Good Stuff: August’18

Manisha Koppala
Sep 4, 2018 · 4 min read

To read:

  1. Fireflies

(“But whenever you shine, you inspire those close to you to shine too, a little bit sooner than they otherwise would have”)

2. A cancer memoir of literature and sciences

(“Dr. Kalanithi understood that “literature provided the best account of the life of the mind, while neuroscience laid down the most elegant rules of the brain”)

3. How to make this the summer of missing out

(“A lot of the time, we fail to recognize the moments in our lives actually become our lives,” Ms. Whillans said. “The moments that we’re spending on our computer checking email slowly accumulate to hours and days, time we’re not spending living our lives.”)

4. Is It Too Late to Confront My Abusive Ex?

(“The consequence of his abuse is that he doesn’t get you in his life.”)

5. Don’t Send Your Kid to the Ivy League

(“Our system of elite education manufactures young people who are smart and talented and driven, yes, but also anxious, timid, and lost, with little intellectual curiosity and a stunted sense of purpose: trapped in a bubble of privilege, heading meekly in the same direction, great at what they’re doing but with no idea why they’re doing it”)

6. Tragedy is a straight line, Gajabuji never is

(“Haunted houses are nothing but those living spaces where ideas outnumber people. And ideas? They never stay still. Ideas move, mate, migrate, and frighten people.”)

7. Alok Sarin dreams of relevant conversations on mental health

(“The clinical encounter is a tripartite phenomenon: between society, medicine and law, with an individual at its heart, and all of these need to be in communication with one another”)

8. Yuval Noah Harari on what the year 2050 has in store for humankind

(“Who am I?” will be a more urgent and complicated question than ever before.)

9. A wild muddle: The ethical formation of citizens was once at the heart of the US elite college. Has this moral purpose gone altogether?

(“And yet the ‘muddled mess’ that is the American college remains, however embattled. Amid the absurdity of some recent campus incidents, elite American colleges provide a privileged elite with resources, space and time that is not wholly beholden to markets. Almost despite themselves, they continue to be fugitive spaces, where a poem can capture the attention of an 18-year-old for days, an essay can steal the time of a 40-year-old faculty member for weeks, or the children of those who never belonged can bring bookish ideas — about democracy, duty, justice, evil, truth — to bear on how they live. There are few institutions of its kind left”)

10. Working with NewsTracker showed me how easy it is to become numb to India’s rape problem

( The numbers that once shook you look like any other depressing data. The stories take on a certain sameness, blurring into each other. When this happens, it is time to stop and remember why the fight against sexual violence — violence against humanity — matters.)

11. What is the morally appropriate language in which to think and write: Arundhati Roy

(“Writing or speaking in English is not a tribute to the British Empire, as the British imperial historian had tried to suggest to me, it is a practical solution to the circumstances created by it”

“As things stand, English, although it is spoken by a small minority (which still numbers in the tens of millions), is the language of mobility, of opportunity, of the courts, of the national press, the legal fraternity, of science, engineering, and international communication. It is the language of privilege and exclusion”

“For me, or for most contemporary writers working in these parts, language can never be a given. It has to be made. It has to be cooked. Slow-cooked”)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

To watch:

1. In praise of unrequited love

(“At any point, millions of love stories are quietly being spun by one person, while the object of their adoration goes about their business blithely unconcerned”)

2. Vincent Van Gogh Visits the Gallery | Doctor Who |

Manisha Koppala

Written by

i'm a happy person. i'm happy in my rage.

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