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The Explainer
Regarding the Weekly Picks that are shared on the blog on Sundays.
Preamble – Some may recall a time when social media feeds were chronological. When posts from friends and pages were neatly arranged by time, sans algorithmic shuffling. The presence of the profit motive (advertising creep and predilection for alarmist content) was limited. That was a long time ago.
That old way of reading the web is still how I consume news. Notably, forcing the information flow to be chronological through settings, then clicking based on topics of interest. This digital grounding helps keep me sane in a world where so much information is so easily accessible. Without strong digital literacy skills combined with a solid baloney detection kit, it is difficult to develop an informed or critical view within the battleground of the internet.
The ’Weekly Picks’ that you see are the latest incarnations of social media posts that I used to make many years ago. A collection of usually longer but always engaging commentaries that prompted good discussion. Amongst friends, these were fodder for fun, serious, and sometimes heated discussions. I would create bookmark libraries of these articles, which I still maintain to this day; my own digital archive of in-depth analysis, searchable via key terms. A way to support dialogue-framing between non-experts.
We know that the multi-media specialists and companies dominate the fourth estate. The old-fashioned investigative journalism and longform reporting guided by independent interests is dwindling. Space, time, and money for incisive writing is becoming concentrated as our species navigates its digital infancy. I have noticed, since I began this sharing exercise more than a decade ago, how much the online information landscape has become adulterated. It is appropriate to find it all overwhelming.
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Weekly Picks – March 9, 2025
Credit (left to right): Nicolas Nova (Flickr / CC BY); NASA/ Johns Hopkins APL/ Ed Whitman; Seguace di hieronymus bosch, cristo al limbo, 1575 ca. 02 (CC)This video below is a few years old, but was featured this week on Aeon. It made me think back to those occasional late nights and early mornings my friends and I used to spend at cafes and diners. Plugging in the laptop, sharing meals, or grabbing some drinks; our own little community-making. Extending the liminal hours, buoyed by company despite being sleep-deprived. The film continues the showcase throughout one cycle. This is the kind of everyday I hope is never lost.
This week’s collection:
- Asteroid Hunters | The American Scholar
- AI Search Has A Citation Problem | Columbia Journalism Review
- Slumlord Empire | Protean Magazine
- Is There a Mainstream Media? | The Point Magazine
Introductory excerpts quoted below. For full text (and context) or video, please view the original piece.
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Blame Canada
We used to joke back in 2015 how unbelievable it was that the real-life embodiment of Eric Cartman’s personality – thankfully lacking in his intellect and ambition – was gaining traction as a contender for the most powerful post in the world.
Fast-forward ten years – much suffering later – and placating of that individual’s ego by the greedy and powerful is dragging everyone down a degenerative path. A bitter pill to swallow considering that nonvoting citizens continue to outnumber those whose ballots elect winning candidates across democratic nations.
This gangrene will affect the soul as much as it does the body politic.
Your Measures entry for a daily news cycle fueled by tariffs, trade wars, and nonsense: a twenty-six-year-old cartoon satirizing censorship, unintentionally reflecting the zenith of U.S. foreign policy in 2025.
Carrying prescience as darkly comical today as it was at the turn of the millennium.
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Weekly Picks – March 2, 2025
Credit (left to right): Rhett A. Butler; Jeffrey St. Clair; Sutthichai SupapornpasupadThis week’s collection:
- Why Big Pharma wants you to eat more meat | Vox
- The Invisible Costs of Upward Mobility | Jacobin
- ‘Some people will die’: Conversations with Nigeria’s gorilla hunters | Mongabay
- The End of Oil and Empire | Counterpunch
Introductory excerpts quoted below. For full text (and context) or video, please view the original piece.
Not from the past week (and sans excerpts), but also well worth indulgence:
- The Algeria Analogy | Jewish Currents
- A Memorial at Lety | Places Journal
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Echoes in the Night
Credit: melodysheep a.k.a. John D. BoswellIn the basement of the Koerner Library at the University of British Columbia, there exists a large collection of microfilms. Among them, reproductions of print publications dating back to the mid-eighteenth century. Perhaps earlier.
The types of materials that would come in handy, say, if you were asked to compile a dialectical montage of the history of Stanley Park. A mix of phantasmagorical edifices and natural forests standing adjacent to an industrial port, a microcosm representing landscapes long-since overrun by urbanization.
Facsimiles that could also assist with the study of archives, say of weekly magazines, in order to craft a narrative of their evolving purpose over time. A beguiling exercise of evaluating many ships of Theseus as they undergo fundamental shifts in response to changing media ecosystems.
Or maybe, if the two assignments above were found to be too cumbersome or tiring, the microfilms could offer an escape. Through a wormhole of irrelevance and fun that would carry you from the afternoon to late evening. For example, from a 1905 editorial considering Martian life forms (floating down canals, as they were at the time) to an in-depth analysis of how affordability of the television may result in humanity’s downfall.
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Weekly Picks – February 23, 2025
Credit (left to right): Current Affairs; Mahmud Hams / AFP via Getty Images; Fabio Consoli; Kitra Cahana; Aris Messinis / AFP via Getty ImagesThis week’s collection:
- The Reality of Settler Colonialism | Boston Review
- The Fourth Wall | In These Times
- Grave Mistakes: The History and Future of Chile’s ‘Disappeared’ | Undark Magazine
- Did you think you were safe? | Aeon Magazine
- Why Japan Succeeds Despite Stagnation | Uncharted Territories
- The Fork in the Road | n+1
- Kings of Capital | In These Times
- The Shrouded, Sinister History of the Bulldozer | Noema Magazine
Introductory excerpts quoted below. For full text (and context) or video, please view the original piece.
Plus, an essay from last year that I was only able to fully read recently (quite appropriately, while on an eighty-minute transit journey to the office):
- The Problem With Work | Current Affairs
Finally, some unique angles on our world:
- Winners of the 2025 World Nature Photography Awards | The Atlantic
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Weekly Picks – February 16, 2025
Credit (left to right): Palestinian News & Information Agency (Wafa) in contract with APAimage; ullstein bild Dtl. / ullstein bild / Getty Images; Delmas Lehman / Shutterstock; Jose Cendon / AFP via Getty ImagesThis week’s collection:
- A Brief History of Coffee and Colonialism | Foreign Policy
- The Prophet Business | The New York Review of Books
- ‘Here lives the monster’s brain’: the man who exposed Switzerland’s dirty secrets | The Guardian
- The Unnatural History of Bird Flu | Nautilus
- Proem: The Trauma of Gaza Scholasticide | Informed Comment
Introductory excerpts quoted below. For full text (and context) or video, please view the original piece.
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Weekly Picks – February 9, 2025
Credit (left to right): R.Satish Babu / AFP / Getty; Max Mason-Hubers; PratyushAfter quite a break, ‘Weekly Picks’ have returned. As mentioned in my previous post, an explainer on how these are chosen will be posted soon, and linked in subsequent updates for those wanting a peak behind the curtain.
This week’s collection:
- Why children’s books? | London Review of Books
- The Case for Kicking the Stone | Los Angeles Review of Books
- Adrift in a Sea of Bullshit | 3 Quarks Daily
- Civility and/or Social Change? | Public Books
- The doomsday cult’s guide to taking over a country | 1843 Magazine
And some extraordinary photos from on an ongoing festival in India:
- Maha Kumbh Mela: The Largest Gathering in the World | The Atlantic
Introductory excerpts quoted below. For full text (and context) or video, please view the original piece.
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Words for a Despondent Public
A quick update: ‘Weekly Picks’ posts will return to the blog this Sunday, February 9. I also plan to put together a bit of an explainer within the next couple of weeks on the method behind how I come across those articles/essays/videos. Stay tuned.
Plenty in the news that is levying anxiety on both sides of the 49th parallel these days. Those of us fortunate enough to be in the global minority enjoying stable democratic institutions can never really adopt a complacent approach.
Just a couple of videos for you today. Words of wisdom for troubled times.
Some takeaways:
(@3:00) Treat differences like a resource, not a problem.
(@11:15) Creative solutions are not lacking.
(@13:50) Democracy is something you do, not something that is.“Do not despair. The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed – the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass, and dictators die. […]
You, the people, have the power…the power to create happiness. You, the people, have the power to make this life free and beautiful.”
We dare not disengage.
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End Credits
An impending cold spell has again prompted a return to this space. Helped by the foot of snow that has descended, slowing even the bravest as they slide their oversized vehicles to and from the offices they are forced to employ.
But my mind is at ease. Despite another busy day of commuting and typing, eyes jumping from monitor to monitor, a restless approach to a weekend waiting.
This is in part due to a soothing playlist. One that has disappeared the tinnitus and reminded me of a less hurried time. Where I would still consider going to a theater to watch a premiere, an exercise now so uninviting and diminished that I cannot foresee patronizing the silver screen anytime soon.
I was speaking with someone earlier this week about film endings. At first, we touched on how a significant fraction of modern audiences enthralled by blockbusters remain in their seats hoping to catch after-credits scenes. To glimpse an easter egg or snatch a preview of a sequel or spinoff. This trend no longer the arena of only superhero movies, but any studio-backed venture seeking to establish a franchise. A capitalist evolution of the type of quick, trivial, and non-consequential jokes that elevated the stature of comedies like Airplane! and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.
The conversation soon moved to closing scores. Those that capped narratives with emotional weight, beautifully transitioning the captive witness back to reality. A final Pavlovian filament to the audiovisual yarn weaved, allowing viewers to exit dreams via a veil of scrolling text and imagery. If threaded well, forever tying fond memories to a moment when names of import flash across a frame.
And that is what I share with you today: a few favorites of mine. All related by one of the greatest trilogies every committed to film. After all, it is the overall quality of the picture that also determines how fondly one revisits those scores. I am partial to many excellent efforts somewhat hampered by their association with flawed products.
As a set, however, one would be hard-pressed to find anything in parallel with Howard Shore’s ending compositions for the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Independently towering and together a triumph.
Think back to those incredible instances.