The Digest—Sunday, 11 December, 2016

[The Digest is a collection of articles, videos, and other media I've viewed and found significant throughout the day. It is a way to divest myself from other social media that is more reliant on likes, click-bait, and peer-approval rather than quality, intelligence, and diversity of opinion, which are the qualities I find important. It is also a way to devote myself to daily contributions to this space...at least in theory.]

-=Summary: $$$ vs. Life, outrage over Russia?. the life-lens of Google, that Nabokov vs. editor book, Gloria Steinen glorious as usual, iZombie, & Hip Hop Evolution=-

Articles:

Stop Fixating on Economic Growth -- Let's Talk About Quality of Life
John de Graaf from Truthout

Trying to convince Americans that quality of life is separate from economic growth is an uphill battle; there's a reason the GOP treats issues like advertising cars & pimple cream & viagra. 


Where's the outrage over Russia's hack of the US election?
Paul Waldman from CNN

I'm unconvinced of this, as the U.S. has a horrendous record of hyping up Russian "atrocities" and other mayhem, but even if they did do the hack and release that stuff to WikiLeaks (if that's the extent of it) it's still American's lack of intelligent investigation and pursuit of facts and chest-thumping and feelings of exceptionalism and fear and ignorance that swung the election, not Russian shenanigans. 

Google is not ‘just’ a platform. It frames, shapes and distorts how we see the world

Carole Cadwalladr from The Guardian

Good points made, but how then to determine what is 'relevant' or not?

The High Art Wilson-Nabokov Cage Match
Jay Parini from The Daily Beast

I said I must read; it is on its way. Woohoo!

Gloria Steinem: 'Fewer people will say we live in a post-racist, post-feminist world'
Joanna Walters from The Guardian

Gloria is always glorious, her points salient, her voice of intrinsic value. 

She mentioned, her voice rising, that the US constitution reads “We, the people” not “I, the president”.

In-freakin-deed.

TV/Film:

iZombie, season 2, episodes 1 & 2
via Netflix

Aside from a show named iZombie ignoring the existence of the internet for key points of plot, entertaining.

Hip Hop Evolution
via Netflix

This series did an excellent job describing the socioeconomic, political context of the 70s in the Bronx, in the ghetto, in the rooms and streets and apartments and parks and warehouses where hip hop came into being. Fascinating to watch the creation and evolution of a new art form, a new vehicle for voices unheard. Fantastic.