Via alastair g: a 1980 CIA research paper, by their Deception Research Program, on facts and folklore about deception [PDF link]
Here’s a reading list for me: the 100 best works of New Zealand non-fiction. Many of these I’d never even heard about!
Ta-Nehisi Coates writes a new shortread following up his hugely impactful Case for Reparations. The immediate context is Bernie Sanders making statements ruling out consideration of reparations; the body of the piece is showing how reparations might actually be undertaken in a meaningful way. The true message, to my mind, is how already the entire content of Coates’s reparations article has been forgotten – that piece forcefully said that reparations is not just about long-dead slaves, but also about structural injustices inflicted on millions of living people. The cultural narrative about reparations is very locked up and it will take effort to shift it! Anyway, read Coates kicking tail: The Case for Considering Reparations.
At the bottom of Dangerous Minds’ piece on the dumped original soundtrack for The Exorcist is a great little video compiling interviews with people coming out of screenings. A marvellous few minutes!
An advice columnist is sent a scenario from a Seinfeld episode, and takes it seriously. Everyone seems to be taking this as a huge faux pas by the columnist, but that is silly. There is nothing wrong with this. Seinfeld was famously about the minutiae of modern manners; advice columnists are principally there as an entertaining diversion. It’s all good.
And finally, The Chickening: