The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

In this edition: a father's grief; a commuter's concern; a decision's consequences; a teen's hobby; and a sports fan's hidden haven.

Finding the Cattle Queen | Rachel Ossip

Today, the poster is rarely, if ever, remembered for its relationship to the Cattle Baron, despite the name printed prominently in the bottom right corner. Instead, in museums and academic papers, Facebook posts and news outlets, it is referred to as a “feminist protest poster” by “anonymous.”

Bright, Built World | Los Angeles Review of Books

A reflection on how the poets Richard Siken and Anne Carson responded to losing their language.

The Longreads Questionnaire, Featuring Patrick Radden Keefe

The New Yorker staff writer and author of the new book London Falling on running, writing in the morning, a life-changing childhood trip, and more.

The Future of Everything is Lies, I Guess

Living without my self: Our culture valorises the big, coherent self: reading Robert Musil helps me embrace the beauty of my no-self existence - Sopuli

> Later on, as I moved from literature and into consciousness research in my work, I encountered similar views in other places: most prominently in Buddhist philosophy and in the Western eclectic and non-religious adoption of Buddhism as mindfulness. But also in the reductive and materialist accounts of personhood in Western philosophy that challenge the dominant essentialist and narrative accounts, represented by thinkers such as Hume and Mach, as well as Derek Parfit and Galen Strawson, who is similarly sceptical of the narrative approach: see his Aeon Essay ‘I Am Not a Story’ (2015). > This strand in Western thinking is much aligned with the Buddhist view – and, in fact, potentially originally informed by it. Alison Gopnik has pointed out that Hume might have been influenced by Tibetan and Theravada ideas, made available to him through Jesuit scholars who were familiar with these traditions and who stayed at the Royal College of La Flèche at the same time as Hume was working on his Treatise there. > It is reassuring for me that modern neuroscience finds no sign of a centre of agency or source of awareness in the brain, thus lending empirical support to my non-reductive and non-essentialist experience. Learning about all this has all helped me feel a little less weird. But Musil provided my first and strongest experience of recognition and validation. … > Reading Musil enabled me to poetically and rationally identify with and embrace my philosophical intuitions. The novel supplied me with the guiding existential principles of flexibility and mobility that I have lived by ever since. It helped me make sense of my first, and unintendedly strong, psychedelic trip and to psychologically integrate that experience in my life. And it has inspired and strengthened my meditation practice – when I guide meditation sessions at my philosophy centre in Oxford today, I often start with a reading from The Man Without Qualities. > In this novel, I met two other individuals who relate to the world as I do – without a sense of a singular and essential self or a progressive and coherent life-story – and who develop this experience into a meaningful existential position, illustrating the advantages and beauty of the no-self existence – including the potential for reduced personal suffering, greater social coherence and a sense of universal siblinghood. It alleviated my loneliness as a young student of Western egocentric narrative, taught me how to use my divergent experience as an existential advantage and has helped me live confidently as part of the no-self minority ever since.

Limiting Not Just Screen Time, But Screen Space

The internet has stopped being a place we visit — it’s now an environment we inhabit.

Pigeons tend to respond 'at the edge of chaos,' study finds - Sopuli

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/40342 [https://news.abolish.capital/post/40342] > If you were rewarded for following a particular pattern of behavior, wouldn’t you keep doing it? The answer turns out to be more nuanced than you might think. In a new study, University of Iowa researchers report that pigeons rewarded with food after pecking five buttons in any order did, indeed, decrease the variety of their sequences. However, the birds kept their options open, never gravitating toward a single sequence and consistently electing to try different sequences. > > — > > From Biology News - Evolution, Cell theory, Gene theory, Microbiology, Biotechnology [https://phys.org/rss-feed/biology-news/] via This RSS Feed [https://phys.org/rss-feed/biology-news/].