Like The Nail, The Internet Is Not What You Think It Is

Apple TV+ has been killing it lately, winning multiple Emmys for “Ted Lasso” and multiple Oscars for “CODA,” while also launching some of the best recent dramas, including “Severance,” “The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey,” and “WeCrashed.” To this list of impressive original programming, we can add “Slow Horses,” one of the best spy shows in years, a smart, witty, cleverly plotted piece about a group of outcasts in the world of espionage who end up being essential to a headline-grabbing operation that’s unfolding behind the scenes in a very different way from what the public is seeing on the news every night. The natural comparison will be “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy,” but this Gary Oldman vehicle isn’t as calculated, feeling as much like executive producer Graham Yost’s “Justified” in how that program relied on sharp dialogue and characters who felt instantly three-dimensional to work. It’s one of the best shows of early 2022.

Slow Horses 

It starts sexily enough. A strapping and improbably named M15 agent, River Cartwright, played by Jack Lowden (Dunkirk, the imminent Benediction), wearing fine tailoring and an earpiece, is staking out a would-be suicide bomber at Stansted airport. He has eyes on who he thinks is his man, only to learn, maybe too late, that the real suspect, the one with the bomb in his backpack, is actually heading for that most exclusive of East Anglian transport links, the Stansted Express. River makes a dash for it, racing through the bowels of the airport – including, thrillingly, the area behind the flappy rubber curtain in baggage reclaim – and living out every commuter’s dream of shoving people off escalators while shouting “MOVE! MOVE!” But can he get to the target in time?

New Spy Thriller Series 'Slow Horses' Will Kill Your 007 Fantasies Forever

Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis gets a world premiere at Cannes Film Festival

The Internet Is Not What You Think It Is: A History, A Philosophy, A Warning by Justin E. H. Smith is reviewed by Eric Banks at 4Columns and by Christine Rosen at The Wall Street Journal.

Mikhail Baryshnikov On The Russian War On Ukraine

“From the start of the invasion of Ukraine by the armies of Vladimir Putin, I’ve felt deep dread and a certainty that this will be a bloody and horrific conflict,” writes Baryshnikov, in the submission titled, “The Ukrainians are fighting for all of us.” - San Francisco Examiner

I Can’t Stop Watching This Teensy Dachshund Carry Around Extremely Large Sticks Daily Paws 

The hidden world of octopus cities and culture shows why it’s wrong to farm them The Conversation

Ted Polumbaum’s photos of MLK, Jackie O and more shine off the page in new book NPR 

Alzheimer’s Study Finds 42 More Genes Linked To Higher Risk of Disease Guardian

Almost all the world’s population breathes harmful air, says WHO Financial Times

“It lies in the weakness of human nature to always want to set up a system; perhaps it also lies in the weakness of human nature never to be able to set one up” — Richard Marshall “interviews” Johann Gottfried Herder

Oligarchs don't just love their superyachts — they also use them to cement their status among Russia's elite

1. New: a Twitter “Community” for philosophy — Twitter’s interest-based “communities” allow you the option of tweeting just to others in the community
2. “We should distinguish creativity as we ascribe it to products from creativity as we ascribe it to processes. Value, however, is a core part of creativity, both of the product and of the process” — Julia Langkau (Geneva) on types of creativity and their value, and how “psychology is so far ahead of philosophy concerning research on creativity”
3. How to “level the playing field so that less-overconfident students can gain some of the same advantages” — Eric Schwitzgebel (Riverside) follows up on the “overconfident student strategy” with advice for teachers and students
4. “The beautiful soul is where affections and reason are harmonized through play” — Richard Marshall “interviews” Friedrich Schiller
5. “His students at the LSE jokingly referred to his book as ‘The Open Society and Its Enemies, written by one of its enemies’” — Tae-Yeoun Keum (UCSB) on how Karl Popper’s career was elevated by “bashing Plato,” and what this tells us about philosophy
6. “We all know that we do things against our own better judgment… Do we also believe things against our own better judgment?” — Eugene Chislenko (Temple) on akratic beliefs
7. How did you end up majoring in philosophy? — N.G. Laskowski (Cal State Long Beach) asks Twitter