first Derivative [78]
A few changes to the format this week as I keep experimenting. Let me know if you have any feedback on what’s preferred and easier to read. And they’ll be just minor differences but I’ll fix typos & errors and adding new links to the post after publishing which will be on the website version but not in the email that’s sent out.
As Oscar season approaches, here’s a list of my favorite films from 2022 (I saw Avatar 2 after, I’d put it on now somewhere in the top 5). I wouldn’t say it was a particularly strong year overall. Here’s a list of my recent favorites (of any year).
Happy reading :)
📚🎓 The End of the English Major Good piece on the dramatic decline in enrollment in the humanities, specifically in English departments. Worth reading for the writing itself, some funny moments in here that made me laugh despite the fact that it reads a bit like an obituary for the academic study of literature. In some sense, this newsletter is a way for me to preserve and practice an attention to the world that is humanities inspired. (New Yorker | Nathan Heller | Feb 2023)
I have found that good and clear writing is more rare in the workplace than I would have expected. Even in tech and VC, I think the proliferation of a writing culture, manifesting in personal Substacks, company blogs, and shared investment theses and memos, reflects a premium placed on quality writing and a belief that the writing in turn communicates and shapes quality thinking.
There has been much hand-wringing about ChatGPT and its ability to replicate some composition tasks. But ChatGPT can no more conceive “Mrs. Dalloway” than it can guide and people-manage an organization. Instead, A.I. can gather and order information, design experiments and processes, produce descriptive writing and mediocre craftwork, and compose basic code, and those are the careers likeliest to go into slow eclipse.
And then there’s a class-based angle to all of this for sure but purely off of personal observation I’d say even the most well-off aren’t immune to the pressure, maybe more social than economic, to study something other than the humanities whereas once that pressure might have gone the other way.
“These are people in their thirties and forties who have been stay-at-home parents, or they work. And they are committed to the humanities—they have an idea about the value of liberal-arts education,” Ayanna Thompson, the A.S.U. English professor, told me. Partly, it was a cohort thing, given that the older students represent the views of older generations. But it was also a matter of life experience. The university has a partnership with Starbucks, which pays for its baristas to earn bachelor’s degrees online (a recruitment tool for the coffee company and a revenue source for the school), and what someone who has been in the grind of life wants to learn most isn’t necessarily linear algebra.
Maybe humanities education as we know it is dying but something about it living on in this form feels heartwarming, not with teenage students in classrooms but middle-aged parents logging in remotely after a full day of work to listen to a lecture on history or a novel, not for their job but just because, or rather something about their lived experience that tells them that learning these things is important and maybe essential to living a good life.
Short Twitter thread on the decline of rigor in the humanities and another on the genesis of “English” as a field of academic study in universities
🇦🇫🖥 A look at life in Afghanistan now again under the Taliban. An interesting look at the conflicting tensions in Afghanistan today. An authoritarian Taliban regime that nonetheless has brought order and security, perhaps with a lighter touch than had been expected. And an Afghan people, especially in the cities, including members of the Taliban, who can’t escape living lives untouched by modernity and Western culture. (Palladium | David Oks | Feb 2023)
I saw it, above all else, in many local Afghans whom I met and befriended. These were not Western liberals: they had friends among the Taliban, and were quick to defend regime decisions I found abhorrent, like the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas. But these subjects of the Islamic Emirate could not be kept from watching Stranger Things or Game of Thrones or Japanese anime; they had a better knowledge of Breaking Bad than I did. On Twitter—they, like so many Afghans, were avid users—shared soyjack memes and called themselves “sigma males.” They talked about feminism, “LGBTQ,” and pronouns—strange things to complain about in a country where women can’t go to school. They were becoming Westerners: culture war, America’s most successful soft-power export, was their induction. The younger members of the Taliban, online enough to follow Andrew Tate, were not immune.
Seems to match up more or less with these interviews of former Taliban fighters:
“In our ministry, there’s little work for me to do. Therefore, I spend most of my time on Twitter. We’re connected to speedy Wi-Fi and internet. Many mujahedin, including me, are addicted to the internet, especially Twitter.”
🦠😷 A lab leak is the most likely origin of Covid-19 according to the FBI and the US Energy Department. (WSJ | Michael R. Gordon and Warren P. Strobel | Feb 2023)
Nothing that hasn’t been reported before but it’s been fascinating to see the Overton window on this shift since 2020. Not so long ago, discussing this idea probably would have gotten you labeled as “misinformation” or banned from social media platforms, which to me, really raises concerns over who gets to decide these definitions and circumscribe national discourse. Apart from the media angle, of course it also matters that we’ll likely never get conclusive evidence on this because of the Chinese government’s lack of cooperation. Not just for assigning blame but because the truth might bring public attention to dangerous gain-of-function research being done in these labs. Good or bad, imagine Chernobyl or Three Mile Island without any kind of subsequent national consciousness and debate over the safety of nuclear energy.
🇸🇻👮♀️ El Salvador’s murder rate is plummeting in a crackdown on gang violence after the government declared a state of emergency to suspend certain constitutional rights. While controversial, a majority of Salvadorans approve of the measure. (Reuters | Nelson Renteria, Brendan O'Boyle | Jan 2023)
It’ll be interesting to see how this authoritarian policy’s ultimate success/failure and popularity will become an attractive model for others to copy or a cautionary tale.
🇺🇸💥⛽️ The US is responsible for blowing up the Nord Stream pipelines according to a report by Sy Hersh which remains uncorroborated by mainstream news sources. (Substack | Seymour Hersh | Feb 2023)
Before we get too conspiratorial here, it’s important to stress the report is uncorroborated and based on an anonymous source. But throwing it in here because it’s plausible and interesting. On its face, blowing up the pipelines does seem to benefit the US more than Russia
🇷🇺☢️ Putin suspends nuclear-arms treaty between Russia and the U.S. meaning that “after New Start expires, there will be no agreement limiting U.S. and Russian strategic nuclear arsenals for the first time since 1972”. (WSJ | Ann M. Simmons | Feb 2023)