All social media both feeds and feeds on narcissism, but Twitter’s capacity to mirror the world and its users’ neuroses in discrete verbal and visual units, at least in certain corners of the site, elevates self-regard to a formal principle. What makes Twitter so axiomatically hellish? It’s a place where even the most well-intentioned attempts… Read More KATIE KADUE – Twitter as Suspended Hell
Jacques Pauwels: Mythmaking and the Atomic Destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki Truman and his advisors thus fell under the spell of what the renowned American historian William Appleman Williams has called a “vision of omnipotence”. They convinced themselves that the new weapon would enable them to force their will on the Soviet Union. The… Read More August 6 & 9, Hiroshima & Nagasaki: Mythmaking and Atomic Destruction / Blinded by the Light: Remembering Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Tragically, to the world’s most powerful democracy and all those who, for better or worse, are tugged like the tides by its lunar pull, Trump still matters. He cannot yet be consigned to the past, because he is affecting the present and looms over the future. The clearest evidence is the expectation that he will… Read More Jonathan Freedland: Trumpism is now in the American bloodstream / Rosanna Arquette: ‘I fear the world will fall into the hands of fascist dictators'
As his fame grew, Dalí’s reputation was undermined by his outrageous pronouncements. He confessed that he dreamed of Adolph Hitler “as a woman” whose flesh “ravished me.” Although he insisted he rejected Hitlerism despite such fantasies, the Surrealists, who were allied to the French Communist Party, expelled him in 1939. He also later extolled Spain’s… Read More Soft Construction with Boiled Beans (Premonition of Civil War) – The Surreal World of Salvador Dalí
“The thirty-year interregnum of U.S. global hegemony,” writes David Bromwich in the journal Raritan, “has been exposed as a fraud, a decoy, a cheat, [and] a sell.” Today, he continues, “the armies of the cheated are struggling to find the word for something that happened and happened wrong.” In fact, the armies of the cheated know exactly… Read More Andrew Bacevich: The defining lie at the heart of American foreign policy / Pratap Bhanu Mehta: US vs China is the new Cold War
The withdrawal of Dr Hari Singh Gour University in Sagar, Madhya Pradesh, from an international seminar on “Cultural and Linguistic Hurdles in the Achievement of Scientific Temper” due to bullying by the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad and the local police must not be treated lightly. The university had approved the topic, the collaboration and the speakers,… Read More Apoorvanand; Gauhar Raza: The bully that is destroying India’s academic culture
The impact of bottled water on natural resources is 3,500 times higher than for tap water, scientists have found. The research is the first of its kind and examined the impact of bottled water in Barcelona, where it is becoming increasingly popular despite improvements to the quality of tap water in recent years. Research led by the Barcelona Institute… Read More Environmental impact of bottled water ‘up to 3,500 times greater than tap water’
Old Babylonian tablet likely used for surveying uses Pythagorean triples at least 1,000 years before Pythagoras An Australian mathematician has discovered what may be the oldest known example of applied geometry, on a 3,700-year-old Babylonian clay tablet. Known as Si.427, the tablet bears a field plan measuring the boundaries of some land. The tablet… Read More Australian mathematician discovers applied geometry engraved on 3,700-year-old tablet
There is a certain sort of amusement to be had in watching the developed world deal with the insistent onslaught of climate change. Like many horror stories, this one features a main character full of futile determination to maintain a sense of normalcy even as the ominous signs of doom become ever more impossible to… Read More Our leaders look climate change in the eyes, and shrug / Siberian heatwave led to new methane emissions / Terrifying documentary on US wildfires
Myanmar’s ambassador to the United Nations, who has refused to leave his post despite being fired by the junta after the February coup, has alerted the world body to a “reported massacre” by the military. Kyaw Moe Tun sent a letter to the UN secretary general, António Guterres, on Tuesday saying 40 bodies had been… Read More Myanmar’s UN envoy accuses military junta of township massacre
