FYI #62
The Tidal House Invites Scottish Tranquility on the Solway Coast, via design milk
Merve Emre on emotional intelligence as corporate control, in conversation with Adam Grant
Is the UN fit for purpose?, Tom Fletcher, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, on Leading
The L.A. Fires, via LARB Radio Hour, includes a discussion with Adrian Scott Fine, president of the Los Angeles Conservancy
Symbolic Sovereignty: Alvita Akiboh on the Materiality of Empire, via Public Books. Akiboh’s book, Imperial Material: National Symbols in the US Colonial Empire sounds really interesting.
The Brutalist and Emilia Perez’s voice-cloning controversies make AI the new awards season battleground, via the Guardian
Olive and Mabel - Formula For Life: Dogs + Beach = Happiness (video)
Program for the ACMI Future of Arts, Culture & Technology Symposium (FACT 2025), February 12 - 14, Melbourne. Professor Deb Chachra is one of the keynote speakers. I enjoyed her book, How Infrastructure Works: Inside the Systems That Shape Our World.
2025 Oscar nominations: How is ranked choice voting used?, via FairVote
Triple J’s Hottest 100 list
The New Yorker’s Anxious 100th Birthday Celebration, by Charlotte Klein, via New York magazine. Exhibiton at the New York Public Library A Century of The New Yorker
Jane Austen goes to the dark side: social turmoil and scandalous texting in Sense and Sensibility, via the Secret Life of Books
Join or Die with Robert Putnam, on What Now? with Trevor Noah
Holly Howe's London house, filled with the interesting antiques Howe London is known for, via House & Garden
Writer Elif Shafak On The Books That Will Never Leave Her & Why She’ll Always Choose To Write In Chaos, via Service95
How to survive being online, by Mike Monteiro… ‘Sometimes you gotta listen to the radio and trust the DJ.’
Davos 2025: Special address by Pedro Sánchez, Prime Minister of Spain.. ‘Let’s take back control. Let’s return digital platforms to their original purpose and transform them into safe and fair spaces for conversation. And let’s stop those who want to turn them into a weapon for dismantling our democracies. In a nutshell, let's make social media great again.’
‘Conversation is useless in the best possible sense. It’s anti-capitalist — you don’t make money out of it; there’s not material gain. There is only the pleasure of sitting with another human being, of listening to them, of an ephemeral exchange which has no meaning beyond a shared temporary gratification’, via Shattered by Hanif Kureishi (2024: 170)