This clever and compelling collection of essays sings the praises of 10 thrilling artists whose work has been excluded from the classical canon
— Read on www.theguardian.com/books/2022/jul/04/sound-within-sound-by-kate-molleson-review-a-challenge-to-the-gatekeepers-of-classical-music
Looks like a good read.
The Supreme Court just said: no constitutional right to privacy, it’s up to the people’s representatives to decide what is and isn’t allowed. So, if you feel strongly about the issue, VOTE. Make it clear that you will only vote for someone who declares that abortion is a woman’s choice, regardless of the rest of their agenda.
Same with guns. If this is the issue you care about most strongly, make it clear that you will only vote for someone who will make it all but impossible to own a gun, and will go to work to put language in the constitution to make clear there is no right to own a firearm or carry one in public.
The Court is unelected. They will be there for a while. However, your State representatives can only exercise the power you give them. Of the People, by the People, for the People. These guys aren’t kings. VOTE!!
I’m noticing I have started to have a visceral reaction to reading phrases like “in order to address the problem, we must do …” or “the [govenment|business leaders|the public] must [change|fix|…]”.
The group or person to whom this imperative is addressed hasn’t done anything like what they’re being instructed to do thus far for a variety of reasons (even if, perhaps especially if, the group being addressed is “us”). Perhaps that’s because they have a vested interest in the status quo. Perhaps because they don’t see the issue the writer has identified as a problem. Perhaps they just can’t be bothered.
Whatever. A strident “must” demand isn’t going to get you where you want to go.
www.nytimes.com/2022/05/15/world/australia/covid-deaths.html
I hate to rag on about this again, but here it is in an article about the disparity in Covid outcomes between Australia (and New Zealand) and the US, and it locates the root cause in the culture of trust in the former countries and its lack in the latter. People ask me from time to time what the difference between NZ and the US is, and this is what I tell them. I illustrate it with the story of the stolen canoe carrier from the first weeks of my being here, and how I came to understand the problem. And so, it’s not just a cultural annoyance, it’s responsible for millions of deaths. And maybe the eventual disintegration of the society.
If elites don’t learn to swallow their pride, nihilism will swallow us all.
— Read on americandreaming.substack.com/p/the-people-are-morons-but-we-must
Source: Pluralistic: 22 Apr 2022 – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
Another on-the-mark Doctorow column. Particularly liked the “why we need regulation” section that links our inability to know everything about the stuff we do and use to do it with the need for a verifiably independent truth-discovery process.
Like my daddy used to play
The tension between information “authorities” and the information free-for-all that we live in now. The author suggests it’s not either-or.
Track 3, “In The Traditions”, is nice, even if I say so myself … I thought I’d lost the master, but dBrown has all these things in some cupboard somewhere.
Quem Deus vult perdere, prius dementat: when the gods have decreed that a king must fall, they fill him first with folly.
The Moors in Spain, Stanley Lane-Poole
Would that it were so for our current nemesis, the self-proclaimed Tsar of All the Russias.