Savitz | RAND Corporation | 26th October 2023

It may be worth remembering — and China certainly remembers — that China has conquered Taiwan once before, in familiar circumstances. When Qing-dynasty armies gained control of the mainland in 1644, Ming-dynasty loyalists regrouped on Taiwan, claimed sovereignty there, and continued fighting. They surrendered in 1683 after losing a decisive naval battle, ceding Taiwan to the Qing (700 words)

My Left Kidney

Scott Alexander | Astral Codex Ten | 27th October 2023

How to give a kidney and why you might want to do so. The surgery carries a 1 in 10,000 mortality risk; no real worries. But the pre-op CAT scan carries a 1 in 660 mortality risk, so ask for an MRI. No known risks to longevity. You sleep through the surgery. You wake up feeling fine (except for the catheter). You get a call to say that your kidney has saved a stranger's life. You feel wonderful (6,700 words)

Behind The Scenes

Kimberly Nelson | Chicago | 16th October 2023

What it is really like to be an extra in major motion pictures. It is a lot like jury duty, in the sense that it involves long hours of waiting around for minimum wage pay. Days can start at 3am and end after dark. Being selected to hold a prop or sit next to a principal actor is entirely a matter of chance. And in the end, the shots that feature you may well end up on the cutting room floor (1,640 words)

The Beauty Of Chalk

Roy Peachey | Plough | 24th October 2023

Review of a book about mathematicians and their chalkboards. The act of writing with chalk forces the mind to slow down and thus to encounter new concepts at a pace conducive to understanding. It makes collaboration easier than with a computer screen. There are no glitches or errors that can prevent the ideas flowing out. And it forces a cerebral discipline into the physical realm (1,110 words)

Crooked Timber

Noah Millman | Gideon's Substack | 23rd October 2023

On being called Noah. A dvar Torah. As a Noah you start life with thousands of years of Judaic and Biblical culture at your back. In your infancy everybody gives you toy animals and you "relate to them a bit differently". The older you get, the more enigmatic your forebear appears. After impressing God with his virtue, and saving the animal kingdom from destruction, he gets blind drunk (2,100 words)

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Invitation To A Colonoscopy

Dynomight | Asterisk Magazine | 26th October 2023

A masterclass in interpreting clinical data. American doctors perform some 15 million colonoscopies each year at an average cost of $3,000 apiece. In Europe, meanwhile, a huge clinical trial finds that colonoscopies have little or no effect on mortality rates. American doctors say the trial is wrong, the methodology is flawed, Europeans are different. Are they right, or self-interested, or both? (4,500 words)

Naked Beneath Our Clothes

Jeannette Cooperman | Common Reader | 20th October 2023

Account of a couple's visit to a nudist resort. Both are nervous. She is worried about the etiquette of touching someone during a conversation when nobody is dressed. He is concerned about accidentally ogling the other guests. He is relieved to put the "protection" of his clothes back on, while she finds "the softened gazes and absence of awkwardness" intellectually liberating (5,530 words)

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The Ends Of Knowledge

Rachael Scarborough King | Aeon | 29th September 2023

A valid question about the future of academia: what could learning look like "if it were reoriented around emergent ends rather than inherited structures"? The answer is elusive here, but it bears considering. We accept that needs evolve and new areas of study open up, but the other side of that is that the demand for other areas diminishes. At what point do we start closing departments? (3,200 words)

How To Make A Monster

Charity Urbanski | Medievalists | 23rd October 2023

For most of history, a "monster" was not necessarily an imaginary creature like a vampire or a werewolf. Any deviation in appearance or behaviour (via a birth defect or disability, say) was folded into the concept of monstrosity. By the 12C, a complex visual language had developed that conflated otherness with demons, and this was used to persecute those perceived to be outsiders (2,810 words)

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What Does A Happily Ever After Look Like?

Alice Lang & Jan Diehm | Pudding | 16th October 2023

Analysis of how romance novel covers have changed over time. Comprising almost a quarter of the US adult fiction market, the way these books are marketed reflects the changing status and perceived desires of their women readers. In the 1950s, as more women entered the workforce, "corporate romances" were popular. Later, the classic 1980s Fabio "clinch" reflected "more feminist openness" (2,800 words)

The Future Of Ghosts

Jeanette Winterson | Paris Review | 23rd October 2023

Ghost stories may well have proliferated in the 19C because of the excess carbon monoxide from gas lamps — low level poisoning can cause hallucinations and dread. In the 21C, our hauntings will be predicated on the intangible reality we already inhabit. "A ghost is the spirit of a dead person. An avatar is a digital twin of a living person. Neither is 'real'. A haunted metaverse. Why not?" (910 words)

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Everyone Needs The Odd Free Lunch

James Harris | Stiff Upper Quip | 19th October 2023

On the "spiritual ungenerosity" of the UK. Unlike elsewhere, tap water is not always free and a hot drink rarely comes with an unsolicited biscuit. This writer finds that his homeland has become "a place of martialling scarcity". The little things that make life nicer are in short supply. "This is what happens to people when they live pinched, cramped lives, worrying about every penny" (1,460 words)

A Spark Extinguished

Ian Johnson | China Books Review | 19th October 2023

Extract from Ian Johnson's much-admired new book, Sparks, about China's "underground historians", an informal movement of disparate individuals working at great personal risk to provide a factual account of China's modern history, often contradicting the "official" history written and rewritten by the Communist Party to erase the Party's monstrosities and bolster the Party's legitimacy (4,800 words)

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The Lure Of Madness

Lorna Collins | The Polyphony | 20th September 2023

A reviewer "who has experienced madness" reviews Lure Of Madness, Alastair Morgan's study of Adorno, Foucault, and anti-psychiatry. "As I am reading, I find myself (my hallucinations) reacting violently. I do not usually include my visionary perspectives in an academic review. but these experiences seem to show something valid about the field defined in this book, if not the book itself" (2,080 words)