If you’ve been enjoying these curated article summaries that dive into cultural, creative, and technological currents, you may find the discussions and analyses on our Substack page worthwhile as well. There, I explore themes and ideas that often intersect with the subjects covered in the articles I come across during my curation process.
While this curation simply aims to surface compelling pieces, our Substack writings delve deeper into topics that have piqued our curiosity over time. From examining the manifestation of language shaping our reality to unpacking philosophical undercurrents in society, our Substack serves as an outlet to unpack our perspectives on the notable trends and undercurrents reflected in these curated readings.
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At age 5, I moved with my family to Pokhara, a sleepy town in central Nepal nestled in the foothills of the Annapurna mountains. Our first home was a three-room whitewashed cottage that sat perched on the edge of an escarpment. Below us lay the thunderous Seti Gandaki River, carrying snowmelt down from the Himalayas to the plains of Northern India.
Some 15 feet behind the cottage stood a long stone wall on which a committee of vultures would congregate. I would slip out the backdoor and watch them for hours as they jockeyed for the best spots, looking for all the world like extras from Disney’s “The Jungle Book.”
Other animal encounters were more fleeting, and sometimes terrifying. I once stumbled upon a fight between a snake and a mongoose. Too scared to wait for the outcome, I ran home in breathless excitement. A trip into town promised trains of donkeys laden with saddlebags of Tibetan salt, their bells ringing sharply in the mountain air. On another occasion I watched a pig being slaughtered, its legs held in place while a metal bolt was hammered into its brain. I had never seen so much blood, nor heard so much pain.
From Pokhara we moved to the capital, Kathmandu, where animal encounters were less common but no less memorable. A snake who had taken a wrong turn at the head of our driveway was dispatched with a spade. Two streets away, my mother once found a puppy in a state of confusion and near-death. Its owner, a drug addict, had been taken away by the police, and the puppy appeared to have ingested some hash.
We christened the puppy “Lazarus,” later changing it to “Lazarina” when she gave birth to a litter. Trips to the Kathmandu zoo were a vacation highlight. I remember waiting at the crocodile enclosure, growing drowsy in the midday heat. Then, suddenly, there it was — a long snout, protruding teeth and a slow-blinking glassy eye that fixed its gaze on me. “I was aware of it, but was it also aware of me?” I wondered.
In early May I return to Kathmandu after almost 50 years. I’m one of a group of nearly 30 scientists, philosophers and Buddhist monks who have been invited to speak by Konstantin Anokhin, director of Lomonosov Moscow State University’s Institute for Advanced Brain Studies, to participate in a conference on animal consciousness. Is consciousness broadly spread across the animal world, something that occurs in most, if not all, species? Or is it encountered only occasionally, if at all, outside of mammals?
A stone’s throw from the conference venue is the imposing Boudhanath Stupa, one of Kathmandu’s main Buddhist pilgrimage sites. A nearby banner read, “May all sentient beings be happy, healthy, and peaceful,” but which beings are sentient? Can science tell us who is and isn’t in the consciousness club?
Famously, the French philosopher René Descartes argued that consciousness requires language, and hence that it’s unique to humans. Few would endorse Descartes’ view now, and most contemporary theorists take seriously the idea that consciousness is found not just in mammals but in many other taxa as well.
According to the New York Declaration on Animal Consciousness — released two weeks before the conference — there is “strong scientific support for attributions of conscious experience to other mammals and to birds” and a “realistic possibility of conscious experience in all vertebrates (including reptiles, amphibians and fishes) and many invertebrates (including, at minimum, cephalopod mollusks, decapod crustaceans and insects).”
Read the rest of this article at: Noema
Of course, this being a Paris show, Del Rey had to bring a chic French look to the event. For that, she and stylist Molly Dickson looked to Chanel, wearing a black and navy, iridescent-glittered etamine dress from its spring 2023 collection. “This dress to me is the simplest embodiment of a little black Chanel dress,” says Del Rey. “It had to be tweed. And an A-line is always flattering. I love a classic little black Chanel dress with black boots and a black bow.”
Speaking of accessories, the star finished off the look with Chanel’s Première Sound watch-necklace hybrid. It featured a steel necklace chain, which was woven with 18-karat yellow gold, black leather, and matte black audio cable; The timepiece also featured a steel case coated with 18-karat yellow gold, as well as a black lacquered dial. (Del Rey has exceptional taste in watches: See her Jacob & Co. Fleurs de Jarin watch.) For a special musician-worthy touch, the necklace also came equipped with monogrammed Chanel built-in earphones—a flex.
Of course, this being a Paris show, Del Rey had to bring a chic French look to the event. For that, she and stylist Molly Dickson looked to Chanel, wearing a black and navy, iridescent-glittered etamine dress from its spring 2023 collection. “This dress to me is the simplest embodiment of a little black Chanel dress,” says Del Rey. “It had to be tweed. And an A-line is always flattering. I love a classic little black Chanel dress with black boots and a black bow.”
Speaking of accessories, the star finished off the look with Chanel’s Première Sound watch-necklace hybrid. It featured a steel necklace chain, which was woven with 18-karat yellow gold, black leather, and matte black audio cable; The timepiece also featured a steel case coated with 18-karat yellow gold, as well as a black lacquered dial. (Del Rey has exceptional taste in watches: See her Jacob & Co. Fleurs de Jarin watch.) For a special musician-worthy touch, the necklace also came equipped with monogrammed Chanel built-in earphones—a flex.
The performance comes as hype and anticipation around Del Rey’s upcoming album continues to build. According to an announcement earlier this year, it’s set to be titled Lasso and will reportedly feature a country sound. The star gives us a teaser: “All my albums are somewhat rooted in Americana, unless it’s an album like Honeymoon which has a jazz flair, so I don’t think it will be a heavy departure,” she says. “If anything, it will just be a little lighter lyrically, and more pointed in a classic country, American, or Southern Gothic production—which again, so many of my songs already are.”
We simply cannot wait. But good news for diehard fans: Before the record drops, Del Rey promises there will be more singles on the way. You can expect a follow-up to her latest, “Tough” with Quavo, very soon. In Del Rey’s own words: “We have two more coming out by the end of the year!”
Read the rest of this article at: Vogue
When Ezra Klein visited 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. early this year for a series of off-the-record meetings with top officials, President Joe Biden’s cautious inner circle assumed that the New York Times opinion writer and podcaster would remind Democrats of Biden’s successes heading into the final year of his first term.
The president had pushed through a huge climate package and a series of housing and economic policies that a generation of liberals like Klein had championed. Klein’s stature as the liberal media’s top policy wonk, a man who could see the administration’s substantive achievements through the bad political optics, made him a natural messenger.
Then, in February, White House officials were stunned by the result of Klein’s trip: a series of in-depth opinion pieces calling on the president not to seek reelection, advocating for an open convention, explaining to the Times audience how a situation like that would play out, and laying out which prominent Democrats might replace Biden.
Read the rest of this article at: Semafor
The first time Stephanie Brinkerhoff tried psilocybin, she was a Mormon mother of three and desperate for help. She was struggling with migraines and chronic fatigue, and the antidepressants she had been on for years weren’t working, she felt. After listening to a series of podcasts about psychedelics, and learning about their reported mental health benefits, she presented her research to her Bishop, who didn’t dissuade her.
“He was just kind of like, ‘OK, like, I trust you,’” says Brinkerhoff, who looks a lot like Sally Draper from Mad Men, all grown up. “‘If this is something that you’re approaching for therapeutic reasons, and it feels very spiritual to you and you prayed about it and whatever… Then, good luck.’”
Still, Brinkerhoff, who had never so much as tasted coffee at the time, was nervous. “It was like this really big deal to be like, OK, I’m going to partake of an illegal substance,” she recalls.
In 2021, she swallowed her first dose of magic mushrooms with an alleged medicine woman she found on Retreat.Guru. “I went in blind,” Brinkerhoff admits, expecting the mushrooms to iron out the kinks in her brain and nothing more.
Instead, Brinkerhoff says, she met God. But whereas the God of her childhood was a remote “deity in the sky,” she says, a “parent figure” who could both protect and punish her, the God she encountered on mushrooms was radically different. The divine felt more embodied and earth-based, she says — synonymous, in fact, with “life.”
“It made me realize that everything that organized religion was claiming to give to me wasn’t actually coming from the religion,” Brinkerhoff reflects. “Once that clicked for me, everything fell apart.”
Within three months, Brinkerhoff had left the Church of Latter-day Saints, an organization she now describes as having committed “soul theft” for robbing her of the intuition and sovereignty she credits the mushrooms with returning.
Yet despite leaving the church, her faith in a higher power has only grown.
“It’s kind of like we’re God experiencing itself,” she says now.
AS PSYCHEDELICS REENTER mainstream, with psilocybin legalized for recreation in Colorado, and for therapeutic use in Oregon, millions of Americans are trying them for the first time, and some are walking away — quite by surprise — true believers.
Danny Worwood, a family physician in Utah, says he was motivated to try psilocybin after growing disillusioned with the medical establishment, and feeling like he didn’t have good treatment options to offer his patients. “This is kind of tender to me,” Worwood tells me, voice cracking, as he recounts how magic mushrooms unexpectedly dissolved his previously-held atheism. “It was like a conduit was created for me to know God again.”
Read the rest of this article at: Rolling Stone
Book lovers have all inevitably found themselves slogging through arid prose that stretches on endlessly. Sometimes the culprit is a popular novel whose obnoxious characters you’re desperate to run away from; at other moments, it’s a plot so ludicrous, you can’t suspend disbelief for another page. At some point, even the most dedicated readers may look up and realize that there’s no comprehension quiz holding them hostage and no grade being given for completion. For adults who have finished school, reading is no longer an obligation. But that means the decision of whether to finish a book you’re not enjoying is entirely yours—and, for some people, extremely fraught.
So how does a conscientious person decide when to give up and when to stick it out to the end? The debate is much older than the internet, but in online reading communities such as Goodreads, or on the literary sides of Instagram or TikTok, the acronym “DNF,” for “Did Not Finish,” abounds—as do arguments about when doing so is appropriate. There are those who strongly believe that no matter how badly you want to abandon a book, you should always finish it, and plenty of others adamant that life is too short to ever read something you’re not thoroughly thrilled with.
For those of us who don’t subscribe to a one-size-fits-all approach, articulating a personal, intentional philosophy about when to walk away might be the best we can do. I worked in publishing for a decade and strive to be purposeful in my reading practice while routinely finishing several dozen new books a year and putting down countless others. I spoke with similarly committed writers, teachers, editors, and bookworms about their philosophies in the hopes of creating a guide for others to decide where their limits are—and when they should quit a book.
Before dropping a book, you need to figure out what’s motivating you to stop reading it. Is the writing truly bad, or is the author experimenting in a creative way that might push you as a reader?
And if you hate something enough for it to elicit a huge emotional response, it might be worth sticking with it to better understand why. Mariel VanLandingham, a high-school English teacher in New Jersey, told me via email, “I love when a student comes into class railing about an assigned reading they hated: getting them to define why they feel so strongly and getting other students to react to them is a worthwhile experience for everyone. I would rather them power through something they hate and have big feelings about it than not read at all or be apathetic.”
Read the rest of this article at: The Atlantic
