Apocalyptic thought in the aftermath of the world wars George Prochnik and Anson Rabinbach In what way does writing about catastrophe, either predictively or retrospectively, risk kindling a new blaze? Conversely, is it possible to identify aspects of such texts that work against the drive to catastrophe? Conventional wisdom suggests that temporal distance from historical… Read More In the Shadow of Catastrophe: An Interview
It’s a conundrum of the philosopher’s biography that most basic human needs were alien to her By Judith Thurman The French philosopher Simone Weil was a soul at odds with herself and with a world of affliction. The causes she espoused as a social activist and the faith she professed as a mystic were urgent to… Read More The Supreme Contradictions of Simone Weil
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ A Massive Database of Evidence, Compiled by a Historian, Documents Israel’s War Crimes in Gaza My remarks at the Oxford Union debate President of Refugees International Condemns Biden Admin for Role in Gaza Israel’s war in Gaza amounts to genocide, Amnesty International report finds / Former defense minister Moshe Ya’alon accuses Israel of ethnic cleansing Rashid Khalidi: ‘Israel… Read More ‘In America we do not kill people in cold blood’ etc. But elsewhere…
Ignorance and Bliss: On Wanting Not to Know. By Mark Lilla Reviewed by John Banville This is at once a wise and wonderfully enjoyable book. Mark Lilla treats weighty matters with a light touch, in an elegant prose style that crackles with dry wit. Almost every one of the short sections into which the narrative is divided… Read More The enduring power of stupidity
Unintelligible as it is, new book is part of a ‘manifesting’ trend offering the young and spiritually lost an illusion of control Martha Gill What links these two news stories? The first: “manifesting” has been declared Cambridge Dictionary’s word of the year. The self-help practice, based on the magical belief that mental rituals can move the… Read More Not quite religion, not quite self-help: welcome to the Jordan Peterson age of nonsense
Platforms come and go, but this feels different: the final death of the idea that social media could ever be the internet’s town square, a global meeting place for ideas that would broaden all our horizons. Now, the future of social media looks increasingly segregated for users’ safety, like rival fans at football. X for… Read More The exodus from X to Bluesky has happened – the era of mass social media platforms is over
NB: A tragic yet beautiful story a gay boy and his conservative parents; and of Divine scripture. To me, it signifies nothing less than this: If God does not mean love, God means nothing. Maybe we can yet learn from such real life stories. The most telling lines in the story below are these: “There… Read More After their son came out, this conservative Christian couple went into a closet of their own
Hans Christian Andersen (1805 -1875) Many years ago there was an Emperor so exceedingly fond of new clothes that he spent all his money on being well dressed. He cared nothing about reviewing his soldiers, going to the theatre, or going for a ride in his carriage, except to show off his new clothes. He… Read More The Emperor’s New Clothes
“Today is not your first arrival here.” — Hongzhi Zhengjue, 1091-1157 CE Astrobiology is rewiring our understanding of the intimate connection between life and planets as they appear in the universe. By Adam Frank Across 15,000 generations, human beings have looked out at the sentinel stars and felt the pressing weight of myriad existential questions: Are… Read More The Coming Second Copernican Revolution
In some ways, zero is just like any other number on a number line. But a new study suggests that the mind may treat the symbol for absence differently. Yasemin Saplakoglu Around 2,500 years ago, Babylonian traders in Mesopotamia impressed two slanted wedges into clay tablets. The shapes represented a placeholder digit, squeezed between others,… Read More The Strangeness of Zero
After the truth-shower 