Hello. Something happened last week, and most Gmail subscribers got Kat’s Kable in spam. I think one of the links I shared was the culprit, and I will double check from next time onwards. If you didn’t catch last week’s, it’s here. Here’s this week’s.
- Why Time’s Trump Cover Is a Subversive Work of Political Art - This is just amazingly fun to read! Forward magazine analyses the cover and goes on to say that this is one of the best designed TIME covers ever. And The Donald’s even been given horns!
This visual-temporal shift in a sense mirrors a lot of the drives that fueled Trump’s rise. Trump ran a campaign based on regressive policies and attitudes — anti-environmental protection, anti-abortion, pro-coal, etc. This election was not just about regressive policy choices, but also about traditional values (defined primarily by the Christian right), about nostalgia for American greatness and security, about nostalgia for a pre-globalized world. - Trump says the press mangles his “beautiful flowing sentences.” We asked linguists to weigh in. - More Trump fun! This is also very very nice and informative. The reason you cannot really transcribe Trump’s speeches is because they’re mostly made up on the spot; he hasn’t got scripted speeches, but rather he knows how to tell stories to grab the audience’s attention.
- Memes do not matter - I’ve read a lot lately about the importance of memes, and social media in general in the workings of the world. This is a nice and sensible take on the actual effect of memes in the US’ recent elections.
- Detransitioning: a story about discovery - What happens when you transition genders and then decide you want to go back?
This is another great piece from the same website as above (Outline). - How Two Trailblazing Psychologists Turned the World of Decision Science Upside Down - If you haven’t read a little of the brilliant book Thinking, Fast and Slow, you should. This is a very nice bio of the author of that book (Daniel Kahneman) as well as his long-term collaborator, Amos Trevsky. It’s written by the author of another famous book, Michael Lewis (he wrote Moneyball).
- The real Spectre - 1843 magazine talks about ’Ndrangheta, arguably the most successful international criminal organisation. It’s the only mafia that has replicated itself across many countries, and therefore attains its global reach.
- Bringing up the bodies in Bosnia - In Bosnia, an international organisation is digging up mass graves and using cutting edge scientific research to give victims’ families some sense of closure and justice. This is a very very sad piece (it seems like I never have a dearth of sad or moving pieces every week).
Some people are identified on the basis of just a few bones, and it is up to the families to decide whether they have enough to bury or whether to wait for more. “People find their missing, but not complete,” says Amor Mašovic, who set up the Muslim-Croat Federation Missing Persons Commission after the war. “They may bury a few fingers and a leg, and five years later there’s a knock at the door, it’s the left leg now, two years later a piece of skull. It’s part of that awful limbo.” - ‘We Are Orphans Here’ - I just read Joe Sacco’s excellent graphic novel Palestine, and this piece is just that, but shorter and a little more recent, and also just as heartbreaking.
Later I told myself and everyone else how wonderful it was in the Shuafat camp. How safe I felt. How positive Baha was. All of that still feels true to me. But I also insisted, to myself and everyone else, that Baha never expressed any fears for his own safety. In looking at my notes, I see now that my insistence on this point was sheer will. A fiction. It’s right there in the notes. He said he was nervous. He said he’d been threatened.
Also in my notes, this:
Baha says, two types
1. Those who want to help make a better life
2. Those who want to destroy everything
And in parentheses: (Arms trade. Drugs trade. Construction profits. No oversight wanted.) - Edward Burtynsky’s Epic Landscapes - I discovered photographer Edward Burtynsky, and this long piece talks about his method, his vision, and also has beautiful photographs that he’s taken. Visual treat, and engaging.
- How (Almost) Everyone Failed to Prepare for Pearl Harbour - The high-stakes gamble and false assumptions that detonated Pearl Harbor 75 years ago.
