September 28, 2021
It’s the great god bird with its altar call
Matthew Brown at the Associated Press reports that the US Fish & Wildlife Service will declare on Wednesday that the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker (and 22 other species on the endangered species list) have gone extinct.
How To Not Suck At Writing
In a follow-up to his previous piece on writing, Defector columnist Drew Magary discusses his techniques for improving at being a wordsmith. [more inside]
A museum gave an artist $84,000 in cash. He delivered blank canvases.
chunky cubby chasers
Five Tropes Local TV News Uses to Dehumanize Homeless People
"Rightwing demagogues like Tucker Carlson incite against the homeless on a nightly basis, but mainline outlets also help stigmatize the unhoused, only with more subtlety." Political writer Adam Johnson shines a light on 5 tropes commonly used to dehumanize the unhoused in mainstream news (with receipts).
…interwoven appreciation of the neural function with literary commentary
What Is Literature For? - A Symposium on Angus Fletcher’s “Wonderworks” (LARB): Three reviews of Wonderworks (two glowing, one scathing) and a reply by the author. Erik J. Larson: "All of this tech-talk injected into literature would seem superficial, perhaps, except that Fletcher makes an entirely convincing case that literature really does function like this, and that the form of the narrative is a key to understanding its impact on us and why we find these creations so important. While the neuroscientific accounts of what’s happening in our brains when we find love or let go of old sorrow might be debatable, the overall achievement of Wonderworks strikes me as immensely important. It’s rare in academic literary circles to find mainstream criticism of literature that reaches outside of theory and into the hearts and minds of real readers. Fletcher no doubt does this. The result is a fantastic tour through the world’s literature, an explanation of how it works as a technology, and a scientific discussion that opens the lid on our complex brains, tying it all to our most ancient and cherished activity: reading stories." [more inside]
COVID19 and the American empire
The for-profit, Core-Civic-owned Stewart Detention Center (SDC) recently saw their Covid19 case counts surpass the 1000 mark. Nationally, there have been over 6000 confirmed cases of COVID19 in ICE detention facilities [more inside]
Clean air is now the ultimate luxury
The history of Molekule and the business of selling clean air / Molekule: The Worst Air Purifier We've Ever Tested [more inside]
When Dasani left home
Many of you may remember the story of Dasani, the homeless girl in rapidly gentrifying Fort Greene whose experiences were chronicled in a NYT article several years ago. This article follows up on her experiences since, as she attends a boarding school for lower-income students.
Do Americans Know What a Massive Ripoff American Life Really Is?
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