Articles curated by jsl, #329
on risk-taking, hedonism, exuberance, perfection, and more
Hi there!
From time to time, facebook advises me that although I am technically a millennial, I have a facebook history like a boomer; I used to post all kinds of nonsense on that platform (that was before I found my social media calling and migrated to this platform so I could just post articles every week). Here’s one I was reminded of this past week:
“I’m proud to say that I have hobbies. One of them is to read perfume ads in in-flight magazines. They keep me up to date on how inadequate I am as a man.
In this Azzaro advertisement for “Wanted,” the product name itself arrives with a cheeky double entendre to set the scene. You get the drift. According to the lyrical prose accompanying the picture, this perfume is for he who is capable of “timeless seduction” and who embodies: “hedonism, generosity, freedom and exuberance.” That may sound like Azzaro pulled random superlatives out of a hat, but as you read on, you learn that the fragrance is intended for the man for whom: “anything is possible, and everything turns out well.” In addition, please note that you should spray yourself with this enriched water only if you are a: “magnetic hero with the soul of a rebel who is taking chances with unswerving confidence.”
In other words, all you need to be worthy of this scent is everything, all the time, without any sign of vulnerability or any doubt that you are a tsunami of masculine perfection, a testosterone tornado of irresistibility.
For the visually inclined, I trust the combined symbolism of the eyebrow-band-aid, the 8:30pm-o’clock-shadow, and the Roman nose isn’t lost. In case it were and you’re still wondering how to perform your masculinity, I’ll direct your attention to the bottle itself: a revolver barrel; a subtle hint at aggressive machismo and that little extra oomph for when you embark on hedonistic risk-taking with unswerving confidence that everything will always turn out well.”
With that, please proceed to this week’s selection. Enjoy, keep reading, and have a risk-taking, hedonistic week full of confidence ahead.
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Settler sanctions are theatre. Hathaleen’s murder exposes the cover-up (Al-Jazeera)
Did you see that one of the co-creators of the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land was killed by an Israeli settler? And that the monstrous IDF monstrously raided his funeral a few days later? Perfect illustration of settler colonialism in action. Read more here.
How do the microplastics in our bodies affect our health? (BBC)
Isn’t it cute how we used to walk in hills and valleys and collect berries and drink water from springs and go on mushroom trips and domesticate wolfs and now we’ve filled the planet with tiny bits of plastic that destroy our bodies and minds from the inside? No one made us do this, we just kind of figured along the way that would be the greatest way to go about our human lives. Marvellous.
Missionaries using secret audio devices to evangelise Brazil’s isolated peoples (Guardian)
…And when some people continue to pick berries and drink water from the river, we do our best to pollute their minds with our nonsense. It’s unbelievable, really.
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I shared this blog post last week but for some reason, it was left out. Trying now again. And if there’s a glitch again, just google The Great Feminist Exhaustion. It’s a great piece!
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Israel’s Zones of Denial (New Yorker)
This article asks the most interesting and the hardest question I can think of when it comes to everything Isr/Pal: how is Israel going to survive this sadist mayhem as a democratic state—in its own eyes and those of the rest of the world? How can a nation move on from having committed crimes and brutalities of this nature? How does a country go from being a genocidal pariah to rejoining the club of legitimate actors? David Remnick is the one investigating these questions and I can’t think of someone more qualified.
Thinking Is Becoming a Luxury Good (NYTimes)
This is an important and scary piece. It hits on one of my biggest fears: that our (Western) societies become so unequal, so polarized that social cohesion and trust is entirely dissolved. This inequality can be material, financial, but it can also be cultural or intellectual, which is what this piece gets at. Imagine the long-term ramifications. Here’s an excerpt:
“Since so-called intelligence tests were invented around a century ago, until recently, international I.Q. scores climbed steadily in a phenomenon known as the Flynn effect. But there is evidence that our ability to apply that brain power is decreasing. According to a recent report, adult literacy scores leveled off and began to decline across a majority of O.E.C.D. countries in the past decade, with some of the sharpest declines visible among the poorest. Kids also show declining literacy. (…)
The idea that technology is altering our capacity not just to concentrate but also to read and to reason is catching on. The conversation no one is ready for, though, is how this may be creating yet another form of inequality.
Think of this by comparison with patterns of junk food consumption: As ultraprocessed snacks have grown more available and inventively addictive, developed societies have seen a gulf emerge between those with the social and economic resources to sustain a healthy lifestyle and those more vulnerable to the obesogenic food culture. This bifurcation is strongly class-inflected: Across the developed West, obesity has become strongly correlated with poverty. I fear that so, too, will be the tide of post-literacy.”
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I don’t think I’ve shared The Rest is Politics before. This was a great conversation in two parts. Go ahead and listen to part 1 first if you’d like to hear about Gary’s upbringing and formative years. This part of the conversation is about politics and economics and masculinity. One thing that stood out to me: the natural selection of politicians in our part of the world clearly does not lead to the most competent among us leading the land. I can primarily speak for my own country (where I used to work in parliament); the folks who end up as public servants have most often taken the route through youth politics where they’ve been brainwashed into believing that there’s one political party that happens to correspond absolutely with their own values and politics. And then they remain loyal party soldiers for all eternity. Unless they see there’s somewhere else they can gain more influence/power in which case they suddenly hold a different set of values that happen to correspond with another political party. The incentives are just not set up in a way that facilitates the brightest, most idealistic people joining politics. Rather, it’s those, in my experience, who crave attention and validation and who were the most annoyingly argumentative in high school. Obviously, there are exceptions to this, but I would love to see a society where there was a selection for quite different human traits in terms of leadership and politics. Anyways… Listen to this insightful conversation!