‘That Single Fleeting Moment’: Merce Cunningham in images.
Review of Diary: How to Improve the World (You Will Only Make Matters Worse) by John Cage; Changes. Notes on Choreography by Merce Cunningham; and Love, Icebox Letters from John Cage to Merce Cunningham.
Karl Ove Knausgaard profiles Anselm Kiefer for the New York Times Magazine.
The pace of modern culture. "Using time-series methods, [the authors show] that much of modern culture is shaped by either stabilizing or directional forces or both and that these forces partly regulate the rates at which different traits evolve. (..) In sum, [the] results demonstrate the deep unity of the processes and patterns of cultural and organic evolution."
Ancient West African foragers in the context of African population history. "We infer an Africa-wide phylogeny that features widespread admixture and three prominent radiations, including one that gave rise to at least four major lineages deep in the history of modern humans."
An ant colony has memories that its individual members don’t have.
The long road to fairer algorithms. "To identify and mitigate discriminatory relationships in data, we need models that capture or account for the causal pathways that give rise to them. Here we outline what is required to build models that would allow us to explore ethical issues underlying seemingly objective analyses."
How ‘Big Law’ Makes Big Money. Adam Tooze reviews The Code of Capital: How the Law Creates Wealth and Inequality by Katharina Pistor.
Why fossil fuel producer subsidies matter. Clever analysis taking into account accelerated depreciation of new capital investment, which boosts cash flow at the start of a project making it easier to invest in new oil fields thereby lowering oil prices and increasing oil consumption.
Ian Johnson on How China’s rise has forced Hong Kong’s decline. "This decline is about more than economics. Hong Kong once had a cachet that few cities could match: the home of Bruce Lee, Wong Kar-wai, and Eileen Chang—a bucket-list destination perched on a fault line of global politics. (..) In reality, the city has lost its global allure." It's been more than ten years since I last visited Hong Kong. I'd love to go back one day, but I'm afraid I agree with this assessment: Hong Kong failed to reinvent itself.
Every solution creates a problem. Wind turbine blades can’t be recycled, so they’re piling up in landfills.
Essay on and review of the work of Marie NDiaye.
Thirteen tips for engaging with physicists, as told by a biologist.
Twelve tips for engaging with biologists, as told by a physicist.