First Derivative [52]

Donald Glover—existential crisis—neoliberalism—Black Panther—Jordan Peterson—Chinese “authoritarianism”—predictive policing—Pinker’s errors—demonic males

Donald Glover Can’t Save You by Tad Friend (The New Yorker): A great and very long profile of Donald Glover, millenial Renaissance man. Thanks to fD reader, Arthur, for the article — TK

The Poison We Pick by Andrew Sullivan (New York Magazine): “It may be best to think of this wave therefore not as a function of miserable people turning to drugs en masse but of people who didn’t realize how miserable they were until they found out what life without misery could be. To return to their previous lives became unthinkable. For so many, it still is.” h/t Arthur — TK

Neoliberalism: The Movement That Dare Not Speak Its Name by Philip Mirowski (American Affairs): “For neoliberals, freedom and the market would be treated as identical. Their rallying cry was to remove the foundation of liberty from natural rights or tradition, and reposition it upon an entirely novel theory concerning what a market was, or should be.”

The Tragedy of Erik Killmonger by Adam Serwer (The Atlantic): A look at Black Panther’s “villain”. Jelani Cobb also has a nice piece in The New Yorker— TK

Jordan Peterson’s Gosepl of Masculinity by Kelefa Sanneh (The New Yorker): A very fair profile of Jordan Peterson — TK

The “Surprise” of Authoritarian Resilience in China by Wenfang Tang (American Affairs): Skip the methodology and read the interesting findings — TK

Palantir has secretly been using New Orleans to test its predictive policing technology by Ali Winston (The Verge)

Steven Pinker is wrong about violence and war by John Gray (The Guardian): “Like many others today, Pinker’s response when confronted with such evidence is to define the dark side of the Enlightenment out of existence… it is also true that the power of the modern state has been used for purposes of mass killing”

The Smart Contract Network Effect Fallacy by Kyle Samani (Brave New Coin): “If users won’t care about underlying chains, if the tokens are instantly and seamlessly tradeable, if tokens themselves roam across chains, and if network security can be maintained, what avenues of differentiation are left between chains?”

The Behavioral Ecology of Male Violence by William Buckner (Quillette): For those interested in the “the problem is broken boys” view — TK