Megan Clement in The New York Times:

At first it seemed that we were doomed to bear witness to a grim spectacle, a media frenzy over the appalling details of a nauseating crime that left its victim, in her own words, “a field of ruins.” But there was one more extraordinary element that soon came to light: the strength of Ms. Pelicot. First, she refused anonymity. Then, with patient, powerful insistence that rapists be held accountable for their actions — “It’s difficult for me to hear that it’s basically banal to have raped Madame Pelicot,” she said — she opened up a conversation about sexual violence in a country where a serious reckoning was well overdue.

Convictions for rape are rare in France — 94 percent of reported cases were dropped in 2020, according to a 2024 report by France’s Public Policy Institute. The same report estimated that only 10 to 15 percent of rape complaints ended in a criminal conviction. Speaking after the verdicts were handed down, Ms. Pelicot paid tribute to those who have been denied justice: “I think of the victims, unrecognized, whose stories often remain hidden. I want you to know that we share the same struggle.”

Trials can be devastating for victims. Despite the clarity of the facts in the Pelicot case, this trial has been no exception. At one point, Ms. Pelicot was questioned over whether she had a tendency toward “exhibitionism.” Defense lawyers suggested that in one of the videos she was actually conscious and responding — a moment in which she showed a rare flash of exasperation and walked out of the courtroom. After one particularly insulting line of questioning, she told the court, “I understand why rape victims don’t press charges.”

More here.

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Michelle Goldberg in The New York Times:

It has been a ghastly year for American women — at least those of us who are not looking forward to being ruled by a claque of cartoon chauvinists — but a pretty rich year for women in the movies. One of 2024’s biggest hits featured an unfairly maligned woman who channels her galvanic anger into a fight against fascism. (I’m talking, of course, about “Wicked.”) Demi Moore gave a scenery-chewing performance in “The Substance,” a gruesome body horror film about the pressure on women to stay nubile. Amy Adams starred in Marielle Heller’s supernaturally inflected “Nightbitch,” in which a woman starts to go feral, perhaps literally, amid the tedium of early motherhood. Mikey Madison was incandescent as a street-smart sex worker from a post-Soviet country in “Anora,” a movie that takes the silly Cinderella fantasy behind “Pretty Woman” and explodes it.

But perhaps the most unlikely feminist film of the year is the much-hyped, extremely kinky “Babygirl,” starring Nicole Kidman, which opens on Dec. 25. It’s a movie that satirizes the archetype of the girlboss but ultimately affirms it. On the cusp of our terrible new era, it felt, for all its darkness and perversity, like an artifact of a more optimistic moment, when equality seemed close enough at hand that the orgasm gap between men and women — something the movie’s director, Halina Reijn, often talks about in interviews — could be a subject of serious concern.

More here.

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Purge

The Aryan Jesus, in Hitler’s painting
Madonna and Child, is, I trust, a Jew,
however blond, beneath a firmament
whose children are not yet children,
but calm, sententious, and removed, steadfast
as the precious metal in their hair.
Doubtless our little savior is feeling
over-yellow, as the wheat must feel
given the liberal sentiment it’s under,
where peasantry of a German valley,
somewhere south of new Jerusalem,
busy themselves, harvesting the light.
They kneel in the style of Valkyrie
left to rummage through the battlefield,
to gather the bold who died like gods.
Aryan Jesus was created from light,
extruded from a tube of cadmium,
zinc, acidic salt, antigens that target
a brain, a heart, a testicle, a tongue,
vital systems gone unnoticed until,
exhumed, they make their failures known.
Aryan Jesus is, of course, immune,
and so lives on, baptized in the blood
laid down in gilded portraits such as these.
Let me begin again. A child is born,
and as the manger cripples in the wind,
as the cow and donkey wander off
toward a dip of land on the horizon,
the cradle waxes luminous, raised
an inch above the excrement and hay.
Even as names fade from the gravestones
that are painted figures, bent beneath
their weight in gold, the work ahead continues.
A brilliance fills the carriage where it sighs
into the mire and workers never sleep.
So tireless their labor, they hallucinate
angels, flags, wheat where there is only
emptiness now, emptiness and ether,
fire and all that providence consumes.

by Bruce Bond
from Plume Magazine, issue #160, 12/24

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Jeannette Cooperman at The Common Reader:

Graceland. I am here, for the first time, for the forty-fifth anniversary of Elvis Presley’s death. The name does not feel apt. Surrounded by sweaty, mutton-chopped worshippers in shiny polyester jumpsuits, women with wrinkly tattoos, and little boys in capes, I gulp down hot, syrupy banana glopped with peanut butter on smashed Bunny Bread to condition myself, then set out to meet the fans who keep a dead man alive as an engine of consumerism, a weird religion, and an inexplicable (to me) lifelong obsession.

They surprise me.

Flo Shaw, who comes every year from Manchester, England, wears a sundress printed with black-and-white Elvis portraits and has his profile on her forearm. She lights up brighter than her raspberry hair as she describes loving Elvis for sixty-seven years (far longer than her marriage). A character, I think happily. Yet as she fields my questions, I sense a toughness and acumen in her worship. She thinks the critics are wrong: “So what if he didn’t write his own songs? The range is incredible—from hillbilly to ballads.”

More here.

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From the Rational Optimist Society:

What if I told you the next energy revolution isn’t in the sky, but under your feet?

Deep underground, beneath layers of dirt and ancient rock, an endless furnace burns hotter than the surface of the sun.

It’s been running since Earth formed 4.6 billion years ago, generating enough heat to easily power all of humanity.

This vast energy source has always been tantalizingly out of reach. But armed with a newly repurposed technology, three American startups are now racing to tap into Earth’s natural power plant.

Temperatures reach 10,800°F at Earth’s core. Just a few miles down, the rocks are hot enough to boil water instantly. This is the source of geothermal energy.

The heat locked in Earth’s crust holds more energy than all the world’s oil, coal, gas, and uranium combined—and it’s not close…

More here.

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Cynthia Haven at the Book Haven:

Poet and former National Endowment for the Arts chairman Dana Gioia has been busy. He’s just published a spate of new books: Poetry as Enchantment and Other Essays (Paul Dry Books); Dana Gioia: Poet & Critic (Mercer University Press, edited by John Zheng and Jon Parrish Peede); and last and shortest (205 pages), Weep, Shudder, Die: On Opera and Poetry, also with Paul Dry Books. He calls the last “an idiosyncratic book about the extravagant and alluring art of opera.” He also calls opera “the most intense form of poetic drama.” We couldn’t agree more.

From the Preface:

“This is a poet’s book about opera. To some people, that statement will suggest writing that is airy, impressionistic, and unreliable, but a poet also brings a practical sense of how words animate opera, lend life to imaginary characters, and give human shape to music. And a poet knows about love. There is no art that I love more than opera. I have written this book for those who, sharing the devotion, have wept in the dark of an opera house.” He adds that “the libretto is not a shabby coat rack on which the magnificent vestments of music are hung. Operas begin with their words. Strong words inspire composers, weak words burden them. Ultimately singers embody the words to give the music a human form for the audience.”

more here.

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Erik Parens at ELSI Hub:

In his new book, Understanding the Nature-Nurture Debate, Eric Turkheimer sums up much of his thinking over his long and distinguished record as a behavioral geneticist. As a scientist, he has sought to understand what twin, adoption, and family studies can—and cannot—show regarding the role of genes in the emergence of human behavior. As a thinker, he has sought to understand what findings from those studies do—and do not—mean for us as individuals, who experience ourselves as having agency, and as citizens, who are acutely aware of the injustice and inequality that plague our society. And, as a colleague, Turkheimer has shown unstinting generosity to those of us in bioethics who want to understand what the science shows and what it means.

As the Human Genome Project took off in the 1990s and 2000s, Turkheimer had the insight and courage to stand nearly alone among his colleagues in criticizing what he took to be their unrealistic enthusiasm about how useful it would be—in terms of improving both behavioral and medical care—to sequence human genomes. He was among the first to recognize the way in which discoveries of single “genes for” rare disorders like cystic fibrosis were, essentially, red herrings in the hunt for causal pathways from genes to common disorders and other complex traits. Had Turkheimer’s skepticism about discovering causal pathways been taken more seriously, those charged with caring about the public’s health might have adjusted how much they invested in genomics.

But it isn’t such practical implications that preoccupy him in the new book. Rather, it is the ethical and social ones.

More here.

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Ryan McIlvain at the LA Review of Books:

NEAR THE END of Samantha Allen’s new novel Roland Rogers Isn’t Dead Yet, a memoirist who’s been moonlighting as a ghostwriter confides that he isn’t really an artist anymore, or anyway not the kind who’ll likely win a National Book Award. “I’m never going to be one of those waiflike, purple prose–writing authors who gets cover blurbs like ‘delicate and masterful’ or ‘a powerful meditation on X, Y, and Z.’”

It’s hard to tell if Adam Gallagher is being falsely modest here, not least because the book’s fade-out doesn’t let us in on the success or failure of future books under his name. We do get to read excerpts from the ghosted book Adam has been quickly but passionately at work on—an autobiography of a famous Hollywood action star named Roland Rogers, who happens to be dead at the time the work is commissioned, contracted, interviewed for, drafted, revised, and published. Rogers’s book is called The Truth, and his main aim in it is to come out of the closet at last. And, on the evidence of the few pages presented to us in a playful, moving coda, I’d say Adam the ghostwriter/editor has got moves, plenty of them.

more here.

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Laura Hackett in The Sunday Times:

When Sylvia Townsend Warner expressed an interest in a cottage in East Chaldon, Dorset, in 1930, the surveyor described it as “a small undesirable property, situated in an out of the way place and with no attractions whatever”. Today, one imagines, the cottage, which had no electricity or running water, would be described as “bursting with potential”. Undeterred, Townsend Warner bought it for £90. In escaping London she was following the example of her novel Lolly Willowes, in which an unmarried woman moves to the countryside and becomes a witch. Virginia Woolf once asked her how she knew so much about witches. “Because I am one,” Townsend Warner replied.

Woolf moved to the countryside herself, to Asheham House, near Lewes in East Sussex, in 1915. And so did Rosamond Lehmann, the author of the scandalous Dusty Answer, in 1941 — her idyll of choice was the Berkshire village of Aldworth. All three women had gone through upheavals: Woolf was recovering from a suicide attempt, Townsend Warner had ended a long relationship and Lehmann had separated from her husband. Rural England offered rest and retreat.

More here.

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From LUMS:

LUMS is proud and thrilled to acquire the Lutfullah Khan Sound Archive, the premier repository for the literary, cultural, musical, and intellectual heritage of Pakistan and the wider region. There is no other audio library in the region that comes close to matching the scale, richness, and uniqueness of this incredible collection that is bound to serve as an invaluable resource for interdisciplinary scholarship, student learning, and community outreach across various disciplines, including history, sociology, religion, cultural studies, musicology, film studies, and more.

Mr. Lutfullah Khan (1916 – 2012) was a renowned collector, archivist, photographer, patron of the arts, and a classically trained and accomplished musician. Throughout his lifetime, he dedicated himself to assembling an unparalleled assortment of audio recordings. With tens and thousands of hours of recordings, his extraordinary collection includes oral recitations and conversations with more than 800 poets, writers, intellectuals, critics and other prominent personalities from Pakistan and the wider region. From Bade Ghulam Ali Khan to Suraiya Multanikar, the Lutfullah Sound Archive also has a remarkable and exceptionally rare archive of classical, semi classical, instrumental, and folk music. The typed catalogue of this collection alone is close to nearly 40 volumes. In recognition of his services to preserving cultural heritage, Mr. Khan was awarded the Pride of Performance in 2012.

More here. (Note: I was fortunate enough to view the collection in November 2024 on a visit to LUMS, Lahore. Truly magical and one of the wondrous accomplishments that all of humanity can be proud of)

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In Broken Images

He is quick, thinking in clear images;
I am slow, thinking in broken images.

He becomes dull, trusting to his clear images;
I become sharp, mistrusting my broken images.

Trusting his images, he assumes their relevance;
Mistrusting my images, I question their relevance.

Assuming their relevance, he assumes the fact;
Questioning their relevance, I question the fact.

When the fact fails him, he questions his senses;
When the facts fail me, I approve my senses.

He continues quick and dull in his clear images;
I continue slow and sharp in my broken images.

He in a new confusion of his understanding;
I in a new understanding of my confusion.

by Robert Graves
from To Read a Poem
Harcourt Brace, 1992

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David Phillips at Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews:

David Edmonds’ Parfit belongs to a burgeoning genre. There are the two recent collective biographies of Anscombe, Foot, Midgley and Murdoch (by Benjamin Lipscomb and by Claire Mac Cumhaill and Rachael Wiseman). There are M.W. Rowe’s J.L. Austin: Philosopher and D-Day Intelligence Officer and Nikhil Krishnan’s A Terribly Serious Adventure. Earlier works include Ray Monk’s Russell and Wittgenstein volumes, Tom Regan’s Bloomsbury’s Prophet, and Bart Schultz’s books on Sidgwick and the other classical utilitarians. And Edmonds himself is inter alia the author of The Murder of Professor Schlick and the coauthor of Wittgenstein’s Poker.

Derek Parfit stands out among the subjects of these various works for being so contemporary. Edmonds could draw on a vast collection of stories conveying Parfit’s legendary eccentricity. But he also took on in a particularly acute form the challenge of writing simultaneously for two quite different audiences. One audience consists of philosophers, some of whom are the sources of the stories and almost all of whom know a good deal about Parfit and his ideas. The other audience consists of general readers who are apt to come to the book knowing little or nothing about either.

I think Edmonds meets this challenge admirably. He is a lively and amusing writer. Readers of Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews are unlikely to turn to his book for an introduction to Parfit’s ideas. But it is likely to be the place where some readers with less philosophical training first encounter teletransporter cases, future Tuesday indifference, and the repugnant conclusion. They are in good hands.

More here.

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Ethan Mollick at One Useful Thing:

At the end of last year, there was only one publicly available GPT-4/Gen2 class model, and that was GPT-4. Now there are between six and ten such models, and some of them are open weights, which means they are free for anyone to use or modify. From the US we have OpenAI’s GPT-4o, Anthropic’s Claude Sonnet 3.5, Google’s Gemini 1.5, the open Llama 3.2 from Meta, Elon Musk’s Grok 2, and Amazon’s new Nova. Chinese companies have released three open multi-lingual models that appear to have GPT-4 class performance, notably Alibaba’s Qwen, R1’s DeepSeek, and 01.ai’s Yi. Europe has a lone entrant in the space, France’s Mistral. What this word salad of confusing names means is that building capable AIs did not involve some magical formula only OpenAI had, but was available to companies with computer science talent and the ability to get the chips and power needed to train a model.

In fact, GPT-4 level artificial intelligence, so startling when it was released that it led to considerable anxiety about the future, can now be run on my home computer. Meta’s newest small model, released this month, named Llama 3.3, offers similar performance and can operate entirely offline on my gaming PC. And the new, tiny Phi 4 from Microsoft is GPT-4 level and can almost run on your phone, while its slightly less capable predecessor, Phi 3.5, certainly can. Intelligence, of a sort, is available on demand.

More here.

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Yascha Mounk at his Substack:

Yascha Mounk: I’ve been trying to think through the state of economic policy at the moment, and it seems to me that we’re in a strange moment where there was a clear paradigm that economists followed in the ‘90s and perhaps the early 2000s, and that ran aground. Then there was a principled alternative to it that parts of the left tried to put forward, but that seems to have run aground as well.

Do you think there’s a kind of clear structure to how, let’s say, the mainstream of the Democratic Party thinks about economic policy right now?

Noah Smith: Well, in the 2000s, a kind of an intellectual movement among progressives started to crystallize, which I guess for want of a better term you could call anti-neoliberalism. People basically got a short list of things they thought the market got wrong and told this sort of simplified, potted history: In the 1980s, we decided markets could do everything, cut the government, and then this led to rising inequality, falling worker power, environmental degradation, etc.. And they thought that in order to get rid of those, we need to basically reverse the neoliberal changes—to strengthen unions, various kinds of regulations, and the welfare state. And that was the basic progressive program. And you saw some elements of that program get implemented by Biden, but a lot got blocked.

But the neoliberal turn was a lot less dramatic, I think, than people realize.

More here.

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