Links for the Week

Why Anything, Why This? Philosopher Derek Parfit investigates why anything exists, the implications on our belief in god and regularly blows your mind in the process.
Thoughts on Web3 Moxie Marlinspike explains why Web3 and crypto might not be as decentralised as some believe. Never was a truer word spoken than “People don’t want to run their own servers, and never will”.
The Physics of Wile E Coyote's 10,000,000,000 Volt Electromagnet Turns out it might not be as good at capturing an iron carrot as Mr Coyote would have hoped.
xkcd on Language Development
bell hooks, who died at the end of 2021, reviews Beyonce's Lemonade ""In this fictive world, black female emotional pain can be exposed and revealed. It can be given voice: this is a vital and essential stage of freedom struggle, but it does not bring exploitation and domination to an end. No matter how hard women in relationships with patriarchal men work for change, forgive and reconcile, men must do the work of inner and outer transformation if emotional violence against black females is to end. We see no hint of this in Lemonade."
Wikipedia History Timeline Game If you’ve already done today’s Wordle
Alan Moore's Favourite Magicians Comic writer and devotee of a snake glove puppet god chooses his favourite magical people
Ted Gioia: Is Old Music Killing New Music? As more and more back catalogues get bought by record labels, and fewer and fewer artists are given the chance to get to the next level, what happens to music?

Now Listening

Antidawn EP by Burial

Burial rarely puts out longer form releases nowadays. This, marked as an EP, is in fact 45 minutes long and continues his experimentation with quite how little sound you can put into something and still call it music. A handful of samples, the sound of a scratchy record, little to nothing you could call a beat, or melody and yet here it is gradually etching itself into your mind so you could almost sing along with it, eventually.

Listen on Apple Music

Listen on Spotify

Lego Colosseum

The When in Rome podcast is normally a joy, but I particularly liked this episode where Matt interviews Lego Designer Rok Zgalin Kobe about the creation of the Lego Colosseum.

Now Reading

Mary Magdalene: Women, the Church, and the Great Deception

How did Mary Magdalene, Jesus’s favourite disciple, the one who was the first to see him return from the dead, become a prostitute forever in need of penitence? Short answer - competitive men. Longer answer is in the book, but Paul got in pretty early, cutting her out of the first stories of the resurrection.

Mary Magdalene: Women, the Church, and the Great Deception on Amazon

Now Watching

The Tragedy of Macbeth

I found the Coen’s approach to Macbeth particularly intriguing. Clearly they’ve always had a strong sense of style, but this often looks like a 1920s or 30s impressionist film along the lines of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. It’s beautiful, and the acting is impeccable, but at times it can feel a bit cold, especially in comparison to Polanski’s visceral version.

The Tragedy of Macbeth on TV+

Quote

After receiving the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1918, Max Planck went on tour across Germany. Wherever he was invited, he delivered the same lecture on new quantum mechanics. Over time, his chauffeur grew to know it by heart: ‘It has to be boring giving the same speech each time, Professor Planck. How about I do it for you in Munich? You can sit in the front row and wear my chauffeur’s cap. That’d give us both a bit of variety.’ Planck liked the idea, so that evening the driver held a long lecture on quantum mechanics in front of a distinguished audience. Later, a physics professor stood up with a question. The driver recoiled: ‘Never would I have thought that someone from such an advanced city as Munich would ask such a simple question! My chauffeur will answer it.’
The Art of Thinking Clearly by Rolf Dobelli