Weekly Roundup and a Social Media Symposium
· 5 min read
Dear Quilletters,
Welcome to the 1,010 new subscribers since the last Weekly Roundup!
This week you'll find an eclectic selection of articles to read, including a symposium of mental health experts on the impacts of social media; a summary and analysis of anti-vaccination arguments from the Left; an in-depth review of a new book on "woke" media and another on "woke" racism; and a fascinating podcast with author of The Status Game, Will Storr.
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Warmly,
Claire
Symposium
Facebook: The New Big Tobacco or A Media Moral Panic?
Editor’s note: Former Facebook product manager turned whistleblower, Frances Haugen, recently testified before US Congress in what has been described as the biggest expose in Facebook’s history. Central to Haugen’s testimony has been the assertion that Facebook knows about the social, psychological,…
Quillette
Science
Vaccine Rejectionism and the Left
For most of the past two centuries, the Left has been identified with science and against obscurantism; we have believed that rational thought and the fearless analysis of objective reality (both natural and social) are incisive tools for combating the mystifications promoted by the powerful. … Theo…
Jon Entine and Patrick Whittle
Autonomous Vehicles: Hype or Reality?
Automobile accidents are the second leading cause of death worldwide, with roughly 1.3 million fatalities annually according to the World Health Organization. China accounts for roughly 260,000 of those and the United States roughly 40,000. Car ownership is growing in developing countries, which wil…
Randall Mayes
Review
‘Woke Racism’—A Review
A review of Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America by John McWhorter. Portfolio, 224 pages. (October, 2021) If you had told someone a decade ago—after the election of the first black president, and in anticipation of the first black female vice president—that race relations
Jared Marcel Pollen
Bad News—A Review
A review of Bad News: How Woke Media Is Undermining Democracy by Batya Ungar-Sargon. Encounter, 312 pages. (October 2021) In Bad News: How Woke Media Is Undermining Democracy, Batya Ungar-Sargon, the deputy opinion editor of Newsweek (where, full disclosure, she has published two of my essays), argu…
Kevin Mims
World Affairs
From Playboy Sports Star to Islamist Politician: The Strange Turn of Imran Khan
The values trajectory of Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan is scarcely believable. Born into a well-to-do family in the new country of Pakistan, five years after the independence and partition of India, Khan received a prestigious education at the elite Aitchison College in Lahore and then at Oxfor…
Rumy Hasan
Activism and Culture
Cancel Culture Has a Lot to Answer For
Sometimes our most precious cultural institutions fail to live up to their high educational and moral commitments and responsibilities. These failures especially damage the social fabric because they tend to harm many people who rely on them and tarnish the high ideals that the institutions claim to…
Peter H. Schuck
Injecting Anti-Racism Activism Into the Adoption Process Won’t Help Black Children
A headline on Newsweek’s web site grabbed my attention in early May: “Wokeness Has Come for Adoption. It’s the Children Who Will Suffer.” This is a subject I know well: My wife and I have fostered three child refugees—from Zimbabwe, Guatemala, and Honduras respectively. These foster children
David K. Ryden
Studying the True Face of Gender Ideology
This week, progressive British activist Jo Maugham warned his 300,000-plus Twitter followers of “yet another vast, and vastly expensive, piece of anti-trans infrastructure” that had been erected “virtually overnight, with zero transparency.” The tweet went viral, even though, as many commenters note…
Jonathan Kay
Podcast
Podcast #170: Will Storr on Our Insatiable Appetite for Status
Quillette podcast host Jonathan Kay speaks with author Will Storr about his new book detailing the profound role of status-seeking in shaping human societies.
Quillette
