Beatriz Silva in the Journal of the History of Ideas blog:
“November is a mournful month in the history of Palestine,” Edward Said began his eulogy in memory of Sir Isaiah Berlin in 1997. With the news of Berlin’s passing came an outpour of newspaper articles written by the philosopher’s admirers, friends, and scholars, honoring the man who remains one of the major liberal thinkers of the Cold War. Said’s text, published in the pan-Arab newspaper Al-Hayat, went relatively unnoticed. In the first few paragraphs, the Columbia University professor remembers a man with whom he shared intellectual roots: a skilled orator and a philosopher with an astonishing breadth of knowledge that extended well beyond philosophy. The second part of the text takes an introspective turn, as Said confesses to the reader: “None of us [Palestinians]—and I do not excuse myself at all were able to engage with Berlin on the question of Palestine.” With this reflection, Said hints at an aspect of Berlinian scholarship that persists inadequately addressed: the British philosopher’s unwavering commitment to the state of Israel and, most importantly, his dismissal of the experiences of Palestinians since 1948. In highlighting what has tended to be written off as a mere footnote in Berlin’s life, Said suggests a re-evaluation of the Oxford don’s liberal theory by asking: who was Isaiah Berlin’s liberalism for?
The two intellectuals met for the last time at a London restaurant in 1996. “Unfailingly cordial,” as Said described Berlin’s treatment of himself, “he called out to me and insisted on chatting briefly with me about the eighteenth-century Italian philosopher Vico.” Berlin and Said’s shared interest in Giambattista Vico indicates that the two academics shared more in common than one might expect.
More here.
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“Cinema is frequently associated with glamour, but the reality is that it’s labor,” Corbet told me. In the case of “The Brutalist,” his work seemed to be paying off. Initial reactions had been ecstatic. At Venice, where the film premièred, in early September, viewers had applauded for somewhere between twelve minutes (according to Variety) and thirteen minutes and five seconds (according to Deadline), longer than for any other festival entry but Pedro Almodóvar’s, and Corbet won the Silver Lion for Best Director. The film, which will be released in late December, was already being discussed as a Best Picture contender, and Brody as a Best Actor front-runner. (This week, it was nominated for both awards, plus five more, by the Golden Globes.)
The chance of meeting a person like you is the only reason I talk to strangers.
Do you find it easy to wake up early? You may have Neanderthals in your ancestry.
Now it was June, and we were at the National Hot Rod Association’s Nostalgia Nationals at Beech Bend Raceway in Bowling Green, Kentucky. The weather was brutal, and it was forecast to remain so: sunny, low to mid-nineties, wiltingly humid. In the distance, an antique roller coaster creaked along wooden tracks, and I wondered who would choose to ride it when there were so many cars to ogle and races to watch and people to meet.
Like the writing of book reviews, the live author interview has been placed under the sign of “marketing and publicity,” and treated less as a distinct skill than part of an ethos of service—something that “professional” writers do for other writers and for their publishers—as well as signaling everyone’s support for the perennially endangered small bookstores and event spaces that host them. The assumption is that the interviewer, like the interviewee, has something to sell. Since everyone is engaged in promotion, no one has to be paid. The sense that the interview is a devalued form, anyone can do it, especially if they published a book a year before the book under discussion, makes it a kind of professional corvée for writers whose value accrues elsewhere. This can often have a corrosive effect on the quality of the events. I have been to evenings where it appears the interviewer hasn’t even read the author’s book. More recently they have become another opportunity to indulge in guilty feelings and remind everyone in attendance that something more important and painful is happening elsewhere. In general, people come to these things to look rather than to listen and they do them to be seen rather than heard. The author will be signing books afterwards; there will be free drinks before you go out to pay for drinks; you can take a selfie if you want.
The number of neurons in the human brain is comparable to the number of stars in the Milky Way galaxy. Unlike the stars, however, in the case of neurons the real action is in how they are directly connected to each other: receiving signals over synapses via their dendrites, and when appropriately triggered, sending signals down the axon to other neurons (glossing over some complications). So a major step in understanding the brain is to map its wiring diagram, or 
In 2016, an essay arrived in our offices from John J. Lennon, then incarcerated at Attica Correctional Facility in New York. “
Jaime Teevan joined
Trump’s political rebirth is unparalleled in American history. His first term ended in disgrace, with his attempts to overturn the 2020 election results culminating in the attack on the U.S. Capitol. He was shunned by most party officials when he announced his candidacy in late 2022 amid multiple criminal investigations. Little more than a year later, Trump cleared the Republican field, clinching one of the fastest contested presidential primaries in history. He spent six weeks during the general election in a New York City courtroom, the first former President to be 
Annie Rauwerda: I started back in high school editing typos and adding things that I noticed were missing — like items to lists. But I had never done anything more than that because I was afraid of it because there are so many rules. Like, I’d seen the talk pages. And many of Wikipedia’s policies and guidelines and essays are very wordy.
An optical fibre technology can help chips communicate with each other at the speed of light, enabling them to transmit 80 times as much information as they could using traditional electrical connections. That could significantly speed up the training times required for large artificial intelligence models – from months to weeks – while also reducing the energy and emissions costs for data centres.
In the fall of 2012, when Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the military power now in charge of Syria, was a mere minor terrorist organization, a band of their fighters in Aleppo took me prisoner. Back then they were known as Jabhat al-Nusra. I remained in the group’s custody for two years—often in solitary confinement cells, but not always. During this time, it often happened that news of some stupendous victory would make its way, via the fighters’ two-way radios, into our prisons. It was a surreal experience then to listen as a government checkpoint got blown into the sky, for instance, or a truckload of government troops fell into my captors’ hands.