We Philanthropy
Leading Australian philanthropists unite to underwrite arts think tank
Some Of The Many Books That Helped Us Cope In 2020
Mysteries, children’s books, nonfiction, romance, books about race and racism, and so much more – along with an awful lot of screentime and chill, it’s how we coped with this, OK, yes, unprecendented year. – Washington Post
- The Holy Grail of the Beat Generation Neal Cassady: ‘The Joan Anderson Letter’
When Jack Kerouac read Neal Cassady’s spontaneous rush of words, he claimed it was more alive than any piece of writing he had ever seen. In its effusive style, its freewheeling candor, its Proustian (yes, Proustian!) introspection, the letter touched off a response in Kerouac that reshaped entirely his own... Read more
Hollywood Is Lost And Wandering, And Wondering How To Survive
Sure, Hollywood has been predicting its own demise since TV made it big. Every subsequent innovation – larger TVs! color TVs! The internet! DVD rentals! Streaming! – has the industry thinking it will die soon. But this time, well. “In the 110-year history of the American film industry, never has so much upheaval arrived so fast and on so many fronts, leaving many writers, directors, studio executives, agents and other movie workers disoriented and demoralized — wandering in ‘complete darkness,’ as one longtime female producer told me. These are melodramatic people by nature, but talk to enough of them and you will get the strong sense that their fear is real this time.” – The New York Times
What’s Up With Romance Novel Architecture?
The men in romance novels – whether straight or gay – seem obsessed with open plans. Open plans, big TVs, big sofas. Blame Canada. (Seriously: Blame Canada for HGTV, which led directly to … this.) – Slate
Scientists solve mystery of mass coho salmon deaths. The killer? A chemical from car tires Los Angeles Times
Stone Age ‘Venus Figurines’ Have a New Explanation, And It’s Surprisingly Touching Science Alert
The most striking images of 2020 BBC
Plastic pollution is everywhere. Study reveals how it travels Environmental Century
Empire of fantasy aeon
Spotify’s Most Streamed Tracks Of 2020
Bad Bunny was the biggest artist globally, amassing 8.3bn streams. The Puerto Rican star’s second album YHLQMDLG notched up 3.3 billion streams, followed by The Weeknd’s After Hours and Post Malone’s Hollywood’s Bleeding. – BBC
How Your Brain’s Built In Biases Let You Believe Untrue Things
There are several well-known mechanisms in human psychology that enable people to continue to hold tight to beliefs even in the face of contradictory information. – The Conversation
Merriam-Webster And Dictionary.com Have The Same Word Of The Year For 2020, And It’s No Surprise
Both sites base their choice on search statistics, and the clear leader was, of course, pandemic. (Coronavirus was close behind.) – M
“Science seems to be saying: yes, attending to beauty is exceptionally helpful and, also, we should pay no attention to beauty” — Michael Strevens (NYU) on scientific progress and “unreasonable constraints”
“Oh, writers, little do we know what unexpected power our words may have. And, oh teachers, little do you know how much every utterance from your lips may be cherished by hundreds of students a generation later” — Claudia Mills (Colorado)
If the “many worlds interpretation” of quantum mechanics is true, “then many observers across the many worlds are living Humean nightmares” — and “maybe we are in a slightly nightmarish Humean world after all,” explains Charlie Huenemann (Utah State)
Descriptions of what people do “are significantly stronger in shaping behaviour and cognition” than prescriptions telling people what to do — and this has implications for the ethics of science communication, argues Uwe Peters (Bonn, Cambridge)
Where did Simone de Beauvoir find “an image of adulthood she could live with”? — in the character of Jo March from Alcott’s Little Women, explains Mary Townsend (St. John’s), who understands Beauvoir’s “satisfaction in simple negation of everything religious”
“Not even the Sixties flower children were as countercultural as philosophy is today, and philosophers are clever enough to know their odds” — Jeannette Cooperman with some observations about the Daily Nous Non-Academic Hires page
“Once a Genius asked me a question in the Q&A after my talk, and then walked out before hearing my answer” — Agnes Callard (Chicago) moves from “The Queen’s Gambit” to some general points about how “Genius is a personality-laundering scheme
The economics of Christmas trees
Podcast with Daniel Gross on finding undiscovered talent.
Are Q-tips OK after all? I’ve been wondering about this for years, of course.
A grumpy rant about the humanities.: “If we were living in a culture dominated by grown-ups, Martin Scorsese would be considered the purveyor of middle-brow forgettable fare rather than the gold standard of sophistication, and at least the childless among us would not even have to be aware of Spider-Man’s existence.”
ORSIFU: Let’s hope this changes, but currently the FAA is not allowing pilots to take the vaccine.