Knocking At The Gate

  Friends, I present to you the 1970s. You might try to watch it for the genre-switching of The Who song, but be sure to hang around for the pantomime during "see me, feel me," the brass flourishes, the mod dancers, the drum solo, the drum solo interpolated with soft shoe, the simulated cardiac arrest, and of course the big teevee show finish.

Writing in The Hedgehog Review , Yale professor Phillip Gorski examines the roots of resurgent authoritarian movements all over the world, and how the conflicts between immanence and transcendence in religion are manifested in political belief: In the American context, these phenomena are usually attributed to populist ideology, racial backlash, or Christian nationalism. Such explanations are not wrong, but they are incomplete. They cannot explain certain puzzling features of the MAGA movement that are also evident outside the American context, including the outlandish behavior of the political leaders, the swirl of conspiracy theories that often surrounds them, or the lack of any clear policy platform. Nor do those explanations account for the enthralling worldviews of the new authoritarian movements, which mix religion, magic, conspiracy, and popular culture in a toxic stew. Historical anthropology and cultural sociology can help us here by placing neoauthoritarianism i...

Bo Bartlett. (2021). "Huntsboro." Oil on linen. 70 in. x 120 in. This painting is typical of Bartlett's work: dazzling daylight, idealized but detailed human figures set in wide swaths of color, and a strong sense that we are seeing a single frame from a longer and more detailed story.  In this case, we are viewing the beachgoers as they view the scenery that we don't get to see. Why are we watching them watch the waves? One is gesturing with his hand as if he is speaking. What is he saying? To whom is he speaking? One person has rested his head on the shoulder of a companion. Is he listening to the speaker or is he just enjoying the moment?  This painting comes from a series titled Things Don't Stay Fixed , which happens to be the same name of a movie directed by Bartlett in the same year this painting was made .   Artist site. 

In Wired , Tom Simonite reports on the people working to create machines to replace human writers. The machines are getting better at it, and the future Web will have more and more advertisements and articles that were not written by human beings. There are concerns about all of this. When asked to generate an outline for this article based on the headline and a one-sentence summary, ContentEdge provided six bullet points. The final one was, “What are the dangers?” Full article here.

Artist reconstruction of  Tupandactylus imperator . Credit: Bob Nicholls   (CC BY) Our understanding of the evolution of feathers is growing, and a new paper explaint that the unusual soft tissue in a pterosaur fossil found in Brazil might indicate that this creature's early feather had differentiated colors. This suggests a possibility that the color variations were a form of signaling about the age, health, and sex of the creature. New research published in Nature has been reviewed by Riley Black for Scientific American , who writes that: Long before the first birds flapped and fluttered, pterosaurs took to the skies. These leathery-winged reptiles, their bodies coated with wispy filaments paleontologists call pycnofibers, were the first vertebrates to truly fly. Now experts are beginning to think pterosaurs and birds had more in common than previously assumed: An exquisitely preserved fossil from Brazil not only hints that pterosaurs’ peculiar filaments may have ...

Writing in The New Yorker, Lauren Michelle Jackson reviews Gathering Blossoms Under Fire: The Journals of Alice Walker, 1965–2000 , edited by Julie Boyd. Jackson follows Walker's paths through lovers and land purchases, through finances and friendships, through doubt and discovery:  It’s possible to divine a connection between a habit of acquisition that seems compulsive, if only for the apparent discomfort she feels about it, and the intense, erratic bouts of depression that choke her ability to write. Walker never knows what triggers them—menstrual hormones, she surmises, or “deep loneliness.” She puts her faith in the usual measures: a healthier diet, less weed, and lots and lots of meditation. By the time the writing returns, the episodes are in the rearview mirror. Full article here.

  Randall Munroe at XKCD considers the implications of the evolutionary tree of life. Much, much more here.