Blogs about Society

Dear Readers, Over the years, some of us (the past and present members of the collective that runs this blog) have been fortunate enough to meet some of you. We say fortunate, because such encounters …

Hi Captain, I (any pronouns) have experienced the same deeply uncomfortable restaurant scenario twice, and I’d love advice on handling it or avoiding it in the future. I jokingly referred to myself in the subject …

From From Peoples into Nations: A History of Eastern Europe, by John Connelly (Princeton University Press, 2020), Kindle pp. 377-379: The elections of 1919 produced stunning majorities in Croatia for the Croat Peasant Party, led …

Paladin - second only to Picador as a publisher's name to set the arty-intellectual bibliophile's heart a flutter... Radical, countercultural, polemical, esoteric, transgressive, avant-garde, youth culture ... a feast for the hungry young mind, portions …

What social changes gave us “helicopter parenting” and, now, even more “intensive parenting”? This New York Times podcast from a few weeks ago, inspired by the Surgeon General’s report on parental burnout, explains all. Michael …

The Knees needed their daily. Curiosity looked at the map and suggested this. A thin strip of woodland, apparently a ridge between two suburban areas just north of Glasgow. It turned out to be as …

I write a lot about how I see hope. I have poems about how hope doesn’t feel positive to me – I know its effect is positive, but it’s not a nice feeling. It hurts. …

In 2020 I summarised the then published research on puberty blockers in a blog. That blog post remains a comprehensive overview of the pre 2020 literature, with relevance to discussions today. There has been a …

one thing about being away from the desk for a while is it resets your habits and relationships to your habits and you see them afresh from the outside, & this prompted me to ask …

Smithsonian magazine offers a summary of the topic: “Ornamental Hermits Were 18th-Century England’s Must-Have Garden Accessory.” Includes many illustrations and a short video of Gordon Campbell’s comments. URL: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/ornamental-hermits-were-18th-century-englands-must-have-garden-accessory-180982469/

If April is the cruelest month because it encourages the growth of flowers but can suddenly cut them down with resurrected cold, autumn is its counterpart. The last warmth of summer lingers into autumn, and …

‘NO WOMAN’S LAND’ has been awarded the prestigious 14th Carmignac Photojournalism Award and will be exhibited at the Réfectoire des Cordelieres in Paris this autumn. A few months ago, photojournalist Kiana Hayeri and researcher Mélissa …

I’m giving a number of talks this November, and two of them are going to be streamed over the internet. The first one is this coming Friday November 8. It’s part of the Biopower at …

Diverse impacts of the largest basic income program in Latin America on socioeconomic outcomes; crisis response use-case Press Release The Maricá Basic Income Evaluation is an assessment of a basic income program in the city …

I had considered using a photo of a SpaceX rocket exploding on the launchpad - because it would be more apt, honestly - but this image is so much more iconic. The Hindenburg, an airship …

link to voicemail secrets The post Sunday Secrets appeared first on PostSecret.

Mark Sugarman wants to repair the world. The 79-year-old Financial District resident has spent his whole life following that maxim, which in Hebrew is known as Tikkun Olam. He does that through volunteering, which he …

❚ The cross-cultural pioneer Quincy Jones died this week aged 91 in Los Angeles. In tribute, we republish Andy Polaris’s appreciation of his genius when he brought a huge orchestra to London’s O2 arena on …

If politics is your life, then you must tell yourself a political story in order to live.

A disclaimer first: we were involved in a little background work (figuring out e.g. dates of parties) for this documentary, so what you are about to read is a little biased. I had been looking …