Tag: CIA

Recommended reading / viewing / listening

The inevitable end to the shutdown / MTV in the 1980s / Is it time for Cat. 6 hurricanes? / The $2,000 tariff dividend idea / The golden age of Costco / Cormac McCarthy shares his inner self

This week: The inevitable end to the shutdown / MTV in the 1980s / Is it time for Cat. 6 hurricanes? / The $2,000 tariff dividend idea / The golden age of Costco / Cormac McCarthy shares his inner self

Most of these items come from my social media networks. Follow me on BlueSky, Instagram, Tumblr, LinkedIn, and Facebook for more fascinating videos, photos, articles, essays, and criticism. Learn more about my academic background here and about me here.

1. Hurricanes: Do we need a new ‘Category 6’?
Sky News | October 2025
“There are five levels on what is called the Saffir-Simpson scale. But with storms getting stronger, should another category be added to it?”
Also see, from The New Yorker: The Hidden Devastation of Hurricanes

2. Beyond the Apocalypse
By Amitav Ghosh | Equator | October 2025
“How visions of catastrophe shape the ‘climate solutions’ imposed by aid agencies.”

3. What to know about Trump’s plan to give Americans a $2,000 tariff dividend
By Paul Wiseman | Associated Press | November 2025
“Budget experts scoffed at the idea, which conjured memories of the Trump administration’s short-lived plan for DOGE dividend checks financed by billionaire Elon Musk’s federal budget cuts.”

4. Inside the CIA’s secret mission to sabotage Afghanistan’s opium
By Warren P. Strobel | The Washington Post | November 2025
“In a decade-long covert operation, the U.S. spy agency dropped modified poppy seeds in an attempt to degrade the potency of Afghanistan’s billion-dollar opium crop.”

5. Why the Democrats Finally Folded
By Russell Berman and Jonathan Lemire | The Atlantic | November 2025
“This is how the government shutdown was always going to end.”

6. Sneaky viruses can hide in your body and bounce back even if you’re cured
By Gabrielle Emanuel | NPR | October 2025
“Often the human hosts have no idea. They’d fallen ill, then appeared to beat the virus. Their blood tested negative. They show no symptoms.”

7. What the Fascist Tech Bros Get Wrong About Prometheus
By James Folta | LitHub | October 2025
“Why a statue of this Greek myth? Prometheus is often seen as the patron saint of innovative risk, but there are some parts of the myth that the tech bros are overlooking.”

8. The Wayback Machine’s snapshots of news homepages plummet after a ‘breakdown’ in archiving projects
By Andrew Deck and Hanaa’ Tameez | Nieman Lab | October 2025
“Between May and October 2025, homepage snapshots fell by 87% across 100 news publications.”

9. Couldn’t Care Less
The Santa Fe Institute | December 2017
“Cormac McCarthy in conversation with David Krakauer … reflects on isolation, mathematics, character, and the nature of the unconscious.”

10. A Baleful Legacy
By David A. Bell | The New York Review of Books | November 2025
“Enlightenment writers who proposed ways of improving and even perfecting the human species laid the theoretical foundations of modern racism.”

11. What killed Napoleon’s army? Scientists find clues in DNA from fallen soldiers’ teeth
By Ari Daniel | NPR | October 2025
“In October, Napoleon called his soldiers back after barely engaging the Russian army. It wasn’t a defeat, but it was no win either. And during the march home, winter arrived early.”

12. ‘MTV Was a Lot Like Kabul’
By Tom Freston | New York Magazine | October 2025
“Tequila girls. Coke-dealing staffers. Office fires. In its ‘80s heyday, the network was a wild place with few rules.”

13. Could the internet go offline? Inside the fragile system holding the modern world together
By Aisha Down | The Guardian | October 2025
“Behind every meme and message is creaking, decades-old infrastructure. Internet experts can think of scenarios that could bring it all crashing down …”

14. Still ‘Crazy’ for Patsy Cline
By Holley Snaith | American Heritage | Fall 2025
“Since her untimely death in 1963, the legendary country music star — and the first female to be inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame — continues to inspire new audiences and artists.”

15. A Trip to Mars? They’re Ready to Go.
By Alex Vadukul | The New York Times | October 2025
“Fans of the red planet joined scientists at an annual conference sponsored by the Mars Society. One attendee said he would take a ‘one-way ticket’ “

16. Can the Golden Age of Costco Last?
By Molly Fischer | The New Yorker | October 2025
“With its standout deals and generous employment practices, the warehouse chain became a feel-good American institution. In a fraught time, it can be hard to remain beloved.”

17. Walking is good for you. Walking backward can add to the benefits
By Stephen Wade | Associated Press | October 2025
“Backward walking, also known as retro walking or reverse walking, could add variety and value to an exercise routine, when done safely. Turning around not only provides a change of view, but also puts different demands on your body.”

18. The Perfect Crime
American Experience :: PBS | April 2018
“When Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, two well-educated college students from a wealthy suburb of Chicago, confessed to the brutal murder of 14-year-old Bobby Franks, the story made headlines across the country. The unlikely killers not only admitted their guilt, but also bragged that they had committed the crime simply for the thrill of it.”

19. The Breakfast Club: Smells Like Teen Realness
By David Kamp | The Criterion Collection | January 2018
“This was John Hughes s great gift in his early films as a screenwriter and director: he understood the whirling, emotionally inconsistent state of being an American teenager better than anyone else working his beat in the 1980s.”

20. Lorca
By Melvyn Bragg | In Our Time :: BBC 4 | 2011-2019
Also see: The Minoan Civilisation | Cogito Ergo Sum | The Bhagavad Gita | The Age of the Universe

Interested in more like this? Since June 2011, Stillness of Heart‘s “Recommended” series has accumulated a magnificent collection of articles, essays, music, podcasts, historical analyses, cultural reflections, and documentaries. Scroll through the offerings here.

Recommended reading / viewing / listening

This week: Trump and Putin / Da Vinci’s genius / Sexism and Clinton’s culpability / Tracing your Texas ancestry / A trans woman’s journey as Beyonce

This week: Trump and Putin / Da Vinci’s genius / Sexism and Clinton’s culpability / Tracing your Texas ancestry / A trans woman’s journey as Beyonce

Most of these great items come from my social media networks. Follow me on Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, LinkedIn, and Facebook for more fascinating videos, photos, articles, essays, and criticism.

1. Why Putin Keeps Outsmarting Trump
By John McLaughlin | Politico Magazine | Nov. 17
“The Kremlin leader is trained to lie. Trust me, I ran the CIA: Believing anything he says is folly.”
Also, from The Economist: America’s foreign policy: embrace thugs, dictators and strongmen

2. Puerto Rico’s DIY Disaster Relief
By Molly Crabapple | NYT Daily :: The New York Review of Books | Nov. 17
“Two weeks after Hurricane Maria hit, aid remained a bureaucratic quagmire, mismanaged by FEMA, the FBI, the US military, the laughably corrupt local government. The island looked like it was stuck somewhere between the nineteenth century and the apocalypse. But leftists, nationalists, socialists … were stepping up to rebuild their communities.”

3. Trump era sparks new debate about nuclear war authority
By Robert Burns | Associated Press | Nov. 19
“[W]hat would happen if an American president ordered a nuclear strike, for whatever reason, and the four-star general at Strategic Command balked or refused, believing it to be illegal?”

4. Latino vote
By Bill Lambrecht | San Antonio Express-News | Nov. 19
“Latino success in Virginia and across the country in recent elections continued a run of historic victories in 2017 and left leaders confident of their strategy heading into mid-term elections next year.”

5. What Made Leonardo da Vinci a Genius?
By Simon Worrall | National Geographic | Nov. 4
“Hint: The great Italian artist was interested in everything.”

6. Sexism on America’s Front Lines
By Susan B. Glasser | Politico Magazine | Nov. 6
“Six top national security pros sound off about an adversary closer to home: piggish men.”
Also, from The Atlantic: What Hillary Knew: Hillary Clinton once tweeted that ‘every survivor of sexual assault deserves to be heard, believed, and supported.’ What about Juanita Broaddrick?
Also, from the Guardian: I saw how we failed Bill Clinton’s accusers. We can’t do that again
Also, from the New York Post: Let’s just cancel the Oscars

7. ‘Everybody’s Cousins’: Tracing San Antonio Ancestry To 1718 And Beyond
By Norma Martinez | Texas Public Radio | Nov. 17
“A lot of South Texans can trace their ancestry back to 1718 and beyond. For those who can’t, a nonprofit is making it easier to follow their family tree.”

8. Becoming Beyoncé On Stage Helped One Trans Woman Come Into Her Own
By Danny Nett | Fandoms :: NPR | Nov. 19
“At first, she didn’t even have a strong, personal connection to Beyoncé the way people might expect, she says. That came later.”

9. Get lost in this visualization of interconnected global issues
By Robbie Gonzalez | Wired | Nov. 13
“[T]here’s more to Knowledge Maps than pretty diagrams. In fact, the tool’s utility becomes clear when you explore its less-mesmerizing features: a series of summaries and content feeds curated partly by humans and partly by machines.”

10. The Making of an American Nazi
By Luke O’Brien | The Atlantic | December 2017
“How did Andrew Anglin go from being an antiracist vegan to the alt-right’s most vicious troll and propagandist—and how might he be stopped?”

Recommended reading / viewing / listening

Castro’s new memoir / New York-sized iceberg / Tweeting truckers / CIA holds back Cuba history / Seductive Super Bowl ads

Most of these great items come from my Twitter feed or Facebook news feed. Follow me on Twitter and on Facebook for more fascinating videos, articles, essays and criticism. Read past recommendations from this series here.

1. Fidel Castro presents 2-volume memoir
By Anne-Marie Garcia | Associated Press | Feb. 4
“Fidel Castro spent six hours presenting a two-volume memoir to an audience at a Havana convention center, state media said Saturday. It was a rare appearance for the retired and increasingly reclusive former Cuban leader.”

2. Petraeus, with plenty of practice, sticks to message
By Greg Miller | Checkpoint :: The Washington Post | Feb. 3
“In his first extended public appearance as CIA director, David H. Petraeus this week did more than display his well-known discipline for staying on message. He did his best to bring other government voices back on message as well.”

3. Antarctica’s 19-Mile Ice Crack Will Produce New York-Sized Iceberg
By Carl Franzen | Talking Points Memo | Feb. 3
“[T]he great ice crack measures 19 miles long, 260 feet wide and 195 feet deep and the resulting iceberg will nearly 350 square miles, NASA reported.”

4. Palestina Amore
Al Jazeera World | October 2011
“Some Italians have made it their mission to mobilise support on behalf of the Palestinian cause.”

5. Shake, Rattle and Roll
By C. Claiborne Ray | Q&A :: The New York Times | October 2011
“Can human actions cause earthquakes?”

6. Sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff
Witness :: BBC News | January 25
“Horst Woit was just 10 years old when he and his mother boarded a ship in the hope of escaping Russian forces towards the end of World War II.”

7. The latest Twitter revolution
By Irin Carmon | Salon | Feb. 2
“Long-haul truckers gather in Mississippi to learn social media skills, burnish their image — and fight regulations”

8. CIA: Release of its History of the Bay of Pigs Debacle Would ‘Confuse the Public.’
By Nate Jones | Unredacted | Feb. 3
“Even if parts of the document truly are predecisional, only they can be withheld, the facts leading up to that decision — and histories are (hopefully) based primarily on facts — must be released.”

9. Super Bowl ads: The art of seduction
Company Town :: The Los Angeles Times | Feb. 3
“The art, and the challenge, is to weave a company’s brand and message into the story line of a commercial without making it feel forced or heavy-handed.”

10. Revisiting the power of Nazi propaganda
By Ellen Shapiro | Salon | Feb. 2
“A new Holocaust Museum exhibit provides unique insight into one of the world’s most devastating ad campaigns”

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