IT’S A DAY of rest, and you may be in the mood for a quiet corner and a comfy chair.
We’ve hand-picked the week’s best reads for you to savour.
1. What do we do if we come into contact with aliens?
Tamlin Magee writes about how humans might collectively react to and treat extraterrestrials if we ever make contact with them, and whether they would be granted ‘sentient’ rights.
(BBC, approx 15 mins reading time)
One major consideration in this case would be the intent of the aliens: in short, whether they were benign or hostile. This feeds into the debate over whether we should actively be attempting to contact extraterrestrials, or passively looking for signals of their existence, Stuart says – an ongoing contentious question amongst space experts. So what would happen if a flying saucer suddenly crash-landed somewhere on Earth? No protocols have been set out or even suggested, but hypothetically, it’s possible that the country it landed in would find itself having to lead initial discussions for how to respond, says Stuart.
2. Lessons from the history of work
A look at what anthropological research on early human societies can teach us about improving our jobs today.
(The New Yorker, approx 21 mins reading time)
This reasoning better explains the energy that propels groups such as AppleTogether to resist a return to pre-pandemic worklife. The battle for telecommuting is a proxy for a deeper unrest. If employees lose remote work, the last highly visible, virus-prompted workplace experiment, the window for future transformation might slam shut. The tragedy of this moment, however, is how this reform movement lacks good ideas about what else to demand. Shifting more work to teleconferencing eliminates commutes and provides schedule flexibility, but, as so many office refugees learned, remote work alone doesn’t really help alleviate most of what made their jobs frantic and exhausting. We need new ideas about how to reshape work, and anthropology may have something to offer.
The legendary director speaks about his upcoming film The Fabelmans, a coming-of-age drama based on his own childhood, and looks back over his life and career.
(The Hollywood Reporter, approx 19 mins reading time)
The Fabelmans is Spielberg’s most vulnerable movie, and at 75, he considers it “the first coming-of-age story I’ve ever told.” “My life with my mom and dad taught me a lesson, which I hope this film in a small way imparts,” he says. “Which is, when does a young person in a family start to see his parents as human beings? In my case, because of what happened between the ages of 7 and 18, I started to appreciate my mom and dad not as parents but as real people.”
A fascinating look at what scientists have learned about the sophisticated ways in which bees communicate, and how research has demonstrated their democratic decision-making ability.
(Noema, approx 20 mins reading time)
Although it has been known for centuries that queens have their own vocabulary (including tooting and quacking sounds), researchers have found new worker bee signals, such as a hush (or stop) signal that can be tuned to specific types of threats and a whooping danger signal that can be elicited by a gentle knocking of the hive. Worker bees also make piping, begging and shaking signals that direct collective and individual behavior.
5. The nuclear question America never answers
Tom Nichols writes about the Nuclear Posture Review, a report in which the White House explains – or rather, doesn’t – what US nuclear weapons are for.
(The Atlantic, approx 8 mins reading time)
The NPR says, yet again, that the triad is a good idea, that it should be modernized at great expense, and that nuclear deterrence is the ultimate guarantee of American national security. And yet the big questions remain unanswered. Does the strategic arsenal exist only to deter the use of similar weapons against us? Or does it exist to fight and prevail in a nuclear war? Biden’s solution is the same compromise found in the four other posture reviews: America hopes for a world in which nuclear arms only deter nuclear arms, but that world isn’t here yet.
6. The unsettling stream of antisemitism
Michael Paulson and Ruth Graham write about the recent rise of antisemitic rhetoric in the US, from people like Kanye West and Kyrie Irving, and the consequences it could have.
(The New York Times, approx 11 mins reading time)
Antisemitism is one of the longest-standing forms of prejudice, and those who monitor it say it is now on the rise in America. The number of reported incidents has been increasing. On Thursday, the Federal Bureau of Investigation warned of a “broad threat” to synagogues in New Jersey; by Friday the agency had located a man it said expressed “an extreme amount of hate against the Jewish community.”
…AND A CLASSIC FROM THE ARCHIVES…
After Elon Musk began cutting jobs at Twitter following his $44 billion takeover, this article from 2018 looks at what it was like to work for the world’s richest man at his other company, Tesla. It is quite something.
(Wired, approx 46 mins reading time)
When he arrived, Musk began marching through the factory. He walked along the assembly line, red-faced and urgent, interrogating workers he encountered, telling them that at Tesla excellence was a passing grade, and they were failing; that they weren’t smart enough to be working on these problems; that they were endangering the company, according to someone who observed him. Employees knew about such rampages. Sometimes Musk would terminate people; other times he would simply intimidate them. One manager had a name for these outbursts—Elon’s rage firings—and had forbidden subordinates from walking too close to Musk’s desk at the Gigafactory out of concern that a chance encounter, an unexpected question answered incorrectly, might endanger a career.
Note: The Journal generally selects stories that are not paywalled, but some might not be accessible if you have exceeded your free article limit on the site in question.
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