Weekly Roundup: October 29th, 2021

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This Week on Better Questions

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The Elephants.

A bit of a mission statement this week. We will return to our regularly scheduled programming soon.

But this is what is in my head each week when I sit down to write these, and I very much appreciate you being here.

Something On My Radar:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOvefm5U250

Metroid Dread.

If you are a fan of the Metroid games at all, this is an absolute delight. What a joy to play.

My kids get pretty scared by the Emmis; the game really succeeds in ramping up the tension and creating moments of exhilaration.

On Nintendo Switch.

Lebanon as We Once Knew It Is Gone

Sent in by reader Paul S. This wasn't on my radar at all, but this article is absolutely harrowing. A must-read.

The Ideological Battlefield of the "Mamasphere"

I...honestly don't know what to make of this, other than to say it's stuck in my brain and I think about it a lot.

If you have scratched your heads at images of white ladies with letterboards sporting messages about wine and overwhelm and all that...this article is for you. Fascinating.

An Ode to Middle Age

"From the outside it looks steady.

It looks resolved. Sitting heavily in a chair, with settled opinions and stodgy shoes—there’s something unbudgeable about the middle-aged person. The young are dewy and volatile; the old are toppling into fragility. But the middle-aged hold their ground. There’s a kind of magnetism to this solidity, this dowdy poise, this impressively median state.

But on the inside … You’re in deep flux."

Confucius Quotes that he Didn’t Actually Say

Since Confucius is quoted all the time by people who haven't the foggiest idea what he actually thought, I of course thought this article was going to be about debunking fortune-cookie-isms and the like.

Instead, I was pleasantly surprised by a deep-dive into Chinese mis-quotations and mis-understandings of Confucius. Very interesting!

Researchers analyzed 700-plus songs known to give people chills. Here’s the playlist

Posting here mostly so you can check out the accompanying playlist.

None of my music is on there, so it is clearly flawed. Still, might make for an interesting afternoon's exploration.

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