The writer Ismail Muhammad says, “You can’t disentangle blackness and California” – and nowhere, he explains through books, movies, and memories, is that clearer than in the history of Los Angeles, the idea of “South Central,” and the country’s imagination of what L.A. stands for. – LitHub
Category: ideas
What Makes A Dictator? An Outsized Personality
The road to dictatorship is depressingly predictable. Once power is stolen, the problem is to keep it. Anyone who might develop a separate power base must be struck down. Eradicate rivals, rule through force and fear. Trust no one, particularly family, friends and the army. Keep everyone on their toes with random executions, unpredictable policy changes and imaginative public tortures. – New Statesman
How The Internet Reframed What It Meant To Be A Desirable Human
“While the Internet was meant to allow you to reach out to any- and everyone without a hint of the cruel discriminations that blight our world, it turned into the opposite, a forum where individuals are less speaking to other people than preening and listening to themselves—turning themselves into desirable objects to be coveted by all. It became, that is, the perfect embodiment of consumer capitalism, where everything can be touted in the marketplace.” – New York Review of Books
Patreon Wants To Fund The Creative Class. But Is It Just Propping Up A Bad System?
The service may very well allow artists to become less beholden to the unpredictable algorithms, turbulent monetization policies, and stingy revenue-sharing of behemoth distribution platforms like YouTube. But in the absence of a viable alternative to those platforms, Patreon winds up effectively subsidizing that very unpredictability, turbulence, and stinginess. – Wired
Rise Of The Anti-Meritocracy
“An attack on meritocracy is invariably an attack on higher education, where meritocrats get sorted and credentialed. So the turn against meritocracy prompts big questions. Has meritocracy in fact failed?” – Chronicle of Higher Education
Scans Of Artists Painting Using Their Feet Show The Brain Rewiring Itself
In typically developed people, the “foot” part of the map is a solid region, with no distinct representation of the toes. But in the brains of Tom Yendell and Peter Longstaff, there were clear toe areas, arranged in order. – The New York Times
How Rich People Like Jeffrey Epstein Are Corrupting Science
“Money corrupts—which, duh—but the Epstein episode tells an even bigger story. The entire system for metabolizing philanthropic gifts, particularly private ones, into academic research is a poorly illuminated pile of broken guardrails. Even if most institutions and foundations are cautious internally, even if the unfolding scandal with Epstein and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is an outlier, the system is essentially a pool of dark money.” – Wired
Why It’s Important For Us To Understand The Language Of Numbers
The numbers have no way of speaking for themselves. We speak for them. We imbue them with meaning.’ Not only has someone used extensive judgment in choosing what to measure, how to define crucial ideas, and to analyse them, but the manner in which they are communicated can utterly change their emotional impact. – Aeon
Science Is Deeply Imaginative And Creative
Why is this such a secret? “Without the essential first step, without a creative reimagining of nature, a conceiving of hypotheses for what might be going on behind the perceived surface of phenomena, there can be no science at all.” – Aeon
People Are Moving Out Of America’s Largest Cities
There’s little mystery about where people are heading, or why: They are mostly moving toward sun and some semblance of affordability. The major Texas metros—Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, and Austin—have collectively grown by more than 3 million since 2010. The most popular destinations for movers are now Phoenix, Dallas, and Las Vegas, which welcome more than 100,000 new people each year. – The Atlantic