The title doesn't do it justice; A history of the creation of competitive selective enrollment at educational institutions (not limited to the Ivies), and a discussion of its impacts on American society, as well as a consideration of possible alternatives.

By the time the entrees came, we’d reached the end of these “so what else is new” updates. I recognized that we were at a threshold — one I had been unable to cross so far without booze.

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If you couldn't be bothered to read it: It was mainly protestant Germans from rural areas, as well as upper-middle-class districts.

Also available as a documentary style video essay on YouTube.

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This is to support a new book that Alex wrote, but they don't really talk about the book. They mostly talk to Alex about what it's like to grow old, various attempts at touring again, and how he's doing getting over Eddie's death. I though it was pretty moving in places.

[We] have now fully turned in terms of public sentiment toward Big Tech. People have to use it because you can’t participate in society without it, but that’s not winning users. That’s coercion. We’re talking about lock-in, where other options have been foreclosed by state abandonment or monopoly. The demand for an alternative has never been stronger.

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Archive link.

Cloud apps like Google Docs and Trello are popular because they enable real-time collaboration with colleagues, and they make it easy for us to access our work from all of our devices. However, by centralizing data storage on servers, cloud apps also take away ownership and agency from users. If a service shuts down, the software stops functioning, and data created with that software is lost.

In this article we propose “local-first software”: a set of principles for software that enables both collaboration and ownership for users. Local-first ideals include the ability to work offline and collaborate across multiple devices, while also improving the security, privacy, long-term preservation, and user control of data.

How Vavilov, the Mendelev of botany, was prosecuted for speaking out against Lamarckian pseudoevolution, and how his institute worked tirelessly and hugrily to preserve his seed bank during the Siege of Leningrad.

An exploration into the biggest challenge to the proposed Yucca Nuclear Waste Repository: Warning future beings against treating it as an Indiana Jones film set.

The German political establishment has abandoned the belief that the Holocaust gave it a responsibility to humanity and replaced it with a responsibility to Israel alone.

cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/15726314

This is a surprisingly interesting thinkpiece for its length that ultimately arrives at no conclusion, but it's an important discussion to be having while we still can.

I first read this excellent article many years ago. With the Central Park Five recently making speeches at the DNC, it seems timely. I find that it exposes the superficiality of contemporary public and political discourse, especially when contrasted with the systematic, detail-oriented nature of the legal process.

Really cleverly and comedically written. "Summer is too hot, too boring, and too long."

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/19095878

I had not been to Israel since June 2023, and during this recent visit I found a different country from the one I had known. Although I have worked abroad for many years, Israel is where I was born and raised. It is the place where my parents lived and are buried; it is where my son has established his own family and most of my oldest and best friends live. Knowing the country from the inside and having followed events even more closely than usual since 7 October, I was not entirely surprised by what I encountered on my return, but it was still profoundly disturbing.