I’ve taken a break from Facebook, but not from reading the news. These are the pieces I read that I would love others to read. That’s it. That’s the … er … post.
Maria Ressa, CEO of news site Rappler, wins Nobel Peace Prize; Facebook and Duterte in spotlight
The Norwegian Nobel Committee’s award to Ressa is a recognition of her courage in standing up to a strongman, yes, but it is also a mark of appreciation for all she has taught the world about the ways social media — and Facebook in particular — can be used to harm public safety and democracy. She started this crusade before “fake news” became a household phrase, and she deserves the world’s recognition for her far-sightedness. — Nina Jankowicz, Washington Post, Oct 10, 2021
Reminder: You should have canceled Eric Clapton by now
“We know that the drink doesn’t make you make up sophisticated lies,” Wakeling says. “It just makes you tell the truth too loud at the wrong time to the wrong people.” — David Browne, Rolling Stone, Oct 10, 2021
A faster, quiet boom
In an alternative timeline in which the sonic boom problem never arose, the situation today might have been very different, with supersonic air travel being the norm on all the world’s long-haul routes. Now there’s a real possibility that this could happen in our world, if the X-59 lives up to expectations. — Andrew May, Science Focus, Oct 11, 2021
Email totally blows
To be productive–to convert our time and effort into value–we need to be fiercely discerning, allocating our time to things that will add the most value, and then doing those things like a craftsperson, as well as we can. Could anything jar more with this approach than ploughing through an inbox and feeling pleased when we’re done? As if answering emails is in itself a thing of value. And as we’re ploughing through that inbox, what are we generating? Yet more emails! It’s a phenomenon Newport calls the “hyperactive hive mind”—a self-sustaining frenzy that burns us out and gets us nowhere. — James Plunkett, Prospect Magazine, Sept 28, 2021
The word thief
Jordan didn’t foresee that Sebald would pass Gebhardt’s memoir off as his own writing without attribution. That upset him. Sebald “should not have used it so closely without crediting it,” he tells Angier. Weighing the evidence, Angier decides that most of Sebald’s purloined histories amount to run-of-the-mill authorial borrowing, but in extreme cases like Bechhofer’s, she wonders: “Can there be any defense of Sebald here, with his special empathy for Jewish victims, and his special awareness of the moral dangers of a German writing about them?” Her answer is no. — Judith Shulevitz, The Atlantic, Oct 5, 2021
Absolutely ashy Dave Chappelle
Watching Chappelle contort himself to justify ashy ideas about gender, queerness and identity is harrowing, because the only thing more brutal than someone saying hurtful shit is someone saying hurtful shit moments after making you laugh, moments after cracking you up in a way that’s both fun and deeply needed, moments after you making you feel like you all got free together. America has only gotten better at trying to kill me. — Saeed Jones, GQ, Oct 11, 2021
