Loss: How should we understand the 'road not taken'? Laurie Taylor talks to Susie Scott, Professor of Sociology at the University of Sussex, about her study of lost experience - that vast terrain of things we have not done, that did not happen or that we have not become. Also, Tim Strangleman, Professor of Sociology at the University of Kent, reveals a lost world of paternalistic employment in which people enjoyed a well-paid job for life, free meals in silver service canteens, after work sports & theatre clubs & a generous pension on the horizon – the story of the Guinness Brewery in West London.
24 February 2020
The Log Books: “You might well be very angry!”
The 70s was a hotbed of activism, from lesbians fighting for child custody to gay men demanding equal laws for the age of sexual consent. Tracking the movement through the log books, Tash and Adam hear from activists on the frontline, including Lisa Power and Ted Brown. Meanwhile, young activists in a resurgent Gay Liberation Front discuss the actions they plan for 2020...
99 Percent Invisible: Their Dark Materials
Vantablack is a pigment that reaches a level of darkness that’s so intense, it’s kind of upsetting. It’s so black it’s like looking at a hole cut out of the universe. “Vantablack is striking when you look at it… because it [doesn’t look] like something is colored black. It looks like an absence. It disappears,” explains Adam Rogers, a journalist who writes for Wired. Vantablack swallows nearly all visible light and gives back no reflection, so every contour or crease of whatever it’s applied to disappears. It has this odd effect of making something look two dimensional, while at the same time as if you can fall right through it. [...]
What really caught his attention Jensen was the amount of interest that came from another field in desperate need of a super-black pigment: the art world. In that first couple of weeks alone, Surrey Nanosystems received over 400 inquiries from artists wanting to use it in their work. Working with artists was just not something Surrey Nanosystems was equipped to do because Vantablack was incredibly hard to work with. Carbon nanotubes had to be grown at about 430 degrees centigrade, which is still hot enough to damage most materials. CNTs were also very delicate and could scrape off easily but most importantly, any collaboration with artists would take up time and tech resources since anything coated with Vantablack would have to be grown in Surrey Nanosystem’s reactors. Working with artists just didn’t seem like a practical move for the company… until they met Anish Kapoor. [...]
Ben Jensen is quick to point out that artists being protective of technology isn’t actually a new thing in the art world. Artists have been creating their own oil paints since the Renaissance and they were under no obligation to share their material with competitors. Jensen explains, “People feel if something exists, they have an automatic right to it… The reality is the world has never been like that. You go back to when Turner was creating his blacks and you go up to him, say, ‘Hey, you created an amazing black. I want it.’ You would have been laughed out of the art scene.” Stuart Semple sees it in a different way. He believes that sharing knowledge and technology can only move the arts community forward. It was a clear cut disagreement on how the world operated vs. how one thought the world should operate.
Vox: America's presidential primaries, explained
Before Americans vote on the next president in November, both major political parties have to settle on a nominee. That process is called the primary, and in 2020 it consists of 64 different contests, held on 22 different days, over several months. And for some reason, it all starts in the midwestern state of Iowa. So how did America's political parties come up with this system? And is there a better way to do it?
UnHerd: How Kazakhstan’s multicultural dream turned sour
Kazakhstan has never witnessed ethnic violence on this scale before, but the turmoil evoked traumatic memories of intercommunal clashes in Kyrgyzstan in 2010 between Uzbeks and Kyrgyz which left hundreds dead. [...]
Nursultan Nazarbayev, the president who ruled Kazakhstan for three decades until his resignation last year, made ethnic harmony a pillar of the nation, partly to avoid antagonising his powerful neighbour Russia, always on the look-out for discrimination against Russians abroad (they are Kazakhstan’s largest ethnic minority, making up 40% of the population at independence and now just under 20%). [...]
Under Nazarbayev, ethnic tensions were a taboo topic. The government steadfastly denied any intercommunal element to such incidents, even flying in the face of evidence on the ground. This time, Tokayev, the president, initially dismissed the violence as a “group brawl”, before obliquely acknowledging an ethnic slant by condemning “criminals” acting under the guise of shouting “pseudo-patriotic slogans”.
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