The waterfall has been imagined as a stream feeding the dark realms of the underworld and circling up to issue again from craggy heights. It has suggested the descent of the immutable into an ever-dividing stream that defies capture, cannot be contained, is eternal movement, eternal change, generating life and death. One can be broken in the tonnage of the waters; "Deep calls to deep at the thunder of your cataracts all your waves and billows have gone over me," cries the Psalmist to his god. In Chinese tradition, the waterfall represents the autumnal, yin aspect of the dragon's water power; it plunges into the water, its claws are the spouts of foam.
Human beings have learned to exploit the waterfall's hydroelectric power in order to drive technology, but in so doing they destroy the waterfall and devastate the land to which it belongs and contributes ecologically. The waterfall itself is an emblem of balance. Chinese landscape paintings portray the waterfall in contrast to the upward movement of the rock face over which it descends, and the dynamic movement of its rushing waters with the stillness of the rock (48). - The Book of Symbols: Reflections on Archetypal Images (Taschen, 2010)
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Lewison, Rebecca. "Hippopotomology (Hippos)." Ologies (February 5, 2025) ["Do they sweat blood? Will one kill you? What are cocaine hippos? Is Moo Deng… okay? Actual real life Hippopotomologist Dr. Rebecca Lewison explains how hippos have some of the best – and worst – PR. We chat about pet hippos, subspecies, daily diets, the current state of hippo conservation, the absolute chaotic affection we have for pygmy hippos, their role as ecosystem engineers, what’s up with their nostrils, and how to keep a hippo in your pocket."]
McKay, Adam. "How Don't Look Up Explains Our Times." Current Affairs #367 (February 8, 2025) ["Adam McKay is a writer and film director who has made some of the most successful comedy films of our century, including Anchorman (No. 6 on Time Out's top 100 comedy films of all time), Talladega Nights, Step Brothers, and The Other Guys. In the last decade, his more dramatic and political films like Vice and The Big Short have attracted critical acclaim and been nominated for multiple Academy Awards. He joins us today to discuss the film he released in 2021, Don't Look Up, a satirical look at the climate catastrophe that uses the analogy of an approaching deadly comet to expose how the media, corporations, and the political system are incapable of addressing a major crisis. When Don't Look Up came out, it quickly became one of the most popular movies in Netflix's history, but many critics assailed it as "heavy-handed." In Current Affairs, Nathan wrote an article arguing that these critics were missing much of the penetrating leftist analysis that makes the film a remarkably astute piece of satirical fiction."]
Mulainathan, Sendhil. "Can AI Even Be Regulated?" Capitalisn't (February 13, 2025) ["This week, Elon Musk—amidst his other duties of gutting United States federal government agencies as head of the “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE)—announced a hostile bid alongside a consortium of buyers to purchase control of OpenAI for $97.4 billion. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman vehemently replied that his company is not for sale. The artificial intelligence landscape is shifting rapidly. The week prior, American tech stocks plummeted in response to claims from Chinese company DeepSeek AI that its model had matched OpenAI’s performance at a fraction of the cost. Days before that, President Donald Trump announced that OpenAI, Oracle, and Softbank would partner on an infrastructure project to power AI in the U.S. with an initial $100 billion investment. Altman himself is trying to pull off a much-touted plan to convert the nonprofit OpenAI into a for-profit entity, a development at the heart of his spat with Musk, who co-founded the startup. Bethany and Luigi discuss the implications of this changing landscape by reflecting on a prior Capitalisn’t conversation with Luigi’s former colleague Sendhil Mullainathan (now at MIT), who forecasted over a year ago that there would be no barriers to entry in AI. Does DeepSeek’s success prove him right? How does the U.S. government’s swift move to ban DeepSeek from government devices reflect how we should weigh national interests at the risk of hindering innovation and competition? Musk has the ear of Trump and a history of animosity with Altman over the direction of OpenAI. Does Musk’s proposed hostile takeover signal that personal interests and relationships with American leadership will determine how AI develops in the U.S. from here on out? What does regulating AI in the collective interest look like, and can we escape a future where technology is consolidated in the hands of the wealthy few when billions of dollars in capital are required for its progress?"]
Nussbaum, Martha C. Justice for Animals: Our Collective Responsibility. Simon & Schuster, 2023. ["A “brilliant” (Chicago Review of Books), “elegantly written, and compelling” (National Review) new theory and call to action on animal rights, ethics, and law from the renowned philosopher Martha C. Nussbaum. Animals are in trouble all over the world. Whether through the cruelties of the factory meat industry, poaching and game hunting, habitat destruction, or neglect of the companion animals that people purport to love, animals suffer injustice and horrors at our hands every day. The world needs an ethical awakening, a consciousness-raising movement of international proportions. In Justice for Animals, one of the world’s most renowned philosophers and humanists, Martha C. Nussbaum, provides “the most important book on animal ethics written to date” (Thomas I. White, author of In Defense of Dolphins). From dolphins to crows, elephants to octopuses, Nussbaum examines the entire animal kingdom, showcasing the lives of animals with wonder, awe, and compassion to understand how we can create a world in which human beings are truly friends of animals, not exploiters or users. All animals should have a shot at flourishing in their own way. Humans have a collective duty to face and solve animal harm. An urgent call to action and a manual for change, Nussbaum’s groundbreaking theory directs politics and law to help us meet our ethical responsibilities as no book has done before."]
Proctor, Robert. "Agnotology (WILLFUL IGNORANCE) Updated Encore." Ologies (February 12, 2025) ["Yes, there is an -ology for that. And yes, we’re airing this episode -– with a ton of 2025 updates -– because it’s never felt more relevant. Dr. Robert Proctor is a Stanford professor of the History of Science and co-edited the book “Agnotology: The Making & Unmaking of Ignorance,” having coined the word 30 years ago. We chat about everything from tobacco marketing, to the sugar lobby, to racial injustice, horse vision, the psychology of the Flat Earther movement, which countries have the highest rates of climate denial, empathy, how to navigate difficult conversations and why it's critical to dismantle the systems of willful ignorance, starting locally. Dr. Robert Proctor’s book: "Agnotology: The Making and Unmaking of Ignorance" His 2021 book: Science and the Production of Ignorance: When the Quest for Knowledge Is Thwarted."]
Rubsam, Robert. "The Empire of Ugliness." Liberties (December 2024) [This is a review of the film Red Rooms: "So what are we doing here, really? One cannot imbibe such diverse, daily horrors and not be made coarser. It has been argued that this presentation dulls us to violent images by making them seem less real, but I think we are experiencing something more akin to a levelling, in which images of violence are made to seem just as banal as all the other images or thoughts we see online, both disarming the violence and infecting the mundane with a violent energy, a tincturing which degrades both at the same time. ... We can see these forces everywhere, in the fossil fuel CEOs who consciously destroy our planet, the tech VC billionaires who commit their fortunes to end democracy, the president-elect who promises to make public life hell for all manner of minorities. These are vicious, vindictive people, obsessed with their IQs, who preen over their supposed genetic superiority, yet must purchase a prominence they cannot earn. Leys found them not only in the realm of aesthetics, but even more in ethics: “The need to bring down to our own wretched level, to deface, to deride and debunk any splendour that is towering above us is probably the saddest urge of human nature.” They can destroy whatever is good and beautiful in society, can attack it in others, can push their technologies to the edge, yet they are totally incapable of producing anything but ugliness themselves. It should disturb us that so many identify with and celebrate them. Their empire is everywhere, and we are all stakeholders."]
Sanchez, Lily. "US Transit is Abysmal and Unacceptable." Current Affairs (February 7, 2025) ["America’s air safety crisis, our automobile-congested cities, and our lack of high-speed rail and other options make getting places a real (and dangerous) pain in the ass. We desperately need safe, efficient, and enjoyable public transit."]
Skopic, Alex. "Who Are the Real Vampires in ‘Nosferatu’?" Current Affairs (January 18, 2025) ["Eggers isn’t the first filmmaker to revisit the silent Nosferatu. Werner Herzog remade it in 1979 with Klaus Kinski in the lead role, and the prolific character actor Doug Jones starred in a low-budget independent version in 2023. There’s also Shadow of the Vampire, the metafictional horror movie from 2000 that imagines an actual monster stalking Murnau’s set. But more than any previous retelling, Eggers’s Nosferatu holds fascinating—and disturbing—historic echoes of the German original. Murnau and his crew made their silent film in the wake of the deadly influenza pandemic of 1918-19, as fascism was beginning to emerge as a hideous threat across Europe. More than a century later, Eggers made his version as the COVID pandemic continues to ravage the planet, and as neo-fascism is emerging in the United States and elsewhere. As a result of their historical context, both films are preoccupied with themes of plague and contagion, and with their respective societies’ fears about race and immigration. They can be seen as violently xenophobic films, portraying Count Orlok as an immigrant figure who is also a demonic spreader of plague and decay and has to be exterminated by the protagonists. But that would be a superficial reading, and ultimately a flawed one. Dig a little deeper into the vampire’s tomb, and you begin to realize that it’s not the ethnic or cultural other that’s really the looming threat at Nosferatu’s heart. It’s the economic elite."]
Stiglitz, Joseph. "Visions of a New Progressive Capitalism." Capitalisn't (June 24, 2024) ["In the last 60 years, few economists have contributed more to exposing the failures of capitalism than Joseph Stiglitz. Formerly the chief economist of the World Bank and chair of the U.S. Council of Economic Advisers under President Bill Clinton, Stiglitz won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2001 for his work showing that the possibility of having different information can lead to inefficient market outcomes. On this episode of Capitalisn't, Stiglitz joins Bethany and Luigi to discuss his latest book, "The Road to Freedom: Economics and the Good Society" (W.W. Norton, 2024). The book, as Bethany describes it, is a "full frontal attack on neoliberalism" that provides a prospective roadmap towards a more progressive form of capitalism. Together, the three discuss the role of mis- and disinformation in producing market inefficiencies, the importance of regulation, institutional accountability, and collective action in correcting market failures, and the role of neoliberalism in today's global populist uprising. In the process, they underscore the close link between economic and political freedom."]
Szaniawski, Jeremi. "Trick or Treat? Genre Trouble." Senses of Cinema #112 (January 2025) ["Concurrently, we have seen enough horror films to know that they are one of the best places to investigate mild societal shifts before they occur in full swing in mainstream culture. And this holds true even as they have vastly abandoned the ghetto of independent production and become reified objects of the film industry in their own right, at least as far as their modes of production and distribution are concerned. So it is that, in the fall of 2024, besides the grotesque spectacle of the US presidential election, which may constitute its darkest comedy, and the wars and invasions unfolding in various corners of the globe, marked by mind-boggling numbers of civilian casualties (unarguably, the most intolerable horror of all) something is afoot. The return of the thriller/horror genre, is at one and the same time some sort of conclusion that yet also constitutes a new beginning. Not that any of these films, taken individually, is exceptional: rather, they coalesce into an interesting whole, and they are, each in their own way, compelling. "]
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