Veritatis splendor

Keith Preston

1 year ago

Week XIX, MMXXV

It’s not every week that Russia invades a neighboring country, or the U.S. withdraws from Afghanistan, or there’s a new pope. But there’s always news. Do you sometimes wonder, though, what exactly news is? We tend to talk about it as if it’s a thing in the world—like the weather—that simply happens, whether we know about it or not. But news is a tricky idea, when you think about it: meaningless apart from the real events it refers to, incomprehensible without understanding it’s also essentially constructed by the people who produce it. That might sound like a philosophical problem, but it’s increasingly a practical one—as news organizations give themselves over more and more to business models that depend on capturing as much of our attention as possible. And you just can’t pay attention to all of it. You literally have better things to do. So we have a rule of thumb: Does it raise a good question?—one you want to be thinking about if you need to be oriented in the world, now or weeks and months from now.

—John Jamesen Gould

The Signal is your loyal guide to a fast-changing world. … This week, in the member’s despatch:

DEVELOPMENTS

‘We have a pope.’ India, Pakistan, and all-out war. & An election surprise in Australia.

+ The U.S. and U.K. announce a trade deal. Germany’s parliament manages to confirm the country’s chancellor, to uncertain effect. & Thinking about the beauty of art seems to help thinking abstractly.

CONNECTIONS

Is Donald Trump making China more popular?

FEATURES

What are the risks of “killer robots” to civilians? Lucy Suchman on the automation of modern warfare.

& Why are people in the United States eating record amounts of meat? Glynn Tonsor on a mysterious outlier trend in the Western world.

BOOKS

From Allison Pugh, on humane labor in an age of automated work; Deborah Davis x Terry Lautz, on how personal encounters have shaped Chinese-American relations; and Wolfgang Münchau, on what happened to the German economy.

MUSIC

From Max Richter, Anthony Naples, and Tenor Saw.

+ What’s dancehall reggae?

WEATHER REPORT

54.4138° S, 36.5827° W …

Open

Getty Images

‘Ring the Alarm’

Tenor Saw, a pioneer of dancehall reggae, was killed in 1988 at the age of only 21 by a hit-and-run in Houston, Texas. In this 1985 track, he became one of the original “singjays”—DJs who sing over instrumental music tracks, or “riddims”—using the backing track “Stalag 17,” which artists in reggae, reggaeton (reggae’s Panamanian / Latin American variant), punk, and hip-hop have since sampled for hundreds of derivative tracks.

What’s dancehall reggae?

From the member’s despatch …

Become a member to access all articles, the full archive, + the weekly member’s despatch—with deep dives on key questions, vital debates, new music, and more … and become part of a growing network dedicated to helping people think for themselves in the world.

Join now

Members play a crucial role in backing our mission to develop a new genre of independent current-affairs coverage—for less than one fine cup of coffee every couple of weeks. Support The Signal.

This email address is unmonitored.

Please send questions or comments here.

Interested in getting your teams or students

access to The Signal? Please be in touch.

Find us on Linkedin, Instagram, Bluesky, or X..

Add us to your address book.

Unsubscribe here.

Attack the System