culture
The Antidote to the Irreversibility of Life: Hannah Arendt on What Forgiveness Really Means
Maria Popovathemarginalian.orgThe writing is getting better. The ideas are getting worse. There’s a new genre of essay that other academics reading this will instantly recognize, a clumsy collaboration between students and Silicon Valley. I call it glittering sludge .
Brian Klaas • The Death of the Student Essay—and the Future of Cognition

The most frequent complaint I hear about streaming services is that they don’t pay artists fairly. Michael Pelczynski, the former Vice President of Strategy at SoundCloud, took that complaint personally. Over his five years with the streaming service, he helped conceive and implement a novel payment scheme that received much praise.
In an hour-long... See more
In an hour-long... See more
Chris Dalla Riva • Music's Past & Future: Talking with Michael Pelczynski

Her discovery may have been crucial to creating the atomic bomb, but she wanted nothing to do with it nor wanted to be depicted in films about it. And I believe Meitner’s refusal to participate in the weaponization of her work on moral grounds makes her more worthy of commemoration than Oppenheimer. She chose humanity over notoriety.
Olivia Campbell • Lauding Lise Meitner, Who Said ‘No’ to the Atomic Bomb
Houellebecq wore his biography, professional identity, marital status, and psychiatric condition – everything modern society considers intrinsic and defining of the individual – as an amusing costume to be played with and discarded. He frees himself through his work from the straitjacket of ‘identity politics’ which placates its prisoners, like a... See more