The movie wears well, and is certainly better than I remembered, but time has also made it a different film, in certain ways closer to Shakespeare than it used to be or was probably meant to be. Or closer to a certain Shakespeare, the one who loves terrible jokes and cheerfully allows them to accompany violence and distress.
Reading
The letters page from London Review of Books Vol. 45 No. 3 (Thursday 19 January 2023)
The art of biography appears to the prince to be a pane of clear glass through which the truth will finally be revealed to the reader. Harry’s truth is a cartoon strip of saucy entertainments and shouty jeremiads masquerading as a critique of the establishment, and it simply couldn’t be more riveting.
Table of contents from London Review of Books Vol. 45 No. 3 (Thursday 19 January 2023)
The postwar welfare state, with its implicit recognition of human need, produced public domains and clinical spaces in which the state was cast as maternal surrogate to a population of child citizens. If Nazism had demonstrated the triumph of the superego’s capacity to punish, with ‘Hitler daddy’ as the authoritarian father, only a maternal approach could avert future catastrophe.
If it is the job of a poet to cast spells, H.D. was very good at it. She was a master of the striking launch, the bravura speech act, sustained intensity. Her work can seem like a high-wire performance, a hierophantic authority balancing over the abyss of kitsch; what’s amazing is how often she pulls it off.
If political advantage were the only consideration, you would expect the government to quickly settle disputes where the strikers have public support. A poll at the end of last year suggested that 66 per cent of people support striking nurses, with only 28 per cent opposed. That the government hasn’t come to an agreement with the Royal College of Nursing suggests either that they are poor tacticians, or that they are unwilling to countenance tax rises, no matter the cost to public services.
Vivekananda might have styled himself as an avatar of timeless Eastern wisdom, but he was a creature of steam trains and ocean liners. In the years between his appearance at the World’s Parliament of Religions in Chicago and his early death in 1902, he became the face of a quintessentially modern – because newly global – form of religiosity.
If ever a project has demonstrated the futility of conservation divorced from any concern with planning or social good, this is it. Yes, the original fabric of the building has been restored and ingeniously faked, but to what end? Who wants this Tate Modern for philistines, this Senate House for illiterates, this Berghain for people who can’t dance?
Russell Banks admitted that he wrote about the sort of people who voted for Trump; those were the people he came from. He wanted them to understand themselves better. But that didn’t mean he was an optimist. The real-life story of Sadie Marchant had a happy ending insofar as the Shakers were vindicated. Banks’s story is different.
Samuel Adams was an ascetic, indifferent to worldly baubles, decent comforts, respectable clothing. His republican vision for Massachusetts was forbiddingly austere, not an open marketplace free of intrusive British taxation, but what he termed, uninvitingly, a ‘Christian Sparta’. Religion was not then a private matter of belief unrelated to political attitudes.
In today's BCTV Daily Dispatch: The Rookie, Night Court, WWE/Vince McMahon, Doctor Who, South Park, The Three-Body Problem, SNL, and more!
At least some others are exhibiting some skepticism…
These types of statements are even more ridiculous than the NATO/CIA shills who predict the imminent collapse of the Chicoms https://t.co/kIny2dC0cn
— Darren J. Beattie 🌐 (@DarrenJBeattie) January 18, 2023
If you like some alternative to regime content Beattie is a good follow…
“It will be difficult to make an entire class completely ChatGPT cheatproof. But we can at least make it harder for students to use it to cheat.” (I’m reposting this to encourage those teaching philosophy courses to share what they are doing differently this semester so as to teach effectively in a world in which their students have access to ChatGPT. It was originally published on January 4th.) That’s Julia Staffel (University of Colorado, Boulder) in a helpful video she has put together on ChatGPT and its impact on teaching philosophy. In it, she explains what ChatGPT is, demonstrates how it can be used by students to cheat in ways that are difficult to detect, and discusses what we might do about it. You can watch it below: See our previous discussions on the topic: Conversation Starter: Teaching Philosophy in an Age of Large Language Models If You Can’t Beat Them, Join Them: GPT-3 Edition Oral Exams in Undergrad Courses? Talking Philosophy with ChatGPT Philosophers On GPT-3 (updated with replies by GPT-3)
Hannah Arendt and Isaiah Berlin both struggled with the upheaval of the 20th century. Arendt's The Human Condition wins the argument.
Unfortunately, it's prudent to be mindful of what our Davos overlords are plotting. But they seem mighty unsettled.
As ministers turn their focus to cutting away at workers’ basic civil liberties and waging war on their trade unions, the NHS crisis—said to be resulting in hundreds of deaths every week—continues. At the base of that crisis are a series of political decisions to underfund the health service and undervalue the workers within it. […]
The arrest of Andrew Tate – over allegations he denies – has put sex trafficking back on the news agenda. Sian Norris looks at the horrors inflicted on the industry's victims
- by Julie Pfeiffer
- by Psyche Film
In the first episode of Dissent, host Jordan Smith and legal analyst Jordan Rubin discuss the Supreme Court docket and what’s at stake.
The post Dissent Episode One: Tipping the Balance appeared first on The Intercept.
- by Nic Hooper
The process of making some products has grown more fragmented and complex, meaning now-global supply chains are more exposed to shocks, an economist said.