Lapore on Editing and Civilization

“It’s not so much that American public life is more idiotic,” Jill Lepore said, referring to both press coverage and the public discussion it spawns. “It’s that so much more of American life is public. I think that goes a long way to explaining what seems to be a ‘decline.’ Everything is documented, and little [...]

Madeleines

WikiLeaks Defended

Selected WikiLeaks roundup: Clay Shirky: The Government’s Extralegal Pursuit of Wikileaks is a Blow to Democracy n+1: In Praise of WikiLeaks Ron Paul:

Jane Jacobs On Privacy

Privacy is precious in cities. It is indispensable. Perhaps it is precious and indispensable everywhere, but most places you cannot get it. In small settlements everyone knows your affairs. In the city everyone does not–only those you choose to tell will know much about you. This is one of the attributes of cities that is [...]

Winslow-Yost On Video Games

Waste is not a byproduct—it’s the point: playing video games is a revolt against life. All art forms, even the polite ones, are escapist in that each answers some fundamental objection to the world and its limits. Novels let you know, granting access to inner lives and narrative arcs otherwise hidden and guessed at. Films [...]

Beatles, Jesus

Olivier Assayas on Genre

Movie in Words: Lydia Davis

Representatives of different food product manufacturers try to open their own products. “Idea For a Short Documentary Film,” The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis

Obsolescence

Anne McAndrews, a 21-year-old marketing major at Emerson College in Boston, says she and her friends almost never talk on the phone. “If I were to call someone, it would have to be urgent,” she says. “Otherwise, it’s sort of rude and invasive.” She takes a social-media marketing class to which Sprint has donated 10 [...]

Of Tavi Gevinson

She seems uninterested in attracting attention beyond the fashion world, and has turned down offers to appear on “Oprah,” the “Tonight Show,” and morning news shows. “It’s so cheesy,” she said. “The ‘Good Morning America’ audience–I guess that’s just not a crowd whose eyes I want on me.” “Tavi Says,” The New Yorker

On Facts

Recently, a few political scientists have begun to discover a human tendency deeply discouraging to anyone with faith in the power of information. It’s this: Facts don’t necessarily have the power to change our minds. In fact, quite the opposite. In a series of studies in 2005 and 2006, researchers at the University of Michigan [...]