social confirmation

An important and timely instalment of Hidden Brain explores how a movement, a reckoning erupts as a cultural moment and the insufferable becomes no longer tolerated through overcoming or redirecting the discouraging mechanism of social or behavioural confirmation bias that reinforces grudgingly accepted norms by making us blind to the brittleness of custom and to the fortitude of our own convictions and has an interesting post-script, an unsung hero in the figure of Tarana Burke. After interviewing young survivors of sexual violence, Burke found herself without words but gathered resources over the next decade, founded an outreach network and gave her movement a name: Me Too. Another decade later, solidarity reached critical mass and the slogan championed behind a hash tag became a unifying message that the future is not going to look like the past.

tituli picti or norman consequence

On this in 1066, the forces of William, Duke of Normandy (previously) crossed the English Channel (la Manche) and established a beachhead at Pevensey, East Sussex, in order to dispute the claim to the Anglo-Saxon throne by King Harold Godwinson, precipitated by the extinction the Wessex line with the death of Edward the Confessor, who died without issue.
Harold’s elevation was challenged on three separate from by the Norwegian sovereign Harald Hardrada and Harold’s own brother Tostig—whom were repelled divisively (but at a great cost of men and materiel) under the Battle of Stamford Bridge in Yorkshire on the twenty-fifth of September, but eventually fell to William’s armies at the Battle of Hastings on the fourteenth of October. Norman troop frustrated when their advances were stopped at first and were unable to penetrate English front lines adopted a tactic of pretending to retreat and then—more agile—turn back on their pursuers.

horizontal transaction or gini coeffienct

Building on the central tenets of chartalism, the belief that legal tender was created out of a ruler’s or government’s desire to direct economic activity through currency manipulation and trade rather than as a solution to make barter and exchange more portable and imperishable, Planet Money introduces us to a school of thought styled Modern Monetary Theory, an macroeconomic idea that one’s pocket change is very different than fiat money and that a country that produces and controls its own currency can fully fund all the goods and services it wishes. Provided it is not indebted with loans in a foreign currency or is not able to create more money (like individual member states of the European Union), it cannot go bankrupt. Rather than to generate revenue for the government, taxation is an effective means to regulate inflation and unemployment. It’s a provocative argument surely and some would call it naïve to diminish the role of inflation but it seems that economies are doing this all the time. Do give he episode a listen and let us know what you make of the compelling question and answers.

7x7

yokohama-e: early depictions of Westerns (previously) by Japanese illustrators—via the Everlasting Blört

uncanny valley: the secret (related) and sometimes glamourous life of fashion mannequins

periodicals: the Avocado has a regular column on reading vintage and antique magazines—via Things Magazine

spriting: fun and informative pixel-art animation tutorials

millinery: curating the illustrations of Joanna Spicer to celebrate the hatmaking industry of Stockport

reading room: Massimo Listri’s amazing photography of European libraries

what-ifs: illustrator Tom Stults envisions films created in another time and place

s. s. minnow

On this day in 1964, as our faithful chronicler Doctor Caligari informs, that among many other events the series Gilligan’s Island has its original release on CBS. Probably most memorable for its theme song, “The Ballad of Gilligan’s Isle,” written by Sherwood Schwartz and George Wyle, was performed to network executives as the pitch for the show, as was sort standard practise in those days as evinced by many programmes (like the Brady Bunch which also first aired on the same date five years later) with expository openings.
The version for the pilot (filmed on the same day as the assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy and the whole project was put on hold until the following fall, with “Marooned” unaired until 1992) had a distinctive calypso theme courtesy future film score composer John Williams who also provided other incidental music for the show. The eponymous vessel was not named for the small bait fish but rather for the Federal Communication Commission chairman Newton Norman “Newt” Minow, that producer Schwartz held in contempt and accused of ruining the US television by characterising it as a “vast wasteland.”  Reforms that Minow helped engineering resulted in the creation of the Public Broadcasting System and National Public Radio.