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Weekly Picks – August 18, 2024
Credit (left to right): Umar Nadeem for The Atlantic; Jose Camões Silva / Wikimedia; IDF/ GPO/ Sipa/ Rex/ Shutterstock; Eric Thayer/ ReutersAs mentioned last week, this is the final ‘Weekly Picks’ post to this blog. I am soon departing for some travels and new updates will be shared in October when I return to Canada.
While this 33-week exercise highlighting 265 pieces across 104 sites (plus some archival material) has been fun, it must come to an end as I refocus my efforts. Expect long form content to continue to appear in this space, though from a personal lens.
This week’s collection:
- The melting brain
- Fatal Chase: Cops and the Illusion of Control
- As a former IDF soldier and historian of genocide, I was deeply disturbed by my recent visit to Israel
- A Trip to One of the Hottest Cities on the Planet
- What if we learned contemplation like we do arts or sports?
Introductory excerpts quoted below. For full text (and context) or video, please view the original piece.
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Weekly Picks – August 11, 2024
Credit (left to right): Piotr Kowalczyk; Makrem Larnaout; Moises Saman/ Magnum, for The New York Times; Mark Harris for Vox/ Getty Images; Stephen Lam/ ReutersDear reader, next week’s collection of articles will be the final ‘Weekly Picks’ post.
As newsletter subscribers were informed recently, In Difference will be on a brief hiatus from August 19 to the end of September, while I am travelling without regular access to the internet.
I have decided to use this interlude as an opportunity to refresh some of my initial aims in creating this reflective space.
Wishing you a pleasant week ‘neath the Perseids ahead.
This week’s collection:
- The Parable of the Vulture
- A Worldmaking Plant
- The Future Before Us
- Medicine is plagued by untrustworthy clinical trials. How many studies are faked or flawed?
- The Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples
- How the most powerful environmental groups help greenwash Big Meat’s climate impact
- Building a Public Energy Commons
- The War the World Forgot
- Who Do They Think They Are?
- Milky Way Over Tunisia
Introductory excerpts quoted below. For full text (and context) or video, please view the original piece.
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Weekly Picks – August 4, 2024
Credit (left to right): Katalin Balog/ 3 Quarks Daily; Kamal Kishore/ Reuters; pics721/ Shutterstock; Petra PéterffyThis week’s collection:
- American Descent
- ‘Nobody knows what I know’: how a loyal RSS member abandoned Hindu nationalism
- Artificial Wombs When?
- Israeli Journalist Gideon Levy on the Killing of Gaza
- Excavating a Language at the End of the World
- What Is Left of the Mind
- Debt Is a Labor Issue
Introductory excerpts quoted below. For full text (and context) or video, please view the original piece.
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Weekly Picks – July 28, 2024
Credit (left to right): Noma Bar; Abdullah Farouk/ Unsplash; David Bacon; Gent Shkullaku/ AFP/ Getty Images; Harol BustosThis week’s collection:
- Secrets of a ransomware negotiator
- Who’s Afraid of the Student Intifada?
- Adventures Close to Home
- Should We Abolish Prisons?
- Who Owns Garbage? – Understanding Illegal Recycling Workers
- US Corporations Pump Aquifers Dry as Police Kill Water Defenders in Rural Mexico
- The dangerous effects of rising sea temperatures
- Not only kafala
- The Physics of Cold Water May Have Jump-Started Complex Life
Introductory excerpts quoted below. For full text (and context) or video, please view the original piece.
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Weekly Picks – July 21, 2024
Credit (left to right): Adrià Fruitós; Remy Steinegger/ Wikimedia; Harland Miller, Courtesy of White Cube Gallery; Staffan Widstrand/ Rewilding EuropeThis week’s collection:
- Literature Without Literature
- How Europe’s only Indigenous group is inspiring a greener Christianity
- How Microfinance Became the ‘It’ Development Program
- To a Starving Orphan Who Died Alone in Rubble
- Philanthropy’s Power Brokers
Further reading on Bill Gates, the Gates Foundation, and broader issues with billionaire-led philanthropic endeavors (the first three pieces are by Tim Schwab, who is quoted in the article above):
- Bill Gates’s Charity Paradox
- While the Poor Get Sick, Bill Gates Just Gets Richer
- Bill Gates, Climate Warrior. And Super Emitter.
- How Bill Gates Impeded Global Access to Covid Vaccines
- Bill Gates’s Philanthropic Giving Is a Racket
- Dark cloud over good works of Gates Foundation
Introductory excerpts quoted below. For full text (and context) or video, please view the original piece.
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Weekly Picks – July 14, 2024
Credit, left: Jack Jen Gieseking. Credit, center (clockwise from top-left): Eyðfinnur Olsen/ Alamy Stock Photo; Pratyush Dhawan; Nesma Moharam; AP Photo/ Ng Han Guan; Creative Touch Imaging Ltd. / NurPhoto via Getty Images; Etienne Laurent / AFP / Getty. Credit, right: Selman Design.This week’s collection:
- Dreaming of a Great World
- Five Ring Circus
- Queer Maps, Data, Devices, and Resistance
- Blood in the Water, Food on the Table, Protesters on the Shore
- 26 million tons of clothing end up in China’s landfills each year, propelled by fast fashion
- How gamification took over the world
- Inside Ziklag, the Secret Organization of Wealthy Christians Trying to Sway the Election and Change the Country
- I Went to Death Valley to Experience 129 Degrees
- A Deal With the Devil: What the Age-Old Faustian Bargain Reveals About the Modern World
- Canada Is Arming the World’s Bullies
Introductory excerpts quoted below. For full text (and context) or video, please view the original piece.
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Weekly Picks – July 7, 2024
Credit (left to right): The Open Syllabus Galaxy; Brian Gratwicke / Flickr; Jose Miguel Picon Chimelis; Isai Ramos / Unsplash.This week’s collection:
- Galaxy Brain
- Learning to love monsters
- One fish, two fish, 3,000 fish…
- Infiltrating the Family
- Dragon-shaped aurora and ‘scream of a dying star’ revealed as 2024 Astronomy Photographer of the Year finalists
Introductory excerpts quoted below. For full text (and context) or video, please view the original piece.
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Weekly Picks – June 30, 2024
Credit (left): Alphavector/ Shutterstock. Credit (center, clockwise from bottom left): Bruno Barbey/ Magnum Photos; Ahmad Al-Rubaye/ Getty Images; Wired staff/ Getty Images. Credit (right): James O’Brien for Quanta Magazine.This week’s collection:
- Exit 238
- Agreeing to Our Harm
- Why the ‘Costs of Doing Business’ Are Costing Us Our Lives
- Computation Is All Around Us, and You Can See It if You Try
- The Power of Physician Empathy
- Rule by Militia
- The psychology of oppression and liberation
- Pooping on the Moon Is a Messy Business
Introductory excerpts quoted below. For full text (and context) or video, please view the original piece.
Linked here but not quoted below, some ‘fact sheets’ shared in the past week:
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Weekly Picks – June 23, 2024
Credit (left to right): Agnes Jonas; E+ via Getty Images; Film4 / Access / Polish Film Institute / JW Films / Extreme Emotions / The New Inquiry.This week’s collection:
- Climate, State, and Utopia*
- When Police Shootings Don’t Kill: The Data That Gets Left Behind
- The Sentimentality of Evil
- The Beekeeper in Kathmandu
- The Evolution of Empire
- Ghosts on the Water
*The new forum published this week in Boston Review. Responses can also be found at the link.
Introductory excerpts quoted below. For full text (and context) or video, please view the original piece.
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Weekly Picks – June 16, 2024
Credit (left to right, top to bottom): Frederic J. Brown/ AFP via Getty Images; Dan Kitwood/ Getty Images; Pete Niesen / Shutterstock; March Avery, Evening Reading, 1972/ ©2024 Artists Rights Society (ARS), photo by Josh Schaedel; Carlos Jasso/ReutersThis week’s collection:
- Neymar: Bolivia’s Ladder Boy
- Inside Mexico’s anti-avocado militias
- Should I Have Kids?
- The Internet Supercharged the Exploitation of Black Culture
- The Great Video Game Swindle
- The prison system isn’t ‘broken’ – it’s designed to traumatize black people en masse
- The Oldest Ecosystems on Earth
Introductory excerpts quoted below. For full text (and context) or video, please view the original piece.