[A Plesurable Headache] the wolf; web waste; bro culture; manchette; pilger
Not a huge edition this week. The day job has been hectic with a return to work after having to self-isolate. That said, next week is my last full working week until the new year so next week’s edition tends to be a bit more packed, alongside the usual end of year ‘stuff I’ve been watching/reading’ summaries.
This Week’s Links
- The wolf and the geography of fear
- Waste on the web
- But what about chivalry, bro?
- Manchette examined
- Pilger, proaganda and journalistic truth
Landscape of fear: why we need the wolf
The Guardian report on the efforts to rewild Scotland and other places in the UK. The article highlights the importance of the wolf in these efforts.
“And as the deer’s psychological landscape metamorphosed in the presence of the wolves, so too did the physical landscape that underlay it. As deer numbers fell and grazing habits changed, the willow, cottonwood and aspen seedlings they had been stripping from the clearings were granted a reprieve. Undergrowth thickened. Leafy stands grew up along the river edges. In this way, fear is a force that shapes the world.”
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Webwaste
https://alistapart.com/article/webwaste/
Great piece by Gerry McGovern on the bloated nature of the modern web. The article, rightly in my opinion, argues that text is king on the web, a fact modern websites seem to have forgotten. This, in turn, has contributed to a horribly bloated class of websites, bad for the user and the environment.
“From an energy point of view, it’s not simply about page weight. Some pages may have very heavy processing demands once they are downloaded. Other pages, particularly those that are ad-driven, will download with lots of third-party websites hanging off them, either feeding them content, or else demanding to be fed data, often personal data on the site’s visitor. It’s like a type of Trojan Horse. You think you’re accessing one website or app, but then all these other third parties start accessing you. According to Trent Walton, the top 50 most visited websites had an average of 22 third-party websites hanging off them. The New York Times had 64, while Washington Post had 63. All these third-party websites create pollution and invade privacy.”
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Bro Culture, Fitness, Chivalry, and American Identity
https://patrickwyman.substack.com/p/bro-culture-fitness-chivalry-and
If you’re not reading Patrick Wyman’s newsletter, Perspectives, definitely get on that. One of the more recent editions delves into the venn diagram of Joe Rogan, Jocko Willink and other similarily styled pundits on the web. These figures espouse a specific kind of masculinity, which Wyman harkens back to movements such as ‘Muscular Christianity’ from the beginning of the 20th century before drawing a parallel with the idea of chivalry in its original rendition.
“It’s rooted in physicality and the body, self-ownership through activity. While it doesn’t necessarily eschew the life of the mind - Jocko Willink, for example, constantly discusses and advocates the reading of books on his podcast - that’s simply not the main focus for self-actualization or identity. If you want to talk about intellectual pursuits, you can do it while pulling 500 pounds or beating the hell out of a heavy bag.”
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Jean-Patrick Manchette: Inside the Decades-Long Effort to Bring a Master of French Crime Fiction to American Readers
CrimeReads delves into the career of one of my all time faves, french crime writer Jean-Patrick Manchette. If you can, hunt down the comic adaptations of his work. They are excellent. Recently the NYRB have taken to printing some of his work in English for the first time. The article, by Donald Nicholson-Smith, also speaks about the political dimensions of Manchette’s work and how that developed into something Manchette called the ‘neo-thriller’ that worked across a large geopolitical canvas as opposed to the traditional narrower, noir viewpoint. Sadly, this work was unfinished, as Manchette died before it was finished. However, this title (not called Ivory Pearl in Engish) has now been completed using Manchette’s notes and recently realeased too.
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Stuck In A Lift With John Pilger – ‘News And How To Use It’ by Alan Rusbridger
MediaLens dissects and critiques the recent book by former Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger, using Chomsky and Herman’s ‘propaganda model’ as a launching point, before also delving into the work of Australian journalist John Pilger.
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I’m off to begin on what will be the checks notes 101st edition of this newsletter. Merry Christmas and see you in two!