Category: ideas

Writing today in the journal Science, dozens of researchers from around the world show that the seismic activity from our civilization plummeted as lockdowns went into effect. This “anthropogenic seismic noise,” as seismologists call it, comes from all manner of human activities, whether that’s running factories, operating cars or trains, or even holding concerts. So starting in China originally, then in different places in Italy, and then going through Europe. And whenever lockdowns happened in different countries, we see the effect that’s up to an 80 percent reduction in the amplitude of the seismic noise in some places.” The average was about 50 percent. – Wired

Far from being embraced as a high-minded salute to free speech and the bracing effects of political discourse, the letter was blasted for messages its authors swear were never intended. – Washington Post

For many professors, the sudden transition was a struggle. For Malan, it was the natural extension of a decade’s worth of experimentation. “Our team is fortunate to have been doing this blend of education for quite some time,” he told me recently. “For us, it was very straightforward.” – The New Yorker

“In the 15 years between the inception of a fully-integrated bi-directional digital medium—the internet—and the onset of the coronavirus pandemic bringing with it imposed social distancing, viewing the world through screens has become second nature to all of us. The terms of physical meeting have been more profoundly altered than they ever were by train timetables or wristwatches: the absolute location, together with the universal synchronisation afforded by mobile phones, enables both the place and the time of a prospective rendezvous to be continually recalibrated.” – Prospect

“We put over 100 people who were madly in love into a brain scanner using fMRI. We noticed those who had fallen in love in the first eight months had a lot of activity in brain regions linked with intense feelings of romantic love. Those who had been madly in love for a longer period of time—from eight to 17 months—showed additional activity in a brain region linked with feelings of deep attachment. That vividly showed us the brain can easily fall happily and madly in love rapidly, but feelings of deep attachment take time.” – Nautilus

“While we never mind insisting that art can change the world, we get fuzzy when pressed on the details of how. In pursuing “usefulness,” the past decades have witnessed an increasing instrumentalization of art, one which, in most instances, falls short of our transformative aspirations. Perhaps, in an age of “utility” and “impacts,” the more radical vision is not the instrumentalization of art, but the aestheticization of the world.” – The Philanthropist

The abrupt restructuring of daily working life for tens of millions due to the COVID-19 pandemic has also dramatised just how different ‘flexible’ work is in different contexts: liberating for some, imprisoning for others. – Aeon

If cancellation is removal from a position of prominence on the basis of an ideological crime, it might appear that there is a case to be made for canceling Aristotle. He has much prominence: Thousands of years after his death, his ethical works continue to be taught as part of the basic philosophy curriculum offered in colleges and universities around the world. – The New York Times

The coronavirus pandemic and the administration’s botched response to it are damaging the engine of American innovation in three major ways: The flow of talented people from overseas is slowing; the university hubs that produce basic research and development are in financial turmoil; and the circulation of people and ideas in high-productivity industrial clusters, such as Silicon Valley, has been impeded. – The Atlantic

It took a pandemic to stop the gluttonous consumption of other places, trips that relied centrally on the have-nots—armies of hotel workers, cleaners, food preparers, bartenders, pool attendants—to provide the lavish experience sought. The argument in favor of this juxtaposition was that tourists, however noxious, were propping up the GDP of places like Macau (51 percent), Maldives (32.5 percent), Spain (14.6 percent), and Italy (13.2 percent). It was, as neoliberal economics go, a top-down model, mere cents going to the worst-off at the bottom. – The Baffler