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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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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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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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Weekly Picks – August 18, 2024
Credit (left to right): Umar Nadeem for The Atlantic; Jose Camões Silva / Wikimedia; IDF/ GPO/ Sipa/ Rex/ Shutterstock; Eric Thayer/ ReutersAs mentioned last week, this is the final ‘Weekly Picks’ post to this blog. I am soon departing for some travels and new updates will be shared in October when I return to Canada.
While this 33-week exercise highlighting 265 pieces across 104 sites (plus some archival material) has been fun, it must come to an end as I refocus my efforts. Expect long form content to continue to appear in this space, though from a personal lens.
This week’s collection:
- The melting brain
- Fatal Chase: Cops and the Illusion of Control
- As a former IDF soldier and historian of genocide, I was deeply disturbed by my recent visit to Israel
- A Trip to One of the Hottest Cities on the Planet
- What if we learned contemplation like we do arts or sports?
Introductory excerpts quoted below. For full text (and context) or video, please view the original piece.
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Weekly Picks – August 11, 2024
Credit (left to right): Piotr Kowalczyk; Makrem Larnaout; Moises Saman/ Magnum, for The New York Times; Mark Harris for Vox/ Getty Images; Stephen Lam/ ReutersDear reader, next week’s collection of articles will be the final ‘Weekly Picks’ post.
As newsletter subscribers were informed recently, In Difference will be on a brief hiatus from August 19 to the end of September, while I am travelling without regular access to the internet.
I have decided to use this interlude as an opportunity to refresh some of my initial aims in creating this reflective space.
Wishing you a pleasant week ‘neath the Perseids ahead.
This week’s collection:
- The Parable of the Vulture
- A Worldmaking Plant
- The Future Before Us
- Medicine is plagued by untrustworthy clinical trials. How many studies are faked or flawed?
- The Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples
- How the most powerful environmental groups help greenwash Big Meat’s climate impact
- Building a Public Energy Commons
- The War the World Forgot
- Who Do They Think They Are?
- Milky Way Over Tunisia
Introductory excerpts quoted below. For full text (and context) or video, please view the original piece.
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Weekly Picks – August 4, 2024
Credit (left to right): Katalin Balog/ 3 Quarks Daily; Kamal Kishore/ Reuters; pics721/ Shutterstock; Petra PéterffyThis week’s collection:
- American Descent
- ‘Nobody knows what I know’: how a loyal RSS member abandoned Hindu nationalism
- Artificial Wombs When?
- Israeli Journalist Gideon Levy on the Killing of Gaza
- Excavating a Language at the End of the World
- What Is Left of the Mind
- Debt Is a Labor Issue
Introductory excerpts quoted below. For full text (and context) or video, please view the original piece.
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Weekly Picks – July 28, 2024
Credit (left to right): Noma Bar; Abdullah Farouk/ Unsplash; David Bacon; Gent Shkullaku/ AFP/ Getty Images; Harol BustosThis week’s collection:
- Secrets of a ransomware negotiator
- Who’s Afraid of the Student Intifada?
- Adventures Close to Home
- Should We Abolish Prisons?
- Who Owns Garbage? – Understanding Illegal Recycling Workers
- US Corporations Pump Aquifers Dry as Police Kill Water Defenders in Rural Mexico
- The dangerous effects of rising sea temperatures
- Not only kafala
- The Physics of Cold Water May Have Jump-Started Complex Life
Introductory excerpts quoted below. For full text (and context) or video, please view the original piece.
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Weekly Picks – July 21, 2024
Credit (left to right): Adrià Fruitós; Remy Steinegger/ Wikimedia; Harland Miller, Courtesy of White Cube Gallery; Staffan Widstrand/ Rewilding EuropeThis week’s collection:
- Literature Without Literature
- How Europe’s only Indigenous group is inspiring a greener Christianity
- How Microfinance Became the ‘It’ Development Program
- To a Starving Orphan Who Died Alone in Rubble
- Philanthropy’s Power Brokers
Further reading on Bill Gates, the Gates Foundation, and broader issues with billionaire-led philanthropic endeavors (the first three pieces are by Tim Schwab, who is quoted in the article above):
- Bill Gates’s Charity Paradox
- While the Poor Get Sick, Bill Gates Just Gets Richer
- Bill Gates, Climate Warrior. And Super Emitter.
- How Bill Gates Impeded Global Access to Covid Vaccines
- Bill Gates’s Philanthropic Giving Is a Racket
- Dark cloud over good works of Gates Foundation
Introductory excerpts quoted below. For full text (and context) or video, please view the original piece.