Annotated Bookmarks from the Internet

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25 Years Later, Allan Bloom Is Just as Misunderstood and Necessary as Ever

The man who took the stage looked like he’d stepped out of the darkness and into some great light. In part, that’s a physical description of Allan Bloom one evening in the winter of 1988 at Harvard. No sooner had Harvey Mansfield, a professor of government and the event’s moderator, conclud...

Who can resist a bit of Straussianism? Lord knows I can’t! Especially when it only clocks in at just above 2,000 words. Allan Bloom: he hates a lot of the things you probably like. He wrote that smarty-pants book about how everything in culture is terrible. He’s an unapologetic elitist. Is that more of what the world needs right now? If being an elitist means being right, then maybe. But Bloom definitely sounded like a doofus going on about music (and a few other things), and being an elitist isn’t a necessary precondition to making intelligent decisions. At least he sounded smart while speaking, though. We certainly could use quite a bit more of that these days.

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People's Liberation Army Textbooks: Science of Campaigns (2006) and Science of Military Strategy (2013)

Taiwan in Perspective brings you two key People's Liberation Army textbooks

Curious about what informs the military planning of the Chinese Army? Able to read Chinese ideograms? You might want to check out these textbooks. Not exactly beginner stuff. Also: extremely niche, extremely nerdy.

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Found on Casey Michel’s twitter ( https://twitter.com/cjcmichel/status/682449080002347008 ). A real piece of work, that guy. What was Conrad Black saying about how he was “unfairly target” by the press? Though I suppose one could make the argument that the press had no real way of knowing that Nixon had actually thought about making arrangements to bump off a critic. They certainly might’ve surmised it from his behaviour.

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In Silicon Valley Now, It’s Almost Always Winner Takes All - The New Yorker

The failure of Sidecar, a ride-sharing venture backed by Richard Branson, illustrates that today’s tech-business ecosystem isn’t structured to foster multi-company competition.

Thoughts on the winner-take-all economy of Silicon Valley. Hard not to think about hegemonic core-periphery theory when reading this stuff. Or about Buffett and his “moats”.

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The Two Most Powerful Words That You Can Say To Yourself While Writing

“I’m bored.” These two words are the hardest thing to admit, when you’re writing your deathless novel, or screenplay, or short story. You’re supposed to be creating a work of timeless brilliance. How can you be bored?

Simple writing (or creative) advice: don’t be afraid to say (and accept) that what you’re making sucks.

Doesn’t give the really tough advice about what to do when a bunch of stuff you’ve made in a row sucks, though.

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The Reasons We Work

This article explains 6 reasons in the spectrum of understanding why people do their jobs. Understanding those reasons is the key to unlocking potential.

Shane Parrish describes the different reasons why people work. This post may depress you.

Do you like your work? Or you like how it makes you feel about yourself? Maybe you just like money? Or do you show up for work because it’s just what you’ve been doing for a while?

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Why Facebook Won, and Other Hard Truths

A lot of people have been tweeting and emailing me and DM-ing me the recent Guardian piece by Iran's "blogfather". You should read it yourself, but in short it is the story of a man sent to jail fo...

Trifle of an essay, but there’s something to its thesis: “people don’t want to surf to a bunch of different sites that all look different and have to hunt for content.” Paraphrased: remember how great google reader was? We just want the content, not the framing (when it comes to blogging, or written content, at any rate). That’s why google reader was so good. The question in my head: is the death of GR the death of blogging? And why weren’t RSS readers more popular in the first place? Like any good “thinkpiece” questions, these are basically unanswerable. But one thing is clear enough: people sure don’t give much of a shit about blogs anymore.

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Listening to “Star Wars” - The New Yorker

At eighty-three years old, John Willams remains a vital presence whose influence on musical culture can’t be quantified but is surely vast.

Ross on Star Wars (and John Williams) in the NYer. Not necessarily what you’d expect - or maybe it is? Easy to shit on a bigtime candyman like Williams, but Ross is pretty respectful here. Williams is a bit of a stylistic magpie but he’s written some very fun stuff. Also interesting to note that some accused Williams of lifting bits from Korngold’s scores - I’d never heard that.

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Orson Welles, Musician - The New Yorker

Welles was a passionate, knowledgeable listener, and in his theatre, radio, and film projects he manipulated sound with an expert hand.

More Ross NYRer on Welles - this time as musician.

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Film musicology is growing at a heartening pace, but the discipline is still bereft of sustained contributions from music theory. The current study seizes the opportunity presented by the under-analyzed repertoire of film music, offering an argument

Musicological analysis of tonality and modulation in movie scores. Serious music nerd shit.

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Hong Kong unsettled by case of 5 missing booksellers

HONG KONG (AP) — Hong Kong pro-democracy lawmakers said Sunday that they will press the government for answers after a fifth employee of a publishing company specializing in books critical of mainland China's leadership…

Pro-democracy publishers in Hong Kong are disappearing. Some observers believe there’s a link to President Xi Jinping’s crackdown on dissenting voices. Apparently disappearance and detaining of dissidents is common on the mainland but not so much in HK. Is this the beginning of a new trend?

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RA.500

Dixon, Steffi, Nicolas Jaar, Ben UFO and Omar-S mark our 500th podcast.

A list via the New Yorker’s SFJ of techno mixes. Apparently Resident Advisor has a podcast.

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Self-absorption is general, as is self-doubt. In the large coastal cities of the United States this summer many people wanted to be dressed in "real linen," cut by Calvin Klein to wrinkle, which implies real money. In the large coastal cities of the United States this summer many people wanted to be served the perfect vegetable terrine. It was a summer in which only have-nots wanted a cigarette or a vodka-and-tonic or a charcoal-broiled steak. It was a summer in which the more hopeful members of the society wanted roller skates, and stood in line to see Woody Allen's Manhattan, a picture in which, toward the end, the Woody Allen character makes a list of reasons to stay alive.

A letter from Joan Didion. And a reply: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1979/10/11/theyll-take-manhattan-3/

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Yesterday David Cameron told Parliament that there are ‘about 70,000 Syrian opposition fighters on the ground who do not belong to…

Charles Lister, who along with Will McCants and JM Berger forms the trinity of ISIS-writers with recent books out whose names immediately springs to mind, talks about the non-Islamist Syrian opposition. It’s real, he says, though he admits it could probably use some help.

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A Hundred Years of Orson Welles

He was said to have gone into decline, but his story is one of endurance—even of unlikely triumph.

A sort of half-chronicle, half-thought-piece on Orson Welles, in the fashion that the NYer does so well.

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Nerds build a set-top-box/videogame rig/media server for about $300.

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Words Could Not Fell Me

Reciting sagas in the Westfjords of Iceland. All photos by Karl Steel Haymaking time had come, warm, dry, and cloudless, on a late summer’s morning roughly a millennium ago. All the men had gone out to mow, except for Thorkel, who lingered in bed, eavesdropping on the women in the next room, digesting his breakfast, and,... Read More »

More PR indulgence. This one about pining for the fjords.