"There may be liberty and justice for all, but there are tax breaks only for some."
-- Martin Sullivan
The best revenge is not to be like your enemy.”
~Marcus Aurelius
In the Shadow of Justice by Katrina Forrester, reviewed by Susan McWilliams Barndt at Commonweal
Tragedy, the Greeks and Us by Simon Critchley, reviewed by John Kaag at Los Angeles Review of Books
Norah Jones’s Extraordinary At-Home Concerts New Yorker
Sure, Online Opera’s Nice, But There’s Real Magic Inside Any Opera House Not Only in Sydney
Physics Or Free Will?
Consider that “everything we see around us – rocks and planets, frogs and trees, your body and brain – is made up of nothing but protons, electrons and neutrons put together in very complex ways. In the case of your body, they make many kinds of cells; in turn, these cells make tissues, such as muscle and skin; these tissues make systems, such as the heart, lungs and brain; and these systems make the body as a whole. It might seem that everything that’s happening at the higher, ‘emergent’ levels should be uniquely determined by the physics operating beneath them. This would mean that the thoughts you’re having at this very moment were predetermined at the start of the Universe, based on the values of the particle physics variables at that time.” – Aeon
NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights – Who Moderates the Social Media Giants? A Call to End Outsourcing. Paul M. Barrett, June 2020: “In our latest report on the social media industry, we look at how the major platforms handle the problem of content moderation: deciding what remains on their sites and what should be removed. Despite the centrality of this task—without it, the platforms would be inundated by harmful content—the social media companies outsource content moderation to third-party vendors. The report examines the consequences of this marginalization of a core element of the social media business model, including how content moderation has played out during the coronavirus pandemic.
- Writing for ProPublica, Wendi C. Thomas with “The Police Have Been Spying on Black Reporters and Activists for Years. I Know Because I’m One of Them.”
- Fox News’ Tucker Carlson taking heat for some comments. The Washington Post’s Allyson Chiu has the details. The Daily Beast’s Justin Baragona writes about it, too.
- Does The Washington Post have different standards for social media policy for people of color? Nieman Lab’s Laura Hazard Owen looks into the matter.
Directly inspired by the paintings of Gustav Klimt’s Golden Phase, the intention of Tawny Chatmon’s project The Redemption is to “celebrate and reinforce the beauty of Black hair, features, life, and culture”.
Archaeologists may have found site of the Red Lion, London’s first playhouse Ars Technica
Alberta and South Korea’s pensions just bought the Coastal GasLink pipeline: 8 things you need to know The Narwhal (Senator-Elect)
Moose And Her Calves Decide To Spend A Day In This Family’s Backyard, Man Documents How It Went Bored Panda
Swedish PM Olof Palme’s alleged assassin does have an India connection. No, it isn’t Bofors Scroll
Fossil tracks left by an ancient crocodile that ‘ran like an ostrich’ BBC
The Story of Prisoner No. 760 Der Spiegel