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Reasoning with a tiger

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Week XVII, MMXXV
“When you talk to people in America, on both the left and the right, they’ll often say that things were better in the past. They’ll romanticize the times when America had two or three broadcast networks. People trusted news presenters like Walter Cronkite, even though I’m not sure Cronkite was that much more impartial in his editorial judgments than today’s journalists. But when you only had a few channels, it felt like you could stay on top of things. Today, there’s so much commentary that people can’t keep up with it. And that’s changed Americans’ sense of how to navigate their news environment: Now they tend to think it’s smart to be skeptical of everything—the opposite of trusting. They’ll often say people who trust the news are naïve and easily manipulated. And to some degree, that may be true. But it’s also true that trust is really useful.”

—Benjamin Toff, ‘Trust nexus’
The Signal is your loyal guide to a fast-changing world. … This week, in the member’s despatch:
DEVELOPMENTS
The U.S. talks peace as Russia presses war in Ukraine. The global trade-war era continues—in strange directions. & Border fighting between India and Pakistan follows a mass murder in Kashmir.

+ Pope Francis’s funeral. A new shot at peace in the Congo. & A gladiator falls to a lion in Britannia.
CONNECTIONS
Can Europe finally defend itself?
FEATURES
Why are so many Americans so suspicious of the news media? Benjamin Toff on news consumption, social media, and partisan polarization.

& Why is collaboration intensifying among the world’s most powerful autocracies? Lucan Way on what unites and divides China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia.
BOOKS
From James M. O’Toole, on the decline of confession among American Catholics, Natalie Kerr x Jamie Kurtz, on the contemporary “epidemic of loneliness,” and Michael J. Glennon, on the role of unelected bureaucrats in running U.S. national security.
MUSIC
From Josi Devil, Deradoorian, and Pizzicato Five.

+ What’s Shibuya-kei?
WEATHER REPORT
44.6509° N, 63.5923° W …
Open
S.B. Bandara
‘Twiggy, Twiggy’
In the early 1990s, trip-hop and downtempo were dominant Western sounds, but a very different sound came from the Far East—specifically Japan. Pizzicato Five was one of the formative groups making what came to be known as the Shibuya-kei style of pop music. Rich with signifiers of the Swinging ‘60s, and a giddy sampling touch.

What’s Shibuya-kei?
From the member’s despatch …
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