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From PBS:

Dred Scott first went to trial to sue for his freedom in 1847. Ten years later, after a decade of appeals and court reversals, his case was finally brought before the United States Supreme Court. In what is perhaps the most infamous case in its history, the court decided that all people of African ancestry — slaves as well as those who were free — could never become citizens of the United States and therefore could not sue in federal court. The court also ruled that the federal government did not have the power to prohibit slavery in its territories. Scott, needless to say, remained a slave.

Born around 1800, Scott migrated westward with his master, Peter Blow. They travelled from Scott’s home state of Virginia to Alabama and then, in 1830, to St. Louis, Missouri. Two years later Peter Blow died; Scott was subsequently bought by army surgeon Dr. John Emerson, who later took Scott to the free state of Illinois. In the spring of 1836, after a stay of two and a half years, Emerson moved to a fort in the Wisconsin Territory, taking Scott along. While there, Scott met and married Harriet Robinson, a slave owned by a local justice of the peace. Ownership of Harriet was transferred to Emerson.

More here. (Note: Throughout February, at least one post will be devoted to Black History Month: A century of Black History Commemorations)

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Kathryn Schulz at The New Yorker:

The Romantics were Tennyson’s immediate predecessors, so perhaps it is unsurprising that Holmes returns to the theme in his new book, “The Boundless Deep: Young Tennyson, Science and the Crisis of Belief” (Pantheon). The title suggests that Holmes, too, is interested in Tennyson’s fascination with unknowable immensities, but it is the subtitle that makes plain the book’s central claim: that the crucial factor in the poet’s formative years was the scientific advances of the nineteenth century and the challenge they posed to conventional Christian faith. This is a plausible assertion, given that, by the time Tennyson entered adulthood, the British intellectual class—and, for that matter, much of the rest of the world—had been turned on its head by scientific breakthroughs, above all in geology and astronomy.

The revolution in geology had to do with time. In Tennyson’s youth, geologists amassed evidence in support of the proposition, first floated in the previous century, that the age of the earth was not measurable in the familiar and Biblically sanctioned sum of thousands of years but, rather, in untold billions. That elongated sense of our planetary past helped make room for a new understanding of certain strange creatures that had begun rearing their fearsome fossilized heads and tails and teeth into the public consciousness when Tennyson was in his early teens—the Megalosaurus, named and described in 1824, and the Iguanodon, named and described in 1825.

more here.

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…. The Most Of It

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John Yau at the Paris Review:

One night John and I go to Tribeca, to a small gallery space on Franklin Street, to see Joseph Cornell’s masterpiece, Rose Hobart (1936), a nineteen-minute collage film made by splicing and reordering segments from East of Borneo (1931), a B-film starring Rose Hobart and Charles Bickford, along with an educational nature film of an eclipse. A few days earlier, John called and told me that he had read that there was going to be a screening of Cornell’s film, just as he had first shown it at the Julien Levy Gallery in December 1936, projected through a blue-tinted lens at a slowed down speed consistent with silent films.  John thought it would be interesting to see Rose Hobart as Cornell first conceived of it.

According to John, halfway through the debut showing, with Cornell present, Salvador Dalí—in a fit of envy, and one of the few in the audience to grasp what Cornell had done—used his umbrella to knock over the projector, which Cornell was operating, as he stormed out, screaming: “My idea for a film is exactly that, and I was going to propose it to someone who would pay to have it made. I never wrote it down or told anyone, but it is as if you had stolen it!”

more here.

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Justin Garcia in The Guardian:

As an evolutionary biologist who studies sex and relationships, I’m fascinated by these two truths. We humans make romantic commitments to each other – and some also break those commitments by cheating.

This might sound like a modern problem, but for me, it raises questions stretching far back in evolutionary time. Why did we evolve both a tendency to stay and a tendency to stray? If some among us will inevitably cheat, does that mean humans are hardwired for infidelity?

Answering those questions requires us to understand two key urges that propel our romantic and sexual behaviours as a species: the drive for a romantic bond and the drive for sexual novelty. Research shows that humans have evolved to seek secure partnership in the form of close pair-bond relationships, but it also shows, just as compellingly, that we’ve evolved a separate appetite for variety. Both drives are alive in us modern human beings, despite being at cross-purposes.

Yet some of us seek novelty more than others. In 2010, my research colleagues and I made a shocking discovery when we found that some people’s genetic makeup does indeed create a predisposition to engage in infidelity.

More here.

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Philip Ball in Quanta:

None of the leading interpretations of quantum theory are very convincing. They ask us to believe, for example, that the world we experience is fundamentally divided from the subatomic realm it’s built from. Or that there is a wild proliferation of parallel universes, or that a mysterious process causes quantumness to spontaneously collapse. This unsatisfying state was a key element of Beyond Weird(opens a new tab), my 2018 book on the meaning of quantum mechanics. It’s no wonder experts are as divided as ever(opens a new tab) about what quantum theory says about reality, a century after the theory was developed.

But after reading Decoherence and Quantum Darwinism(opens a new tab), a book published in March 2025 by the physicist Wojciech Zurek, I’m excited by the possibility of an answer that does away with all those fanciful notions. Zurek, of Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, has been working for decades to resolve the question of how the quantum rules that govern the behavior of atoms and subatomic particles switch to those of classical physics — Newton’s laws of motion and so on — that operate at the scales of everyday life.

Zurek’s key idea about how this transition occurs, called decoherence, is fairly well established. But his book brings together for the first time all the elements he has been developing into a grand synthesis.

More here.

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Sarah Majdov at Persuasion:

Economist Tyler Cowen recently posted an interesting call for research proposals. His team is offering $25,000 to investigate how human minds navigate abundance.

Here is how the call described it:

By nearly every measure—life expectancy, wealth, freedom, technology—humanity has never been better off. As material hardships disappear, new psychological challenges emerge: decision fatigue from unlimited choice, more complex forms of social organization making new cognitive and emotional demands, crises of meaning without survival struggles.

Cowen’s team frames this as a research initiative “to understand the psychological tradeoffs of cultural, economic, and technological progress to ensure that mass abundance and freedom translate into mass flourishing.”

More here.

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Arendse Lund at JSTOR Daily:

Although Thiebaud also painted sprawling mesas, towering cityscapes, and sun-drenched coastlines (inspiring its own California license plate), it’s the depictions of food that are unmistakably his. The barely garnished hot dogs of state fairs and the decadent milkshakes of soda shops have all been immortalized in his artworks. When Thiebaud was just starting out painting, he spent a year in New York City; there he befriended Willem de Kooning who advised him to pick a subject matter that felt genuine, saying: “Find something you really know something about and that you’re interested in, and just do that.” Diners with their dessert spreads, gumball machines with their colorful candies for mere cents, arcade games with their whiff of possibilities—these were, to Thiebaud, real experiences. These were the inexpensive pleasures on offer everywhere. Thiebaud’s art is both realistic and exaggerated, influenced by everything from classical Masters to abstractionism. Admiring Thiebaud’s paintings, abstract expressionist painter Barnett Newman told him that “[t]hose European surrealists are boys compared to what you can do with a gumball machine. That’s a real surreal object in you.” But labeling Thiebaud and his art is surprisingly difficult. His paintings are heavy with allusions to Velázquez and Degas, Manet and Eakins, and they’re simultaneously humor-filled and containing a deep sense of time.

more here.

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Zoe Sottile in CNN:

A large image of and a quote from Harriet Tubman have been removed from a National Park Service webpage about the Underground Railroad, following several prominent changes to government websites under the Trump administration. A comparison on the Wayback Machine between the webpage on January 21 and March 19 shows that the large image of Tubman – the railroad’s most famous “conductor,” lauded for helping scores of people escape slavery – has been swapped with a series of five commemorative stamps showing Tubman alongside William Still, Catherine Coffin, Thomas Garrett and Frederick Douglass. All five aided enslaved people seeking freedom. The stamps tout “Black/White” cooperation. A quote from Tubman about her experience coordinating the clandestine network for slaves seeking freedom also no longer appears on the NPS page.

…The past few months have also seen other controversial changes to government websites as the Trump administration enacts a campaign to eliminate DEI, or diversity, equity, and inclusion. The removal of the words “transgender” and “queer” from a National Parks Service webpage about Stonewall Monument in New York City triggered protests in February.

More here. (Note: Throughout February, at least one post will be devoted to Black History Month: A century of Black History Commemorations)

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From National Park Service:

Born into slavery on Maryland’s Eastern Shore in 1822, Tubman was named Araminta by her enslaved parents, Ben and Harriet (Rit) Ross. Nearly killed at the age of 13 by a blow to her head, “Minty” recovered and grew strong and determined to be free. Changing her name to Harriet upon her marriage to freeman John Tubman in 1844, she escaped five years later when her enslaver died and she was to be sold. One hundred dollars was offered for her capture. Vowing to return to bring her family and friends to freedom, she spent the next ten years making about 13 trips into Maryland to rescue them. She also gave instructions to about 70 more who found their way to freedom independently.

Tubman successfully used the skills she had learned while working on the wharves, fields and woods, observing the stars and natural environment and learning about the secret communication networks of free and enslaved African Americans to affect her escapes. She later claimed she never lost a passenger. The famous abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison called her “Moses,” and the name stuck.

More here. (Note: Throughout February, at least one post will be devoted to Black History Month: A century of Black History Commemorations)

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Shelly Fan in Singularity Hub:

Laura Oliveira fell in love with swimming at 70. She won her first competition three decades later. Longevity runs in her family. Her aunt Geny lived to 110. Her two sisters thrived and were mentally sharp beyond a century. They came from humble backgrounds, didn’t stick to a healthy diet—many loved sweets and fats—and lacked access to preventative screening or medical care. Extreme longevity seems to have been built into their genes.

Scientists have long sought to tease apart the factors that influence a person’s lifespan. The general consensus has been that genetics play a small role; lifestyle and environmental factors are the main determinants. A new study examining two cohorts of twins is now challenging that view. After removing infections, injuries, and other factors that cut a life short, genetics account for roughly 55 percent of the variation in lifespan, far greater than previous estimates of 10 to 25 percent.

More here.

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Keza Macdonald at Lit Hub:

In Donkey Kong, Jumpman was a carpenter with a hammer. But now, what with all the pipes, in the endearingly literal narrative logic of early video games, it made sense for Mario to be a plumber. “There were several reasons why we used pipes,” Miyamoto told me in a 2020 interview. “They were perfect for the mechanic in Mario Bros., where enemies disappearing at the bottom of the screen would appear again from the top after a short time; they had this comic book feel about them where they’d bulge and have something come out of them; and then there was the fact that I would always see them on my way to work.” (On his route to the office, Miyamoto would walk through a residential area that had some construction work going on, revealing drainage pipes sticking out of the walls.)

Mario’s unorthodox plumbing uniform of overalls and a red cap has a more functional explanation. In the minuscule eight-by-eight-pixel palette afforded him in the early 1980s, Miyamoto wanted to find a way to draw a character more appealing than the stickmen and blobs that early games typically used as the player’s avatar (characters surely devised by a programmer, not an artist, as Miyamoto asserted—just a little dismissively—in a 2009 conversation with Satoru Iwata).

more here.

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Charlie Ericson in Aeon:

If all the writing that claimed to ‘subvert’ our expectations actually did so, society would have long since learned to live without expectations. The word has become a staple of book reviews and jacket blurbs, a foundation for how undergraduates understand the value of a text, and an aspiration for writers hoping to establish a reputation for colouring outside the lines. This commercial and institutional ubiquity is made stranger by the fact that, except in rare discussions of theological corruption, this very old word has become associated with literature only in the past 70 years. In 1956, the Canadian critic Hugh Kenner became the first to deploy it as a literary-critical term in an essay in The Sewanee Review: he claimed that the Irish poet W B Yeats had ‘subverted’ a tradition. Kenner was using the word in the sense it had since its entry into English via the Wycliffe Bible: to raze, to destroy, to overthrow, or to corrupt.

The fourth in that list is crucial: ‘to corrupt’ hints at the distinction between subversion and revolution. We might call a revolution an inversion of the social order that happens only once Hierarchy No 1 has been weakened enough that Hierarchy No 2 can come into power. It would be impossible for a revolution to be both successful and secret. Subversion, on the other hand, affiliates success with secrecy. Subversion is effective precisely because it takes a keen perception to point it out: it implies corruption so subtle that it eludes notice, even when you think you’re looking.

The idea that Yeats subverted a tradition, though, still implies that traditions are susceptible to wholesale destruction, one that may begin obliquely but end in the rise of a completely new tradition. But literary traditions are not so brittle as that.

More here.

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Melinda Cooper in Equator:

Among the weirder features of the contemporary American far right is the emergence of primal fathers – Old Testament patriarchs who want to sire not just a family, but a race. Elon Musk is the best known of these Aspirational Abrahams, although he is by no means the only one. A long Wall Street Journal report has documented Musk’s desire to beget what he calls a “legion” of children who would save humanity from demographic freefall and bear his superior genes into the far future. A Space X rocket stands ready to transport his seed beyond Earth in a process akin to inverse panspermia, the theory that organic life arrived on our planet via space dust.

Musk is currently thought to have at least fourteen children with four women, whose legal and financial affairs are partly managed by Jared Birchall, the director of his family office. “We will need to use surrogates”, Musk texted one of them, to “reach legion-level before the apocalypse.” In preparation for this scale up in operations, he has acquired a multi-residential compound in Austin, Texas.

Silicon Valley pronatalism is generally understood as eugenic – a reading that captures the desire for racial purification, but not the distinct process by which purity is pursued. The “classic” American eugenicists of the progressive era sought to banish genetic abnormality, which they saw as responsible for mental degeneracy and other social ills. By contrast, Musk and his ilk are steeped in the pseudoscience of transhumanism – less concerned with the elimination of error than the exaltation of exceptional deviance.

More here.

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Ilias Alami, Tom Chodor, and Jack Taggart in Phenomenal World:

More than three decades ago, John Ruggie offered a definition of one of the most vexed terms in political science. Multilateralism, he wrote, was a group of “institutional forms which coordinate relations among three or more states on the basis of generalized principles of conduct” and operate “without regard to the particularistic interests of the parties or the strategic exigencies that may exist in any specific occurrence.” Today, amid rapidly resurgent economic nationalism and increasing geopolitical tension, it has become clear that the postwar system of multilateral institutions is under direct and sustained assault—often from its erstwhile sponsors.

In trade, the US’ obstruction of the WTO system has rendered the global regime dysfunctional, contributing to deepening protectionism and the multiplication of trade restrictions. In security, the UN notes that “paralysis in the Security Council and deliberations of disarmament bodies, as well as persistent geopolitical rivalries, are alarming signs of a multilateralism that has run out of steam.” The credibility of international law has foundered, as Israel and Russia have blatantly dismissed rulings and injunctions from the UN and the International Court of Justice. The UN Secretary General has affirmed that the institution faces “imminent financial collapse” as over 80 percent of states have not paid their membership fees to the organization.

NATO likewise faces existential threats from within its own ranks, while remilitarization has deepened fragmentation in security arrangements. In global health, the politicization of vaccine distribution during the Covid-19 pandemic exposed the empty promise of multilateralism in responding to major global crises. Climate governance is in peril, with UN environmental conferences captured by fossil fuel interests and the second Trump Administration engaging in prolific climate obstructionism.

In short, multilateral cooperation has been thrown into visible disarray across a number of issue areas, as leading states increasingly pursue unilateral actions, obstruct mechanisms, and bypass or disengage from traditional institutions. What explains this turn against multilateralism, and what might take shape in their place?

More here.

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(Note: Throughout February, at least one post will be devoted to Black History Month: A century of Black History Commemorations)

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