[{"id":309650,"date":"2026-08-19T07:40:04","date_gmt":"2026-08-19T11:40:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/?p=309650"},"modified":"2026-08-19T02:46:11","modified_gmt":"2026-08-19T06:46:11","slug":"the-life-of-cicero","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/3quarksdaily\/2026\/08\/the-life-of-cicero.html","title":{"rendered":"The Life of Cicero"},"content":{"rendered":"

Llewelyn Morgan at Literary Review<\/em>:<\/p>\n

\"\"Ancient Rome was a culture governed by the spoken word and Cicero was the most articulate public speaker Rome ever produced. Furthermore, the Middle Ages were comparatively kind to his legacy and fifty-eight speeches that he delivered to the Roman people, the Senate and to juries in court have survived; alongside them we have a number of treatises on aspects of philosophy, politics and rhetoric, including what has probably been his most influential work,\u00a0De Officiis<\/i>\u00a0(\u2018On Duties\u2019). The Cicero that Strossmayer consulted no doubt encompassed both categories of writing, but the implication in any case is that, should one want to address complex intellectual subjects in Latin with clarity, elegance and persuasiveness, Cicero is the only sensible model. But Strossmayer was also aware that Cicero\u2019s exceptional oratorical skills had been forged in the ruinous last decades of the Roman Republic. Ciceronian oratory was the mode proper for a crisis, whether in the Rome of 63\u00a0BC or 1870.<\/span><\/p>\n

Another class of documents relating to Cicero is available to the historian beside the speeches and the treatises, and it is surely the most remarkable survival of all.<\/p>\n

more here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Enjoying the content on 3QD? Help keep us going by donating now<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Llewelyn Morgan at Literary Review: Ancient Rome was a culture governed by the spoken word and Cicero was the most articulate public speaker Rome ever produced. Furthermore, the Middle Ages were comparatively kind to his legacy and fifty-eight speeches that he delivered to the Roman people, the Senate and to juries in court have survived;…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5918],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-309650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-recommended-reading","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/38"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=309650"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309650\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":309652,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309650\/revisions\/309652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=309650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=309650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=309650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":309647,"date":"2026-08-19T06:33:06","date_gmt":"2026-08-19T10:33:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/?p=309647"},"modified":"2026-08-19T06:33:06","modified_gmt":"2026-08-19T10:33:06","slug":"wednesday-poem-511","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/3quarksdaily\/2026\/08\/wednesday-poem-511.html","title":{"rendered":"Wednesday Poem"},"content":{"rendered":"

Posibilities<\/h2>\n

I prefer movies.
\nI prefer cats.
\nI prefer the oaks along the Warta.
\nI prefer Dickens to Dostoyevsky.
\nI prefer myself liking people
\nto myself loving mankind.
\nI prefer keeping a needle and thread on hand, just in case.
\nI prefer the color green.
\nI prefer not to maintain
\nthat reason is to blame for everything.
\nI prefer exceptions.
\nI prefer to leave early.
\nI prefer talking to doctors about something else.
\nI prefer the old fine-lined illustrations.
\nI prefer the absurdity of writing poems
\nto the absurdity of not writing poems.
\nI prefer, where love\u2019s concerned, nonspecific anniversaries
\nthat can be celebrated every day.
\nI prefer moralists
\nwho promise me nothing.
\nI prefer cunning kindness to the over-trustful kind.
\nI prefer the earth in civvies.
\nI prefer conquered to conquering countries.
\nI prefer having some reservations.
\nI prefer the hell of chaos to the hell of order.
\nI prefer Grimms\u2019 fairy tales to the newspapers\u2019 front pages.
\nI prefer leaves without flowers to flowers without leaves.
\nI prefer dogs with uncropped tails.
\nI prefer light eyes, since mine are dark.
\nI prefer desk drawers.
\nI prefer many things that I haven\u2019t mentioned here
\nto many things I\u2019ve also left unsaid.
\nI prefer zeroes on the loose
\nto those lined up behind a cipher.
\nI prefer the time of insects to the time of stars.
\nI prefer to knock on wood.
\nI prefer not to ask how much longer and when.
\nI prefer keeping in mind even the possibility
\nthat existence has its own reason for being.<\/p>\n

by Wistlawa Szymborska<\/a><\/em>
\nTranslated by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh<\/em><\/p>\n

Enjoying the content on 3QD? Help keep us going by donating now<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Posibilities I prefer movies. I prefer cats. I prefer the oaks along the Warta. I prefer Dickens to Dostoyevsky. I prefer myself liking people to myself loving mankind. I prefer keeping a needle and thread on hand, just in case. I prefer the color green. I prefer not to maintain that reason is to blame…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5918],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-309647","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-recommended-reading","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309647","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=309647"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309647\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":309649,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309647\/revisions\/309649"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=309647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=309647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=309647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":309409,"date":"2026-08-19T06:00:15","date_gmt":"2026-08-19T10:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/?p=309409"},"modified":"2026-08-18T00:09:40","modified_gmt":"2026-08-18T04:09:40","slug":"algorithms-before-the-cradle-part-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/3quarksdaily\/2026\/08\/algorithms-before-the-cradle-part-ii.html","title":{"rendered":"Algorithms Before the Cradle: Part II"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Muhammad Aurangzeb Ahmad<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"
Lead Processing at Leadhills. Pounding the Ore, 1789 National Gallery of Scotland<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In the first part of this series<\/a> I described the data footprint that now surrounds a child before birth. It could take the form of an implantation score attached to an embryo, a polygenic risk estimate read from a few of its cells, a sequenced genome, growth curves etc. These may seem harmless or even mundane but the The technology is moving toward something much more ambitious i.e., towards a prediction of the life itself<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Consider the following cautionary tale: an AI model called life2vec<\/a> was developed by researchers<\/a> working with Danish national registry data. The data is a summary of recorded lives of roughly six million people. It includes things like Births, jobs, illnesses, relocations, incomes and diagnoses become events in a sequence. The model reads them much as a language model reads words in a sentence and learns what tends to come next. The analogy being that a human life can be represented as a sequence and, having read enough of that sequence, a machine can try to read forward. Once trained, life2vec could predict several kinds of outcomes, including personality characteristics and early mortality. In the tasks reported by its developers it outperformed specialized baselines. The researchers have also been careful about what this means. The model does not tell someone the date on which they will die. It was not released as a public “death calculator,” and its creators objected when it was described that way.<\/p>\n

Now let’s get back to our main topic, the embryo grade and neonatal probability I discussed earlier were judgments made at one point in time. The systems now being developed can potentially go way beyond that. Foundation models trained on long stretches of electronic health records can absorb a person’s accumulating clinical history and repeatedly revise their estimates. A risk calculated in the neonatal unit could therefore become the first entry in a forecast that follows the patient for years. Genetic predictions are even easier to carry forward. Older forms of prophecy rarely had this institutional reach. A natal horoscope did not really set an insurance premium. A machine-readable risk score might do that if appropriate safeguards are not added to the system. That said, one should note that We are hardly the first people to imagine a life that was written ahead of time. Cultures around the world have greeted newborns with attempts to read what lies ahead e.g., the horoscope cast at the hour of birth, the naming rite that places a child within a lineage, the janam kundali of South Asia, the astrologers who once stood beside royal cradles etc. It is tempting to see algorithmic prediction as another version of the same old habit, updated for the age of data. There is some truth in that. But the older predictions could be ignored, argued with, softened by ritual or simply outgrown. Also, they usually did not plug directly into the institutions that distribute the practical advantages of a life.<\/p>\n

There are however many historical precedents in various global traditional: In the Islamic tradition there is hadith (saying of Prophet Muhammad) that describes the stages by which a human being is formed. It then says that an angel is sent to breathe the soul into the fetus and to write four things: its provision, the length of its life, its deeds, and whether its end will be wretched or blessed. It is difficult not to notice the resemblance to the categories that interest modern prediction. How long will this person live? What will they do? What will their circumstances be? How will their life turn out? One can see the tension between free-will and fatalism in trying to interpret this hadith: Muslim theologians spent centuries trying to prevent it from becoming fatalism. This is the old argument over qadr<\/em>\u00a0(divine decree) and free-will that appears in Islamic theology: if everything has already been written, perhaps the person living the life is only a spectator to it. Mainstream Islamic theology resisted that conclusion. The Ash\u02bfari school (one of the three main theological schools in Sunni Islam) developed the doctrine of kasb<\/em>, usually translated as acquisition to explain this. According to this concept God creates the act while the human being acquires it and remains responsible for it. The Maturidi tradition within Islam approached the problem somewhat differently but likewise tried to preserve human responsibility without surrendering divine knowledge and power.<\/p>\n

One need not settle the metaphysics to understand what all this intellectual labor was trying to protect. The theologians wanted to keep “already known” from collapsing into “therefore compelled.” Divine foreknowledge does not mean that human responsibility is meaningless. Algorithmic prediction creates a different problem because the prediction itself can enter the chain of causes. Machine learning researchers now call one version of this performative prediction<\/a>: a prediction changes behavior, and that changed behavior alters the outcome being predicted. Consider the following example: A navigation system declares one road faster; drivers converge on it; the road becomes congested. Or consider another example where a caseworker sees someone labeled high-risk and intervenes more aggressively; the intervention changes what happens next. The prediction is has now become one of the things producing it. I traced a version of this loop in my essay on machines that predict death<\/a> and again in the neonatal unit in the first part of this essay. The way that it plays out is that a mortality estimate enters a clinical decision. Clinicians and families respond to this and their responses in turn change treatment which in turn affects the outcome against which the original prediction is judged.<\/p>\n

The comparison with qadar does not go all the way. Muslim theologians were concerned with how God could know a person’s future without thereby forcing that person to live it. Algorithmic prediction introduces a problem they did not have to contend with i.e., the prediction itself can change what happens. Once a forecast is taken seriously by parents, doctors, teachers, insurers, or other institutions, their decisions begin to reflect it. The prediction then becomes part of the chain of events producing the outcome it originally claimed only to anticipate. A similar concern appears in a quite different setting in Joel Feinberg’s essay on the child’s “right to an open future.”<\/a> Feinberg was concerned with choices made by parents and communities that might prematurely close possibilities a child should later have the opportunity to choose for themselves. He was not thinking about machine learning, but the idea becomes particularly relevant when predictions are made very early in life.<\/p>\n

Suppose a child carries a risk score that remains in the record for years. A teacher who sees it may expect less from the child. Parents may become unusually cautious about certain activities. A physician may interpret later symptoms in light of the earlier prediction, while an insurer may eventually attach a price to the same risk. None of these decisions needs to be dramatic, most likely this will pan out in an incremental fashion. The effect may come from their accumulation. Over time, a prediction that began as a statement about what might happen can help determine which possibilities remain available.<\/p>\n

The beginning of life makes another limitation of responsible AI unusually visible. Many of the protections we have developed assume that there is a person capable of invoking them. Someone can refuse consent, challenge a decision, request an explanation, ask for information to be deleted etc. But an embryo cannot refuse to be ranked, a fetus cannot contest a polygenic score calculated from its cells, and a newborn cannot ask why a mortality estimate was placed in its medical record. Much of the current language of responsible AI therefore works better for competent adults than it does for people at the very beginning of life. The usual mechanisms of consent and appeal cannot do much when the person most affected by the prediction cannot yet exercise either. Decisions instead fall to parents, physicians, institutions, and whoever controls the record.<\/p>\n

Hindu and Buddhist traditions approach the problem from another direction. In the later parts of my culture of limits<\/a> series, I discussed traditions in which birth is not understood as an entirely fresh beginning. A person enters a new life bearing the consequences of lives already lived. At first glance there is an odd resemblance here to the modern datafied child: something resembling a record precedes birth and affects what follows. However karma is not a risk file assembled by an institution. It belongs to the moral history of the being whose life it shapes, and what has been inherited can itself be changed through the life that follows. The person remains involved in what becomes of that inheritance. A modern data record works somewhat differently. Other people create it, other people interpret it, and other people may use it when deciding what the person is allowed to do or receive. In some circumstances it can even be transferred or sold. The record can therefore acquire power over the person precisely because it belongs to others around them more than it belongs to them.<\/p>\n

None of what we have discussed so far makes prediction inherently undesirable. A neonatal model that identifies danger several hours earlier may save a child’s life. Reproductive technologies can help couples have healthy children after years of difficulty. These are not incidental benefits, and any serious criticism of predictive technology at the beginning of life has to acknowledge them. On the other hand, the problem arises when a useful prediction begins to acquire a larger authority than the evidence warrants. Prediction at the beginning of life occupies an unusual position because it can influence who is born, attach information to that person before they can object to it, and shape later decisions made on their behalf. If the prediction remains in circulation, its influence may last much longer than the circumstances under which it was originally calculated. We do not need to stop making predictions in order to prevent predictions from becoming permanent descriptions of the people they concern. Some forecasts could expire. Certain childhood records could later be sealed. Genetic or developmental scores could be kept away from institutions that have no compelling reason to see them. The practical rules will have to be worked out in medicine, law, insurance, education, and data governance. The larger principle is easier to state. What is written about a child before that child can speak should not be allowed to settle, by itself, what kind of life the child gets to have.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Muhammad Aurangzeb Ahmad In the first part of this series I described the data footprint that now surrounds a child before birth. It could take the form of an implantation score attached to an embryo, a polygenic risk estimate read from a few of its cells, a sequenced genome, growth curves etc. These may…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":77,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3260],"tags":[7225,7231,7226,7230,7232,7227,7229,7228],"class_list":["post-309409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mondaymagazine","tag-algorithmic-prediction","tag-data-permanence","tag-performative-prediction","tag-polygenic-risk-scores","tag-prediction-and-fate","tag-qadar","tag-responsible-ai","tag-right-to-an-open-future","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309409","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/77"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=309409"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309409\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":309606,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309409\/revisions\/309606"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=309409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=309409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=309409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":309519,"date":"2026-08-19T05:00:34","date_gmt":"2026-08-19T09:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/?p=309519"},"modified":"2026-08-17T02:33:51","modified_gmt":"2026-08-17T06:33:51","slug":"man-in-a-desert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/3quarksdaily\/2026\/08\/man-in-a-desert.html","title":{"rendered":"Man in a Desert"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Derek Neal<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"What if you took Paul Schrader\u2019s \u201cman in a room\u201d concept and transposed it to the vast expanse of the African desert? You would get something like Claire Denis\u2019 Beau Travail<\/em> (1999), which shows that the room a man locks himself in doesn\u2019t need to be literal\u2014a prison can be made anywhere. In Denis\u2019 film, the man in a room is Galoup, a French Foreign Legion sergeant who commands a group of some 15 men in Djibouti. He is, he tells us in voiceover, \u201ca perfect Legionnaire,\u201d and like Schrader\u2019s protagonists, he writes in a journal and narrates his memories, a storytelling technique stretching back to Robert Bresson\u2019s Pickpocket<\/em>. The story thus proceeds along two timelines: one, with Galoup in Marseille, writing in his notebook after he has been dismissed from the Foreign Legion; and the other, the memories of the desert and the Legion that the notebook engenders.<\/p>\n

The drama of the narrative begins when a new recruit, Gilles Sentain, arrives in the desert and disrupts the orderly and structured existence that Galoup has fashioned for himself. Sentain and Galoup are foils: Galoup is older (played by Denis Lavant, 39 years old in 1999 but looking closer to 50) and his face is weathered, pockmarked, and to put it bluntly, ugly. Sentain, played by Gr\u00e9goire Colin, is young and beautiful (24 years old in 1999). His skin is smooth, his features angular and chiseled, yet retaining an air of innocence. His nose is long and elegant compared to Galoup\u2019s, which is squat and stumpy, and Sentain has a vaguely androgenous look, while Galoup is clearly an ageing man, and monstrously so. Sentain, at least in Galoup\u2019s estimation, exhibits a \u201ccalm\u201d and \u201copenness\u201d that attracts others, whereas Galoup must work for everything, his effort and straining visible, and he exists apart from the group, unable to take part in the Legion\u2019s camaraderie and brotherhood. In one incredible scene, the rivalry between Galoup and Sentain is dramatized as they circle each another against the backdrop of the sea, holding eye contact the entire time, while the soundtrack to the Billy Budd<\/em> opera plays in the background (the film itself is loosely adapted from the Melville novella).<\/p>\n

\"\"There is little dialogue in the film; it is cinema in its purest sense\u2014storytelling through images\u2014and almost nothing is explained. Because the story in the desert is framed as a series of flashbacks, the logic of memory reigns\u2014images succeed one another, and in their combination suggest moods and feelings, a consciousness and a way of being outside of language, a sort of dream logic where the scenes themselves cannot even be said to be real within the world of the movie, but may only exist in Galoup\u2019s mind. The aforementioned circling scene, for example, seems fantastical and serves little purpose in terms of plot, yet it\u2019s a striking symbolic representation of Galoup\u2019s rivalry with Sentain.<\/p>\n

Other scenes operate in this way, too, almost as if Claire Denis thought: we have 15 supremely fit men in one of the most beautiful settings on Earth, let\u2019s put them through some physical exercises, turn the camera on, and see what happens. These exercises consist of activities such as two Legionnaires dueling underwater with knives, a training routine through the remnants of an abandoned building, and the physical movements the men repeatedly perform as a group, often resembling tai chi or yoga, which are some of the most visually arresting in the film. These scenes have little narrative purpose, we begin to understand, because the Legion itself has no purpose; it is a vestige of a colonial apparatus that continues to run due to inertia, calling to mind Coetzee\u2019s Waiting for the Barbarians<\/em> or, in the sense of fading empire, Ishiguro\u2019s The Remains of the Day<\/em>. The men of Beau Travail<\/em> only know honor, valor, and a glorious France\u2014the film opens with a marching song referencing these values, before giving way to a kitschy pop song in a dingy nightclub\u2014but they exist in a world where these duties are anachronistic. After the scenes of the Legionnaires\u2019 training exercises, Denis frequently cuts to the Africans who view them from a distance, reversing the colonial image of the white, civilized man staring at the savage\u2014here the Legionnaires are the object of study, the group whose activities can only be explained through an anthropological context, from an outside observer, because they are so unfamiliar and exotic.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Galoup<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

And yet, as we watch the men perform their exercises, stretching their bodies this way and that, seemingly at one with the desert landscape around them, their torsos tanned to the colour of sand and dirt, we are taken in by them, captured in aesthetic contemplation, and we feel\u2014or at least I feel\u2014that I too would like to participate in these exercises, to take part in what seems to be a transcendental ritual. I\u2019m reminded of high school soccer practices, lazing around on the grass doing halfhearted stretches with my teammates, existing both separate and together, like stars in a constellation. There is little better than this feeling of being part of something bigger than yourself, a sentiment that the actor Gr\u00e9goire Colin echoes, in an interview about the making of the film, when he says that the \u201cimmersive exercises were extraordinarily transformative,\u201d and that they even led \u201cto the point of losing our identity.\u201d Here Colin is not talking about acting, but about the preparation for the film and the extended training camp that he and the other actors (many of whom were dancers) were put through. One would think this was for physical purposes\u2014the actors\u2019 bodies must look like those of soldiers\u2014but it seems that Denis did this for psychological purposes as well, and she even prevented the actor playing Galoup (Denis Lavant) from joining the training camp until its end, as if she knew that the physical activities themselves would bond Lavant\/Galoup to the other Legionnaires, jeopardizing the authenticity of the film.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Sentain<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The line between fiction and reality blurs here, and Colin also mentions that some of the exercises \u201cwere filmed, and made it into the film,\u201d which seems obvious, but listening to him I realized: many of these scenes were not acted but were lived, the power of the activities\u2014such as one where the men partner up and violently clasp each other, then release, then clasp again\u2014so immense that they are impossible to do without producing a profound effect on the participants. Denis shows these images to the viewer, letting us participate in them\u2014her understanding of the aesthetic power of the image is remarkable\u2014and then she distances us, cutting to the African observers, as if to say, you must see yourself from the outside, you must remember the colonial context of the Legion, the harm they have wrought, and the ridiculousness of these men who play at war when the enemy has long since disappeared. Denis shows us the beauty inherent in Colin\u2019s \u201closing our identity\u201d but the danger too, and it\u2019s notable how closely Colin\u2019s words track Susan Sontag\u2019s characterization of fascist aesthetics in cinema, with its focus on \u201cthe dissolution of alienation in ecstatic feelings of community.\u201d Beau Travail <\/em>is, in fact, one of the most remarkable examples of fascist aesthetics that I can recall, but in repeatedly undercutting the viewer\u2019s enjoyment of its tropes, in showing the absurdity of the Legionnaires\u2019 existence through incongruous juxtapositions, it is not a fascist film, but a commentary on the strangeness of a colonial army after the end of history (this film could have only been made in the 90\u2019s, after September 11, 2001 would have been too late).<\/p>\n

Beau Travail <\/em>is in this sense a postcolonial film, but far from a simple one. As the men move in unison in the desert, training for an enemy that will never come, they are not presented as pitiable or evil, but as beautiful, strong, and godlike. Their exercises have a spiritual quality, and it is easy to understand that the Legion, which is a special unit of the French army allowing foreigners to enlist, is a refuge for men who need a second chance at life. The group itself is diverse; in one early scene, two men chat in Italian while fishing; later, while two Legionnaires pull laundry off the line, one teaches the other, who is Russian, the names of pieces of clothing in French; as the men sit around a table, smoking cigarettes and drinking beer, their different ethnicities are apparent. They are something akin to an elite, European soccer team, which has gathered players from all around the world. These sorts of dualities characterize the film: the Legion\u2019s purpose is to spread French power and to subjugate weaker nations, yet it is also utopian, open to anyone and accepting of people as they are (a few of the Legionnaires observe Ramadan); the men are virile and strong, yet also perform domestic duties, and have a beguiling obsession with ironing their clothes and the pursuit of \u201celegance;\u201d they train and discipline their bodies under the desert heat, yet they also dance playfully in the town\u2019s nightclub, flirting with the local women who frequent it, and with no suggestion of violence or domination. They are ridiculous, yet tragic.<\/p>\n

\"\"This duality is best expressed in the battle between Galoup and Sentain, which is the crux of the film and eventually leads to Galoup\u2019s dismissal from the Foreign Legion. But why does Sentain cause Galoup so much angst, why does \u201csomething vague and menacing\u201d take hold of him when Sentain arrives? Much of the criticism written about Beau Travail<\/em> views Galoup as sexually repressed, and his destruction of Sentain as the sadistic expression of unrealized desire. This then connects to the memorable ending of the film, when Galoup dances alone in the nightclub to the 90\u2019s Eurodance hit \u201cRhythm of the Night\u201d\u2014many critics have seen this scene as Galoup finally expressing his true self, breaking out of the toxic masculinity of the Legion and finding joy, turning Beau Travail<\/em> into a narrative of self-discovery, a sort of hero\u2019s journey where the individual breaks free from tradition with the aim of self-realization\u2014\u201ca utopia of movement without rules,\u201d as one review put it. This, however, is not the film I saw.<\/p>\n

The attempted murder of Sentain\u2014Galoup abandons him in the middle of the desert with a faulty compass\u2014is done out of envy; in a training exercise, Sentain and another Legionnaire crash a helicopter. Sentain survives, then recovers the other Legionnaire\u2019s body in the sea before being picked up by a fishing boat. This earns him the recognition and praise of the commanding officer of the Legion, Bruno Forestier. Although Galoup is a sergeant and often directs the Legionnaires, he is not the leader\u2014Forestier is. Because of this, Galoup is a man apart, not able to participate in the camaraderie of the group, but also not respected as the Commander. Like the other Legionnaires, he wants to win the praise of Forestier, but he can\u2019t. Of Forestier, Galoup says:<\/p>\n

Bruno. Bruno Forestier. I feel so alone when I think of my superior. I respected him a lot. I liked him. My commandant. A rumor dogged him after the Algerian War. He never confided in me\u2026I admired him without knowing why. He knew I was a perfect legionnaire, and he didn\u2019t give a damn. Bruno. Bruno Forestier.<\/p>\n

Then, after recognizes Sentain\u2019s achievement at the funeral of the other soldier, Forestier declares before the other Legionnaires:<\/p>\n

Congratulations, you did your duty. You acted with bravery, selflessness, and resolve. I\u2019m proud of you, as is the entire Legion.<\/p>\n

\"\"The next scene shows Galoup in his room, hurling his shirt on the floor in rage. Rather than incommunicable desire for Sentain, this is something more like the story of Cain and Abel, where two brothers vie for recognition from a Father. This sequence of events brings to mind another portrayal of pride and envy, that of Tarkovsky\u2019s Andrei Rublev<\/em>, when Andrei is selected to paint icons in Moscow while his fellow painter Kirill is left behind. Andrei Rublev<\/em> is a film about the struggle to be an artist, and this too provides a new lens through which to see Beau Travail<\/em>: the art of the Legionnaire. When Galoup says that he was \u201ca perfect Legionnaire,\u201d what he means is that he has elevated his performance to an art, and like any artist, he hopes to be recognized.<\/p>\n

The film\u2019s penultimate scene shows Galoup on his bed in Marseille, holding a gun that we expect he will use on himself. Then we cut to that nightclub in Djibouti, only this time Galoup is alone, staring at the mirror, and he begins to dance. This scene resists interpretation and has seemingly beguiled critics since the film\u2019s release. Is this a memory? A fantasy? Or something else? What are we to make of Galoup\u2019s dance, during which he first appears alternatively suave and cartoonish, languid and silly, and then, after a cut to the end credits, deranged, psychotic, and unsettling?<\/p>\n

When I first watched this scene, I felt deceived. It really did seem, in the first half of the dance, that Galoup had somehow found a way out of his pain, and this felt wildly out of place with his character. But the second half of the dance reassured me. Far from \u201ca utopia of movement without rules,\u201d we see that without structure, Galoup finds chaos. Dance, for that matter, is hardly unstructured, but like any art or skill, depends completely on first mastering the rules, which then allows one go beyond them and move so well that the rules themselves are hidden.<\/p>\n

Galoup eventually rolls to the edge of the dancefloor and then runs out the door, exiting the stage, the nightclub, and the film itself. Earlier in the film, we also see Galoup leave the nightclub a moment after entering it, a short scene which allows us to see the name of the nightclub: \u201cBar des Alpes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"What does it mean to have a nightclub in Djibouti invoke the Alps, and to have one mount a steep staircase lined with red lights to get there? I have to invoke Sontag again, and particularly her analysis of Leni Riefenstahl\u2019s films. Sontag notes that Riefenstahl\u2019s early films, before she worked directly for the Nazis creating propagandistic documentaries, centered on \u201cAlpinism\u201d and on some variation of mountain climbing, which could serve as \u201ca visually irresistible metaphor for unlimited aspiration toward the high mystic goal, both beautiful and terrifying, which was later to become concrete in F\u00fchrer-worship.\u201d The mountain is also \u201cthat majestic force which invites the ultimate affirmation of and escape from the self\u2014into the brotherhood of courage and into death.\u201d But what if the mountain is not a mountain but a seedy nightclub at the top of a staircase, what if \u201cthe blue light,\u201d which flashes at the top of the mountain in one of Reifenstahl\u2019s films, becomes a red light\u2014the universal symbol for vice and prostitution?<\/p>\n

Sontag\u2019s list of the characteristics of fascism\u2014\u201cthe ideal of life as art, the cult of beauty, the fetishism of courage, the dissolution of alienation in ecstatic feelings of community; the repudiation of the intellect; the family of man (under the parenthood of leaders)\u201d\u2014is also a perfect description of the French Foreign Legion as depicted in Beau Travail<\/em>, and, I would add, a description of many strains of spirituality and Romanticism, which are not fascist. Sontag, in her seminal essay \u201cFascinating Fascism,\u201d goes too far, repudiating her earlier writings on \u201cspiritual style\u201d and effectively throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Claire Denis is up to something more interesting, making a film about the ideas Sontag invokes\u2014art, beauty, courage, community\u2014but showing how they have lost currency in the modern world, resulting in something both tragic and camp. This is perhaps the true meaning of Galoup\u2019s suffering, that he is a perfect Legionnaire in an indifferent world.<\/p>\n

Enjoying the content on 3QD? Help keep us going by donating now<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Derek Neal What if you took Paul Schrader\u2019s \u201cman in a room\u201d concept and transposed it to the vast expanse of the African desert? You would get something like Claire Denis\u2019 Beau Travail (1999), which shows that the room a man locks himself in doesn\u2019t need to be literal\u2014a prison can be made anywhere.…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1338,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3260],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-309519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mondaymagazine","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309519","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1338"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=309519"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309519\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":309540,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309519\/revisions\/309540"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=309519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=309519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=309519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":309644,"date":"2026-08-19T04:00:47","date_gmt":"2026-08-19T08:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/?p=309644"},"modified":"2026-08-18T13:22:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-18T17:22:10","slug":"catspeak-481","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/3quarksdaily\/2026\/08\/catspeak-481.html","title":{"rendered":"Catspeak"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Brooks Riley<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Enjoying the content on 3QD? Help keep us going by donating now<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Brooks Riley Enjoying the content on 3QD? Help keep us going by donating now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3260],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-309644","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mondaymagazine","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309644","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=309644"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309644\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":309646,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309644\/revisions\/309646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=309644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=309644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=309644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":309615,"date":"2026-08-18T14:45:45","date_gmt":"2026-08-18T18:45:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/?p=309615"},"modified":"2026-08-18T06:35:47","modified_gmt":"2026-08-18T10:35:47","slug":"if-we-couldnt-make-generalisations-we-would-be-paralysed-by-the-worlds-complexity-does-that-ever-excuse-stereotyping","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/3quarksdaily\/2026\/08\/if-we-couldnt-make-generalisations-we-would-be-paralysed-by-the-worlds-complexity-does-that-ever-excuse-stereotyping.html","title":{"rendered":"If we couldn\u2019t make generalisations, we would be paralysed by the world\u2019s complexity. Does that ever excuse stereotyping?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tom Ralston at Aeon<\/em>:<\/p>\n

\"\"Overgeneralising has a bad rap. It seems an obvious, if understandable, mistake to generalise beyond what our evidence supports. A child playing in the park may assume, based on their experiences of their friendly pet golden retriever, that all dogs are friendly. But they would be wrong to approach an\u00a0XL Bully,<\/span>\u00a0a breed of dog effectively outlawed in the UK recently following a string of attacks on children. When someone makes unwarranted generalisations about social groups, we condemn them for the sin of stereotyping. It is wrong to conclude after just one experience with a rude Brit that all Brits are rude.<\/p>\n

We hear less about the problems of\u00a0under<\/em>generalising. Generalising comes so naturally that few of us are at any risk of undergeneralising, so we give it little thought. The focus on overgeneralising is understandable given its potential costs, such as the child assuming that a dangerous dog is just like the friendly dogs they\u2019ve encountered to date. Generalising itself, though, isn\u2019t a bias that needs to be corrected. It is a cognitive shortcut and a fundamental part of our mental life. We\u2019d be lost without it.<\/p>\n

More here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Enjoying the content on 3QD? Help keep us going by donating now<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tom Ralston at Aeon: Overgeneralising has a bad rap. It seems an obvious, if understandable, mistake to generalise beyond what our evidence supports. A child playing in the park may assume, based on their experiences of their friendly pet golden retriever, that all dogs are friendly. But they would be wrong to approach an\u00a0XL Bully,\u00a0a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5918],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-309615","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-recommended-reading","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309615","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=309615"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309615\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":309618,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309615\/revisions\/309618"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=309615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=309615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=309615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":309612,"date":"2026-08-18T13:45:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-18T17:45:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/?p=309612"},"modified":"2026-08-18T06:30:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-18T10:30:10","slug":"cialis-is-an-erectile-dysfunction-drug-could-it-also-help-you-live-longer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/3quarksdaily\/2026\/08\/cialis-is-an-erectile-dysfunction-drug-could-it-also-help-you-live-longer.html","title":{"rendered":"Cialis is an erectile dysfunction drug. Could it also help you live longer?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Will Stone at NPR<\/em>:<\/p>\n

\"\"Tadalafil [brand name: Cialis] belongs to the same class of drugs as sildenafil, i.e., Viagra \u2013 with the primary difference being that its effect lasts considerably longer.<\/p>\n

While both have been on the market for decades, a handful of large studies, many of them published in recent years, have shown that men taking the drug fare better: They have lower rates of cardiovascular disease and death, and, in some cases, are less likely to develop dementia.<\/p>\n

The major studies in this area are observational \u2013 and retrospective \u2013 meaning they can only show associations, not that tadalafil was the definitive cause.<\/p>\n

But the findings are remarkably “consistent” across the literature, says Kloner, whose lab has studied these medications extensively. “It’s a very interesting signal.”<\/p>\n

The research has surfaced in the online longevity conversation, and prominent voices \u2013 from Stanford neuroscientist and podcaster Andrew Huberman to the immortality-seeking tech mogul Bryan Johnson \u2013 have\u00a0talked up the idea of<\/a>\u00a0taking tadalafil for more than sex.<\/p>\n

More here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Enjoying the content on 3QD? Help keep us going by donating now<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Will Stone at NPR: Tadalafil [brand name: Cialis] belongs to the same class of drugs as sildenafil, i.e., Viagra \u2013 with the primary difference being that its effect lasts considerably longer. While both have been on the market for decades, a handful of large studies, many of them published in recent years, have shown that…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5918],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-309612","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-recommended-reading","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309612","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=309612"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309612\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":309614,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309612\/revisions\/309614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=309612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=309612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=309612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}},{"id":309610,"date":"2026-08-18T12:45:33","date_gmt":"2026-08-18T16:45:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/?p=309610"},"modified":"2026-08-18T05:55:50","modified_gmt":"2026-08-18T09:55:50","slug":"ryan-greenblatt-what-happens-once-ai-can-automate-ai-research","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/3quarksdaily.com\/3quarksdaily\/2026\/08\/ryan-greenblatt-what-happens-once-ai-can-automate-ai-research.html","title":{"rendered":"Ryan Greenblatt \u2013 What happens once AI can automate AI research?"},"content":{"rendered":"