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IT’S A DAY of rest, and you may be in the mood for a quiet corner and a comfy chair.
We’ve hand-picked some of the week’s best reads for you to savour.
1. Military industrial complex?
If you cast your mind back to September you may remember that during a presidential debate with fellow candidates Jim Gavin and Heather Humphreys, then President-elect Catherine Connolly used the term military-industrial complex five times. She said she was “extremely worried” about the military industrial complex in Europe, including Germany. Well she’s not the only one, The Atlantic is examining how Germany, who once embraced pacifism as a form of atonement, is now arming itself again.
“The Bendlerblock is an imposing neoclassical building near the center of Berlin—severe and symmetrical, with a red-tile roof. It once served as the headquarters of the Wehrmacht, and it’s where officers who plotted to kill Hitler in 1944 were executed by firing squad. Now the complex houses Germany’s defense ministry, which oversees the armed forces.
I went to the Bendlerblock this past summer to meet with German military officials and see how they’re responding to an aggressive Russia and a mercurial America. Two sergeants escorted me to the office of Lieutenant General Christian Freuding.”
(The Atlantic, approx 20 minutes reading time)
2. How AI is ruining universities
Students use AI to write papers, professors use AI to grade them, degrees become meaningless, and tech companies make fortunes. Welcome to the death of higher education.
“The panic came first. Faculty meetings erupted in dread: “How will we detect plagiarism now?” “Is this the end of the college essay?” “Should we go back to blue books and proctored exams?” My business school colleagues suddenly behaved as if cheating had just been invented.
Then, almost overnight, the hand-wringing turned into hand-rubbing. The same professors forecasting academic doom were now giddily rebranding themselves as “AI-ready educators.” Across campus, workshops like “Building AI Skills and Knowledge in the Classroom” and “AI Literacy Essentials” popped up like mushrooms after rain. The initial panic about plagiarism gave way to a resigned embrace: “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.”
(Current Affairs, approx 30 minutes reading time)
Have you ever seen someone in public reading from a very large, impressive book? Did you notice that they didn’t turn the pages? Were they holding it upside down? You may have stumbled across a ‘performative reader’.
“A performative reader treats books like accessories, lugging around canonical texts as a ploy to attract a romantic partner or as a way to revel in the pleasure of feeling superior to others. While everyone else is scrolling social media and silencing life with noise-cancelling headphones, the performative reader insists upon his intelligence with attention-seeking insincerity, begging to be noticed with the aid of a big, look-at-me, capital-“B” book.
This way of perceiving social reality—and particularly a person’s reading life—may seem inane, even deranged. But performative reading has firmly implanted itself into the popular imagination, becoming a meme for a generation of people who, by all accounts, aren’t reading a whole lot of books.”
(The New Yorker, approx 10 minutes reading time)
After more than 20 years in the US, an Eritrean mother and nurse tried to self-deport to Canada. She found herself in a Texas detention centre instead.
“Rahel Negassi squeezed her 11-year-old son’s hand as they turned their backs on Buffalo and faced the Peace Bridge. In the distance, they saw the Canadian flag waving from the building ahead.
An ICE agent bent down to remove her ankle monitor. “Good luck!” he said. “We would love for you to stay in the United States — but legally,” she recalled him saying.
“You will never see me again,” she replied.
It was June 27. Rahel had been under a deportation order from the United States for 22 years, ever since she fled her native Eritrea and entered the U.S. with a fake British passport. But because the U.S. does not deport people to Eritrea, she had been allowed to stay in the country.”
(The New York Times, approx 15 minutes reading time)
5. Is being hot now a job requirement?
Is the proliferation of botox and 12-step skincare regimes heightening the pressure of beauty standards for women in the corporate world? Amanda Hoover thinks so.
“Emily Reynolds runs a PR company, and with that responsibility comes the pressure to look young, she tells me.
She’s 44 but often passes as younger, and that’s by design. Reynolds has tried Botox, filler, laser facials, hydrofacials, and invests in expensive skincare products. She has a Peloton and does intense workouts a la Barry’s Bootcamp. She’s walking the precarious line, she tells me, between looking mature enough to show she’s an experienced professional who can run and mentor a team, and young enough to be relevant.”
(Business Insider, approx 10 minutes reading time)
6. The Sackler’s painkiller dynasty
The family behind Purdue Pharma launched and aggressively marketed OxyContin in 1996. What followed is an ongoing opioid crisis killing thousands of Americans.
“Purdue launched OxyContin with a marketing campaign that attempted to counter this attitude and change the prescribing habits of doctors. The company funded research and paid doctors to make the case that concerns about opioid addiction were overblown, and that OxyContin could safely treat an ever-wider range of maladies. Sales representatives marketed OxyContin as a product “to start with and to stay with.” Millions of patients found the drug to be a vital salve for excruciating pain. But many others grew so hooked on it that, between doses, they experienced debilitating withdrawal.
Since 1999, two hundred thousand Americans have died from overdoses related to OxyContin and other prescription opioids. Many addicts, finding prescription painkillers too expensive or too difficult to obtain, have turned to heroin. According to the American Society of Addiction Medicine, four out of five people who try heroin today started with prescription painkillers. The most recent figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggest that a hundred and forty-five Americans now die every day from opioid overdoses.”
(The New Yorker, approx 65 minutes reading time).
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