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Writing
fromVulture
1 day ago

Ben Lerner's Big Feelings

Ben Lerner's new book, Transcription, explores the complexities of authorial voice and the nature of interviews through a unique narrative structure.
Books
fromThe Atlantic
1 day ago

Unconventional Novels About Conventional People

Aging revolutionaries and conformists share parallel narratives of disillusionment and the loss of youthful dreams in recent literature.
Right-wing politics
fromThe Atlantic
2 days ago

The Intellectual Right Is Mad at the Mess It's Made

William F. Buckley Jr. confronted the John Birch Society to maintain conservatism's mainstream appeal, a challenge echoed by conservatives in subsequent decades.
Mental health
fromwww.theguardian.com
3 days ago

The manosphere is dead and no one cares about Andrew Tate any more': the poet taking on toxic masculinity

Sam Browne uses performance poetry to address mental health and masculinity, aiming to change perceptions and support men in their struggles.
Women in technology
fromSlate Magazine
4 days ago

The Lindy West Controversy Is Obscuring Something Important

Millennial feminism faces criticism and perceived decline, highlighted by Lindy West's memoir reflecting personal and societal contradictions.
Writing
fromThe Nation
3 days ago

My Years-Long Fight to Say "They"

The author reflects on their journey of writing about their experiences as a Jehovah's Witness and the challenges faced in publishing.
Right-wing politics
fromWIRED
4 days ago

The Promise of 'Woke 2' Is Fueling a Leftist Fever Dream

Donald Trump's 2024 victory was seen as a rejection of 'woke' ideology, leading to a culture of offensive speech without fear of consequences.
Books
fromThe Atlantic
5 days ago

How Long Can You Live Your Ideals?

Pat Calhoun chooses parenthood over radicalism, paralleling Elsa Haddish's struggle between her militant past and raising her daughter safely.
#liberalism
Writing
fromwww.theguardian.com
5 days ago

Transcription by Ben Lerner review a stunning exploration of technology and storytelling

The novel explores themes of touch, familial inheritance, and the complexities of communication through a narrative involving a final interview with a mentor.
fromwww.theguardian.com
2 weeks ago

The Guardian view on the legacy of Jurgen Habermas: philosophical sustenance for illiberal times | Editorial

The Theory of Communicative Action, his 1980s magnum opus, was not (to put it mildly) as accessible as some of his newspaper opinion pieces. But its central idea—that our nature as linguistic beings puts reason and the search for consensus at the core of who we are—remains an antidote both to intellectual relativism and Trumpian realism, which elevates national or individual self-interest above all other sources of human motivation.
Philosophy
Psychology
fromPsychology Today
2 weeks ago

How Social, Cultural, and Political Structures Influence Our Feelings

Modern society's structural features—individualism, capitalism, democracy, and meritocracy—shape emotions that reflect both internalization of the outer world and externalization of inner experience.
Books
fromJezebel
1 week ago

'Maybe a New Audience Will Tell Me What They Think,' Lindy West Joked a Week Before Her Memoir Release

Lindy West's memoir, Adult Braces, has sparked intense reactions, particularly regarding its themes of polyamory and personal vulnerability.
Scala
fromMedium
3 weeks ago

Rage Against the (Plurality of) Effect Systems

Open-source effect systems provide genuine benefits for safe parallel programming but create systemic problems through their pervasive, infectious nature that spreads throughout entire codebases.
Women
fromThe New Yorker
3 weeks ago

The Feminist Visionary Who Lost the Plot

Elizabeth Cady Stanton's experience of discrimination at the 1840 World Anti-Slavery Convention catalyzed her feminist activism, though her sense of intellectual superiority later contributed to bigoted views.
Right-wing politics
fromThe Burton Book Review
1 week ago

Leah Litman, Lawless: How the Supreme Court Runs on Conservative Grievance, Fringe Theories, and Bad Vibes (Simon & Schuster, 2025) - The Burton Book Review

The current Supreme Court is advancing a conservative agenda that undermines democracy and marginalizes historically disadvantaged groups.
Books
fromwww.theguardian.com
1 week ago

A new world is being born': author Rebecca Solnit on the slow revolution' the far right cannot tolerate

Rebecca Solnit emphasizes a slow revolution in societal attitudes, contrasting it with the immediate crises of fascism and despair.
US Elections
fromThe Nation
3 weeks ago

George Packer's Liberal Imagination

The Short American Century, spanning 1945-2016, progressed through four distinct eras of confidence, skepticism, exuberance, and hubris before ending with Trump's 2016 election, which shattered liberal consensus about permanent American dominance.
Psychology
fromPsychology Today
3 weeks ago

Why You Don't Have to Choose Just One Version of Yourself

Humans possess multiple self-aspects across different roles and contexts, and greater self-complexity provides psychological resilience against stress and setbacks.
Right-wing politics
fromwww.theguardian.com
2 weeks ago

Chain of Ideas by Ibram X Kendi review anatomy of a conspiracy theory

The great replacement theory is a complex ideological framework linking various ideas about race, democracy, and authoritarianism, as outlined by Ibram X Kendi.
Philosophy
fromHarvard Gazette
3 weeks ago

Where have all the public intellectuals gone? - Harvard Gazette

Public intellectuals are essential in democratic cultures to articulate unformed ideas and help citizens understand their values, but conditions supporting intellectual life in America are eroding due to social and economic shifts.
fromwww.berkeleyside.org
1 month ago

Around Berkeley: Rebecca Solnit, Michael Pollan, Jeff Chang book talks; Louise Pearl show

Louise Pearl's one-woman show Pass the Nails and Shame The Devil recounts the experience of her family's ordeal building their own house amid Oakland's 1980s crack epidemic as her strong-willed, Louisiana-born mother and gather a motley crew of men to make this dream home into a reality.
East Bay (California)
Social justice
fromenglish.elpais.com
4 weeks ago

Ta-Nehisi Coates, writer: Obama never understood how deep-seated racism is in the country that elected him'

Ta-Nehisi Coates uses on-the-ground reporting across Africa, the American South, and Palestine to expose how official narratives obscure truth and marginalize voices.
fromInsideHook
1 month ago

Are the Humanities Poised for an Academic Comeback?

Many colleges and universities have made cuts in these programs, often bolstering STEM programs at their expense. It's a situation that has sparked no small amount of impassioned editorials. The headline of a recent article at The Guardian by Alice Speri referenced an 'existential crisis at U.S. universities,' and Speri's reporting features numerous examples of undergraduate and graduate programs facing cuts or outright elimination.
Higher education
Books
fromIntelligencer
3 weeks ago

Ibram X. Kendi Can't Separate His Fame From How to Be an Antiracist

Dr. Ibram X. Kendi's antiracism framework defines racism as a descriptive policy term based on material effects, not a personal identity, though institutions misappropriated his work for performative diversity initiatives.
fromDefector
1 month ago

A Complimentary Profile Of Jason Lee That Was Surprisingly Difficult To Publish | Defector

It's kind of a little local community hang spot as much as it is a retail store. You could buy analog cameras or photo books at the shop. If you're like me, you could browse in order to motivate yourself to dig your old film camera out of the closet. Or you could just hang out, talk art, and make friends.
Los Angeles
#trump-presidency
Books
fromFuncheap
3 weeks ago

After Hours: The Tension That Divides Us with Claude M. Steele

Trust building mitigates tensions between people with different identities and power levels through psychological understanding of historical wariness rather than bias alone.
Portland
fromOregon ArtsWatch * Arts & Culture News
1 month ago

A politics of hope: Author Christopher Mathias talks about his book, 'To Catch a Fascist' * Oregon ArtsWatch

Christopher Mathias documents anti-fascist activists who use espionage and investigation to expose and undermine white supremacist and neo-Nazi extremists operating in America.
Philosophy
fromApaonline
1 month ago

The Humanities Challenge: Expanding the Circle of Philosophy

Philosophy offers transformative insights and vision into human life, and public humanities must evolve beyond traditional academic formats to make philosophy accessible to broader audiences through innovative, engaging methods.
Books
fromHarvard Gazette
4 weeks ago

That's a book? - Harvard Gazette

Italo Calvino used tarot card decks as a computational system to generate interconnected narratives, predating modern AI by decades and demonstrating how structured systems can create complex literary works.
Books
fromInsideHook
1 month ago

What to Read Right Now, According to Cool Men

Men discuss fiction books they recommend others read, including Pulitzer Prize winners, memoirs, and fantasy novels to combat reading disengagement.
Philosophy
fromThe New Yorker
1 month ago

What Walter Benjamin Knew

Walter Benjamin combined stubborn unworldliness with startling prescience, maintaining intellectual pursuits despite internment and imminent danger.
fromPsychology Today
1 month ago

The Politics of Looking Away

Like us, you may feel paralyzed in the face of the relentless images of violence we see every day. Suffering children, military occupations, the devastated neighborhoods, the cries of parents mourning their dead-these scenes haunt us. Whether it is happening in Palestine or Minneapolis, we are witnesses to suffering, and that witnessing takes a heavy toll. Clearly, the devastating situations in the West Bank and Gaza and in Minneapolis differ
Social justice
Europe politics
fromThe New Yorker
2 months ago

The Country That Made Its Own Canon

Sweden released a national culture canon, sparking controversy over national identity as immigration rises and the nationalist Sweden Democrats gain political influence.
Science
fromwww.theguardian.com
1 month ago

A World Appears by Michael Pollan review a kaleidoscopic exploration of consciousness

Machine metaphors limit understanding of consciousness; plants and other organisms display complex, cognitive-like behaviors that call for broader, non-mechanistic frameworks.
fromwww.theguardian.com
1 month ago

Matthew Kelly: Something extinct I'd bring back to life? Wokeness a good thing that's been hijacked'

Born in Lancashire, Matthew Kelly, 75, studied drama at Manchester Polytechnic and acted at the Liverpool Everyman. He moved into TV, presenting Game for a Laugh in the 80s, You Bet! in the 90s and Stars in their Eyes from 1993 to 2004. Having returned to the stage, he received an Olivier award in 2004 for his role in Of Mice and Men in London's West End.
Television
Media industry
fromThe New Yorker
2 months ago

What Bari Weiss Wants

Bari Weiss, founder of The Free Press, was appointed editor-in-chief of CBS News by David Ellison, surprising observers and promising institutional changes.
US news
fromThe Atlantic
1 month ago

The Epstein Emails Show How the Powerful Talk About Race

Jeffrey Epstein promoted race science by sharing white-supremacist race-and-IQ material and seeking contact with proponents who claimed genetic bases for intelligence differences.
fromMedievalists.net
1 month ago

Yuval Noah Harari: From Medievalist to Global Cultural Prophet - Medievalists.net

Trained as a historian of medieval warfare, Yuval Noah Harari has become one of the most influential public intellectuals in the world, shaping global debates about artificial intelligence, human identity, and the future of society. Richard Utz traces how a medievalist moved from specialist scholarship to cultural prophecy-and why the habits of medieval history still matter for understanding his voice today.
History
Film
fromwww.theguardian.com
1 month ago

My cultural awakening: Thirteen influenced my hedonistic youth, until a psychotic episode ended it'

A 13-year-old experienced a sudden shift into self-destructive rebellious behavior influenced by peers and the film Thirteen, seeking acceptance and identity.
World news
fromPrx
1 month ago

The World

Jimmy Lai sentenced to 20 years; Milan Cortina bans PFAS ski wax; Sanae Takaichi won snap election; Albania reviews 45 years of Hoxha films.
fromenglish.elpais.com
2 months ago

Timothy Morton, activist: The United States is a massive concentration camp'

Timothy Morton is one of the authors leading the new wave of environmentalism. The British thinker, whose latest work is provocative and extremely personal, takes it as a point of fact that the destruction of the planet is in process. Admired by the singer Bjork and Hans Ulrich Obrist, the artistic director of the modernist London gallery Serpentine, Morton comes across as a punk creative, one who has kept up the fight against preconceived thinking.
Environment
fromwww.theguardian.com
1 month ago

Gender studies courses are shutting down across the US. The Epstein files reveal why | Joan Wallach Scott

The move to cancel gender studies is explicitly justified as a way to comply with Donald Trump's executive order of last year titled Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government. That document makes the biological reality of sex a matter not of science but of law.
Higher education
fromDefector
2 months ago

Bari Weiss Is The Symptom | Defector

"My general view here," the CBS News editor-in-chief wrote in a memo before shelving the now-infamous 60 Minutes report on El Salvador's CECOT concentration camp, "is that we do our viewers the best service by presenting them with the full context they need to assess the story. In other words, I believe we need to do more reporting here." Expediency, personal prerogative, servility to power, all smuggled under the cover of journalistic scruple:
Media industry
fromwww.theguardian.com
2 months ago

America feels like a country on the brink of an authoritarian takeover | Francine Prose

When we talk about our inability to pay attention, to concentrate, we often mean and blame our phones. It's easy, it's meant to be easy. One flick of our index finger transports us from disaster to disaster, from crisis to crisis, from maddening lie to maddening lie. Each new unauthorized attack and threatened invasion grabs the headlines, until something else takes its place, and meanwhile the government's attempts to terrorize and silence the people of our country continue.
US politics
fromThe New Yorker
1 month ago

Briefly Noted Book Reviews

This devastating début novel takes the form of an oral history about a tragedy that shatters a family. At its heart is a couple who arrived in the U.S. in the late nineteen-nineties as refugees from Afghanistan. They prospered, and brought up four children in an affluent suburb in Virginia. Rotating testimonies from people they know-family friends, a cousin, lawyers-offer theories about what led to the novel's central catastrophe.
Books
Social justice
fromMedium
3 years ago

Confessions of a Race Writer

Race writers risk performing a narrowed, victimized 'blackness' while often holding privilege and a platform to speak for marginalized people.
US politics
fromThe Atlantic
1 month ago

How Not to Understand Slavery

Right-wing media downplays U.S. chattel slavery, portrays progressive critiques as exaggerated, and contrasts that sanitization with claims that slavery motivated American independence.
Writing
fromThe Atlantic
1 month ago

Literary Theory

Words carry multiple meanings; 'swallow' embodies both bird and ingestion, showing language's power to alter perception and emotional states.
US politics
fromIndependent
2 months ago

Colin Murphy: Is America now a fascist state? Here are the people who beg to differ

Many outside liberal urban centers see anger over ICE as legitimate but believe city-based commentators exaggerate and amplify fears of authoritarianism.
Social justice
fromThe Nation
1 month ago

The Truth About Interracial Intimacy

Racialized desire can make race itself the object of erotic attraction, producing unease and complex social and power dynamics within interracial interactions.
fromThe Nation
2 months ago

How Was Sociology Invented?

What I mean is that 'religion' was the way the classical sociologists like like Emil Durkheim, Georg Simmel, and Max Weber first managed to turn 'society' into something you could actually study. Durkheim's Elementary Forms defines religion as a system of beliefs and practices tied to sacred things, and what matters there is how those beliefs and rituals bind people together into a moral community-the church. For him, the believer isn't wrong to think he depends on a higher power.
Philosophy
fromwww.theguardian.com
2 months ago

Newly released files shed new light on Chomsky and Epstein relationship

The close friendship that Noam Chomsky maintained with Jeffrey Epstein continued being detailed extensively among millions of investigative records pertaining to the late convicted sex offender recently released by the US justice department, including Chomsky fantasizing about the Caribbean island. In Friday's tranche of the so-called Epstein files, which built upon earlier disclosures of their close social ties, there is no indication that the famed academic and linguist was referring
US politics
fromemptywheel
2 months ago

Regime Change By Patrick Deneen - emptywheel

The readings in my last series led me to see the genuine hatred conservatives have for what they call variously liberal hegemony, liberal ideology, left-wing ideology, and other names. David Brooks, newly ensconced at Yale and The Atlantic, is just sure it was liberals who caused Trump's wins, with their snotty "knowledge", and "refined tastes". I mocked this nonsense, but apparently Brooks was serious about the super bad feelings his people have about such things.
Right-wing politics
Social justice
fromPsychology Today
1 month ago

Truth and Prejudice

Xenophobia in media and policy damages immigrant health and fuels prejudice; diversified news sources and cross-group social engagement help reduce stereotyping.
fromApaonline
2 months ago

Philosophy at the Threshold of Belonging

I grew up in West Baltimore where I experienced homelessness for almost the entirety of high school. For me, philosophy emerged in situations of precarity and uncertainty. Those formative years, spent not so much in a single home as in a patchwork of many, shaped what are now some of my central philosophical concerns: belonging, exclusion, and the status of those at the margins of society, those at the threshold of belonging.
Philosophy
US politics
fromwww.aljazeera.com
1 month ago

Chris Hedges on decline of the American empire

Hardline policies, ICE raids, and political pressure on media since Trump's return signal expanded presidential power and growing threats to US democratic institutions.
fromApaonline
2 months ago

Why We Should Doubt that Academic Philosophy Benefits the Broader Public

A professional philosopher outside the academy walls can act as a popularizer (the goal here is to make philosophy more accessible to the general public), an applied ethicist (the major task is to offer an analysis of various specific moral issues that arise within a society), and a public intellectual (I limit this role to questions that have political connotation). Of course, there are overlaps between these roles and they certainly do not exhaust all possible forms of public engagement of a professional philosopher.
Philosophy
fromenglish.elpais.com
1 month ago

Jung Chang, writer: If people thought China was so wonderful, they would go there'

Yes, because I grew up under Mao's rule and fear was ingrained in our hearts. Today I try to overcome it, not feel it and move on with my life, but it's still there.
Books
Books
fromThe Atlantic
1 month ago

The Fine Balance Required of an 'Authorial Rant'

Lionel Shriver's political provocations increasingly overshadow her fiction; A Better Life reads like an op-ed and renders characters sociologically rather than psychologically.
fromThe Atlantic
2 months ago

Bring Back Moral Fiction

It was once commonly understood that fiction was in the wisdom business, that it offered not only aesthetic pleasure but also moral improvement. This function of literature was not tough to spot. One of the first English novels was Samuel Richardson's 1740 work, Pamela: Or, Virtue Rewarded-a title not meant ironically. Through the 19th century, many authors turned directly to the reader with philosophical and social (if sometimes ironic) commentary: "It is a truth universally acknowledged"; "It was the best of times"; "All happy families are alike." For readers not up to the challenge of full George Eliot novels, her enterprising publisher compiled a volume of Eliot's many Wise, Witty, and Tender Sayings, in order to more broadly distribute "a morality as pure as it is impassioned."
Books
Books
fromDefector
2 months ago

Fanfiction's Total Cultural Victory | Defector

Fifty Shades of Grey's transition from fanfiction to mainstream publishing transformed the industry, proving fanfiction-originated romances can be highly lucrative and culturally influential.
Books
fromwww.theguardian.com
2 months ago

'How do you really tell the truth about this moment?': George Saunders on ghosts, mortality and Trump's America

Ghost stories are used to explore mortality, memories, and ethical legacy, forcing characters to confront past actions and discover more truthful perspective.
fromThe Atlantic
2 months ago

A Biography Without 'The Boring Bits'

Sophia Stewart poses a choice that many biographers struggle with: "what to do with the boring bits."
Books
Books
fromInsideHook
1 month ago

What to Read Right Now, According to Cool Men

Men continue to read fiction; male readers recommend a diverse set of books, including literary fiction, nonfiction, and widely endorsed titles.
fromMedium
4 years ago

bell hooks saved me

bell hooks saved me. I say that in all sincerity. At a critical time in my life, when I was at my lowest point, it was bell hooks, through her books, who pulled me out of a hole of profound depression and set me on a path of self-renewal on which I have remained ever since. Newly divorced with two very young sons, I was determined to give a better fatherhood experience than the one I had.
Books
fromThe New Yorker
2 months ago

How Do You Write About the Inexplicable?

Rational skepticism coexists with a persistent tendency to personify evil and read coincidences as omens.
Books
fromThe Nation
2 months ago

George Whitmore's Unsparing Queer Fiction

A 1987 novel titled Nebraska uses the state's flat, isolating landscape to frame a family chamber drama that serves as an oblique allegory of AIDS.
Books
fromPortland Monthly
1 month ago

Chuck Klosterman's 'Football' Journeys into America's Media-Addled Soul

NFL football is simultaneously conservative and liberal, highly edited with few surprises, and exerts vast societal influence while facing safety and cultural contradictions.
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