Who knew Country Music would get embroiled in the so-called “Culture Wars.” Well, unless you haven’t been paying attention, just about everybody. Because hey, just about everything gets caught up at one time or the other. Emily Nussbaum has a terrific long read in Country Music’s Culture Wars And The Remaking of Nashville. FYI: No mention of some guy not born in a small town but singing as if he was.
If you’re looking for a collection of good writers and good writing you won’t go wrong with Ellemeno Magazine on Medium. Some top notch and provactive stuff going on there. Because there’s so much quality writing, I don’t feel so guilty for not recommending more this selections this Sunday.
If you’re interseted in just what the heck Sunday Morning Reading is all about you can read more about the origins of Sunday Morning Reading here.
A few loose threads in this edition of Sunday Morning Reading. Yes, that’s a bad attempt at headlining what’s going on in the social media universe after the release of Threads by Meta. But hey, if you’re interested there’s also pieces on our inevitable extinction driven by our pursuits of pleasure along with a piece of how we can possibly slow down aging.
On Lake Time this weekend so a smaller edition of Sunday Morning Reading to share.
First up are two articles about the recent launch of Threads and the continued demise of Twitter. It’s all a bit nuts in the social media-verse. But to be honest, it’s also all a bit fun. Too early to tell how this shakes out.
It’s been a week. But they usually are. I don’t think there’s a theme to this week’s Sunday Morning Reading other than that things continue along the same path of craziness that for some reason we just continue to accept as somehow normal. So perhaps it is.
Kicking things off is a great piece by M.G. Siegler about the Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg let’s have a cage mage nonsense called These Used To Be Serious People. I think that title could be applied to just about any field of human endeavor in this current moment.
Annalee Newitz says Ben Franklin Would Have Loved Bluesky as Twitter and Facebook lose ground to federated platforms. She says we’re in a social media era of chaos that sociologists woujld call a “legitmation crisis.” While the title uses Bluesky and Ben Franklin for attention grabbers she burrows down a bit into how the decentralization desires for some in social media, government and life tend to get thwarted by money. She goes deeper than that in a worthy read.
And Casey Newton says The AI Is Eating Itself. I’m very much in line with his thinking here.
Did you know that Samuel Beckett and Buster Keation collaborated on a film? They did. Thomas Leatham tells us about it in The Film Created by Samuel. Beckett and Buster Keaton. You can check out a small clip of it in the article.
And to wrap things up this week here’s a bit of fun and curiosity. Jisha Joseph highlights an interesting bit of Victorian news and comedy commentary from Tit-Bits Magazine:
a competition that offered a reward to unmarried women who could provide the best answer as to why they were yet to find themselves a husband. The page-full of responses published on April 27, 1889, made one thing abundantly clear: Women in Victorian England had a badass sense of humor.
If you’re interseted in just what the heck Sunday Morning Reading is all about you can read more about the origins of Sunday Morning Reading here.
As the picture says, I’m on lake time this Sunday morning. So the list of suggested Sunday Morning Reading topics is a shorter one. Here’s hoping you find a little weekend time to chill as well.
Theatre and opera director Adele Thomas talks about her beginnings, her art and her career and how artists and the challenges (financial and otherwise) that directors face trying to get a career going. Good interview by Fiona Maddocks.
Some Sunday Morning Reading for Father’s Day. There’s no real theme to this week’s edition. Which is fitting. We used to joke that my Dad had a new hobby every six months. He did. But that just demonstrated his endless curiosity about the world around us. I think I got some of that tossed into my mix. So here’s a pot-pourri of topics to share.
What came first the chicken or the egg? Well that age-old riddle leaves the rest of the egg-laying species out of the question. Intriguing piece by Nisha Zahid.
And while we’re talking about the riddles that plague humans about the non-humans sharing our planet, Ari Daniel highlights an article in Cell that says an Octopuses can tweak the RNA in their brains to adjust to warmer and cooler waters.
This is a scary and sad tale. Gina Dimuro tells us about Blanche Monnier. Her parents locked her in her room for 25 years after she fell in love with the wrong kind of guy.
If you’re interseted in just what the heck Sunday Morning Reading is all about you can read more about the origins of Sunday Morning Reading here.
Charisma might be the theme of some of this week’s edition of Sunday Morning Reading. Or maybe it’s our fasicnation with folks who seem to marshall it for mischief. The theme runs through a range of topics from Artificial Intelligence to the media with a few other subjects tossed on the reading pile. Speaking of charisma and mischief marshaling, these articles all came my way as we were absorbing the news of the Trump indictment this week. I wrote a little something about that here.
Om Malik stands as much in dismay as I do at how much time the media spotlights charlatans in Media and Monsters.
“I knew: This man is doing me violence — but I was no longer strong enough. I kissed the hand he offered and with choking voice uttered: ‘Master, what shall I do?’”
We’ve witnessed quite a few falls from grace this week. None more glaring than CNN’s Chris Licht. Mark Jacob in the Courier breaks down the difference between platforming and journalism. The latter Licht’s lickspittling helped slide further down the reputation damage scale.
Morality is declining. That seems to be something most believe at the moment. Data says otherwise according to Mariana Lenharo.
Jeff Jarvis followed a court case in which a couple of lawyers had to own up for submitting nonexistant citations and cases created by ChatGPT.
John Warner lays out an excellent long read on why Speed and Efficiency are Not Human Values. Yes, it’s AI related but you’ll also find a little Korsakov, Tolstoy and Prince in the mix.
James Grissom claims he received a phone call from playwright Tennessee Williams, who asked Grissom to “be my witness.” After a meetiing with Williams, Grissom takes the names Williams gives him and proceeds to follow the playwright’s wish: “I would like you to ask these people if I ever mattered.” Grissom turned it into a calling card, a book and a career. Lots of folks doubt the whole thing. Helen Shaw tackles the story in Did This Writer Actually Know Tennesee Williams?
David Todd McCarthy takes on our fascination with the unprecdented in America Grows Up.
And to end this week’s edition of Sunday Morning Reading here’s a piece by Melissa Cunningham about Jenny Graves. “Why are we still singing about Adam and Eve when there’s so much gorgeous science out thre is the world that explains our origins.” That’s the question Jenny Graves, an evolutionary geneticist, asked herself on her way to creating a libretto based on Joseph Hayden’s The Creation. Melissa Cunningham tells the story
If you’re interseted in just what the heck Sunday Morning Reading is all about you can read more about the origins of Sunday Morning Reading here.
Some complex, challenging, and excellent writing to share with you today covering everything from big picture politics to the small, media meanderings and meltdowns, and some interesting tech analysis heading into Apple’s big mixed reality headset announcement at its WorldWide Developer Conference tomorrow. Hope you find the suggestions fascinating. I do.
The subhead for this piece, “The view from nowhere came from somewhere” should have been the title instead of The Invention of Objectivity. Regardless Darrell Hartman lays out a good read about how “objectivity” came to the New York Times. Subjectively speaking pretending that journalism can be unbiased is not a bias I subscribe to.
David Todd McCarthy walks along The Edge of Defeat in today’s political battles between progressives and establishment loyalists. Note: McCarthy is also setting up a new publication focusing on his political writings and musings called Rome Magazine. Also worth your time while the world burns.
Peter Turchin in The Atlantic adapts some of his book End Times (a good read) into an article called America is Headed Toward Collapse. He argues that history can show us how to muck our way through our present day “discord” as we have done twice before. I’m not sure history is going to be so kind this time around.
Anyone paying attention to the goings on at CNN leading up to and following the recent “town hall” featuring the conman known as the former president will find this behind the scenes feature by Tim Alberta in the Atlantic a fascinating read. The title certainly points to where it’s going: Inside the Meltdown at CNN.
Big pictures are complex. Neil Theise’s book Notes on Complexity: A Scientific Theory of Connection, Concsicousness, and Being tackles some of that complexity. In this article he lays out five key insights from his book.
Smart People are Falling for Stupid Lies by Kathryn Joyce in Vanity Fair is another article that racks the big picture political focus down to the view inside local battles in a specific county. These type of articles are enormously helpful in shedding light on the fact that the problems we face aren’t just top down but also bottom up, and how both feed the frenzy. Here’s another one from February in Politico about Ottawa Country, Michigan.
I’m kicking back this Memorial Day weekend and reading a bit less on the Internet. So this Sunday Morning Reading edition doesn’t feature articles of interest. Instead it features links to a few folks I follow for their writing and creativity. I’d recommend you take a look at their stuff as well.
Stan Stewart is a musician, poet, and does some nice photoraphy on his site Muz4Now. He’s always putting out something worth your time.
David Todd McCarthy is a writer I’ve come to know since jumping on to Mastodon last year. He’s opinionated, always fun, and occasionally infuriating. But you’ll come away glad you walked in the door. You can find him on Medium.
Jason Kottke is one of the original bloggers from back in the day when everyone was asking what a blog was. If you’re looking for something/anything that might pique your interest, you’ll certainly find it at kottke.org.
If you’re interested in tech, especially Apple tech as well as some interesting takes on some cultural things surrounding us, you might want to check out M.G. Siegler on 500ish.com.
If you’re interseted in just what the heck Sunday Morning Reading is all about you can read more about the origins of Sunday Morning Reading here.
Some Sunday Morning Reading to share. If you’re new to this now regular feature on Wicked Stage, you can read more about the origins of Sunday Morning Reading here. As always, it’s a varied collection of links. Some I find fun. Some informative. Some just weird. Regardless they caught my attention and I hope they catch yours.
The Debt Limit is Just One of American’s Six Worst Traditions. Lots of talk about the US Debt Limit debate at the moment. Here’s a look from John Schwarz and others at The Debt Limit and five other silly/stupid/bad political traditions in the US. Bet you’ll learn something from this one.
Apple announced some very interesting new accessibility features coming later this year. John Vorhees of MacStories did an interview with David Niemeijer of AssistiveWare, a company that makes augmentative and alternative communication apps for the iPhone and the iPad about how these kind of features can beneift real-world users.
Life on the Wicked Stage: Act 3 