Quillette Weekly

Dear Reader,

We have some treats in store for you this week, with a special history-themed newsletter. You will find compelling essays on topics as wide ranging as the history of the antimafia movement in Italy, the attack on Nat King Cole in Birmingham Alabama, Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather 50 years on, and an exploration of the ways in which technology has freed us from exploitation and oppression (contrary to some popular narratives).

In our Science + Tech section this week, you will find two important articles on the proliferation of anti-scientific attitudes in different domains. The first is a report by a German academic on the growth of gender ideology in his country, with scientists suffering backlash for presenting basic biological facts to the public. The other is on an insidious anti-science campaign emerging in Wikipedia articles relating to human intelligence.

And finally, don't miss Jonathan Kay’s debunking of a recent media-fuelled social panic. In 2021, the New York Times reported that mass graves of children had been found at residential schools for Indigenous children in Canada. Yet to date, no evidence of graves or human remains has been found, and the reporting remains uncorrected.

Until next week,
—Claire
Founding Editor

Art, Culture, and History

A Media-Fueled Social Panic Over Unmarked Graves

Not a single body has been unearthed. But Canadians wouldn’t know it from the false information reported in The New York Times.

QuilletteJonathan Kay

Slavery and Steam

The dangers of forfeiting societal sustainability.

QuilletteDavid Foster

Assault in Alabama

Revisiting the attack on Nat King Cole.

QuilletteThomas Doherty

Honorable Men

Falcone, Borsellino, and the legacy of Italy’s long and bitter war on organized crime.

QuilletteMaura Cremin

The Delia Demolition

Why is the Atlantic slinging mud at the 72-year-old author of ‘Where the Crawdads Sing’ on the eve of the film’s release?

QuilletteKevin Mims

“I Believe in America”

Fifty Years of ‘The Godfather‘

QuilletteGraham Daseler

Stop Sharing Political Memes

They are a doorway into stupidity and misery.

QuilletteChristopher J. Ferguson

Science + Tech

Gender Ideology Comes to Germany

In June, my co-authors and I published an article describing the reality of biological sex. The resulting controversy persists to this day.

QuilletteUwe Steinhoff

Cognitive Distortions

How the culture wars came for Wikipedia’s articles about human intelligence.

QuilletteShuichi Tezuka

The Metaverse: Science Fiction or Reality?

We tend to overestimate a technology’s abilities in the near term, and massively underestimate what it can do in the long term.

QuilletteRandall Mayes

Podcasts

Podcast # 193: Understanding Wokeness as a Make-Work Strategy for the Privileged Class

Quillette podcast host Jonathan Kay speaks with Swedish Marxist Malcom Kyeyune, who argues that nominally progressive theories of race and gender are actually aimed at securing influence, employment, and prestige for underemployed university graduates.

QuilletteQuillette

‎27 Rouge: A Quillette Podcast: XVI: Classical Music’s Suicide Pact feat. Heather Mac Donald on Apple Podcasts

‎Show 27 Rouge: A Quillette Podcast, Ep XVI: Classical Music’s Suicide Pact feat. Heather Mac Donald - 18 July 2022

Apple Podcasts

From Around the Web

The Democrats need to wake up and stop pandering to their extremes

For the good of America, the governing party urgently needs to take on its own activists

The EconomistThe Economist

Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences | Lex Fridman Podcast #302

Richard Haier is a psychologist specializing in the science of human intelligence. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors:- Calm: https://c...

YouTube

Inside the Woke Meltdown at One Domestic Violence Organization - Washington Free Beacon

It was just two months after the death of George Floyd that one of the largest domestic violence nonprofits in the United States, Women Against Abuse, brought in several diversity consultants to conduct a racial-equity audit. The goal of the audit, Women Against Abuse told staffers, was to become “a…

Washington Free Beaconaaron-sibarium