Tag: real world
The Despots of Silicon Valley
If you had to capture Silicon Valley’s dominant ideology in a single anecdote, you might look first to Mark Zuckerberg, sitting in the blue glow of his computer some 20 years ago, chatting with a friend about how his new website, TheFacebook, had given him access to reams of personal information about his fellow students:
Zuckerberg: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard
Zuckerberg: Just ask.
Zuckerberg: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS
Friend:
The World is Falling Apart. Blame the Flukes.
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The 21st century has been defined by unexpected shocks—major upheavals that have upended the world many of us have known and made our lives feel like the playthings of chaos. Every few years comes a black swan–style event: September 11, the financial crisis, the Arab Spring, Brexit, the election of Donald Trump, the coronavirus pandemic, wars in Ukraine and Gaza. Even daily
‘American Fiction’ and the ‘Just Literature’ Problem
“Why are these books here?” asks Thelonious “Monk” Ellison, the writer protagonist of the film American Fiction, as he points to four novels stacked neatly on the shelf of a chain bookstore. The name Ellison sticks out from their spines.
Monk wants to know why his Greek-tragedy-inspired novels are housed not in “Mythology” but in the “African American Studies” section. A bookstore employee offers the obvious explanation: “I would imagine that this author, Ellison, is … Black.” He has
Humans Can No Longer Ignore the Threat of Fungi
This article was originally published by Undark Magazine.
Back at the turn of the 21st century, valley fever was an obscure fungal disease in the United States, with fewer than 3,000 reported cases a year, mostly in California and Arizona. Two decades later, cases of valley fever have exploded, increasing roughly sevenfold by 2019.
And valley fever isn’t alone. Fungal diseases in general are appearing in places they have never been seen before, and previously harmless or mildly harmful
Elon Musk’s Latest Target Hits Back
Over the past few days, hundreds of thousands of posts on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, have lambasted a Jewish organization that many people are only vaguely aware of: the Anti-Defamation League. The #BanTheADL campaign, started by overt white nationalists and later boosted by Elon Musk himself, accuses the Jewish civil-rights group of seeking to censor the site’s users, intimidate its advertisers, and generally abrogate American freedoms in service of a sinister liberal agenda.
I’m pretty familiar with
Reader Views on the Role of Taboos
Welcome to Up for Debate. Each week, Conor Friedersdorf rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Later, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.
Last week I asked readers, “How should liberal democracies utilize or eschew taboos?”
Replies have been edited for length and clarity.
We in liberal democracies have a fondness for countercultural expression and norm challenging that can seem paradoxical—if so many of us come to love a rebel,
What to Read When You Can’t Focus on Reading
When I teach a literature class to undergraduates, one of my most important tasks is to help my students relearn how to read in the age of distraction. I assign them an exercise: Set a timer for 20 minutes and dive into a book, no phone in sight, and don’t stop before the alarm goes off. They frequently tell me that time moves differently when they do this. The first few minutes drag, and the exercise feels totally impossible and
A Poem by Greg Delanty: ‘After Viewing the Bowling Match at Castlemary, Cloyne (1847)’
At first glance, Daniel MacDonald’s painting The Bowling Match at Castlemary, Cloyne 1847 seems pretty cheerful. A young man is flinging himself into the toss of a ball, his arm swung back and his feet off the ground. A crowd has gathered around him, eager to watch, perhaps waiting for a chance to play. But 1847 was not a happy year in Cloyne, Ireland; it fell in the middle of the country’s Great Famine, the result of a potato
Please Don’t Make a Barbie Sequel About Ken
I know a lot of impressive women married to men. Maybe the men are impressive too. I don’t give them much thought, to be honest. By the time I catch up with these women on all they are doing, and commiserate on the state of the world, we rarely have time to talk about their husbands. Sometimes, to be polite, I ask, but they normally don’t come up unless some conflict is brewing. This doesn’t mean that my friends don’t
‘Barbie’ and the Ascendence of Girl Culture
In the 2000s, male artists routinely excavated the popular culture of their boyhood for imaginative repurposing in their art. Michael Chabon’s novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay traces the lives of two men who become comic-book creators. In Jonathan Lethem’s The Fortress of Solitude, two boys find a magic ring they use to take on superpowers; the title itself evokes the fictional fortress of Superman. Back then, I remember feeling that the equivalent was not possible for