What We Are Reading Today: ‘The Shadow over Innsmouth’

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Updated 10 April 2024
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What We Are Reading Today: ‘The Shadow over Innsmouth’

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Author: H.P. Lovecraft

“The Shadow over Innsmouth” is one of H.P. Lovecraft’s most popular and influential stories, first published in 1936. It follows the narrator, a student on a rambling tour of New England, who stumbles upon the mysterious town of Innsmouth in Massachusetts.

The town of Innsmouth is shrouded in secrecy and strange rumors. The narrator becomes increasingly curious about the town’s dark history and the peculiar appearance of its inhabitants.

As the narrator digs deeper, he discovers a connection between his own family and the sinister activities of Innsmouth. He becomes entangled in a web of conspiracy, horror, and forbidden knowledge.

Eventually, he finds himself pursued by the inhabitants of Innsmouth, who are determined to keep their secrets hidden.

“The Shadow over Innsmouth” is notable for its themes of forbidden knowledge, cosmic horror, and the idea of hidden, ancient races lurking beneath the surface of our world.

It is often considered a significant contribution to Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos, a shared fictional universe featuring ancient deities, forbidden texts, and otherworldly horrors.

Lovecraft was an American writer who developed cosmic tales as a weird, horror fiction literary genre.

His works have profoundly impacted subsequent generations of writers, and his creations, such as the Cthulhu Mythos, have become iconic within the genre.

Lovecraft’s works were not widely recognized during his lifetime, and he primarily published his stories in pulp magazines.

After his death, his writing gained more recognition and a dedicated following.

Other notable works of his are “The Call of Cthulhu,” “At the Mountains of Madness,” and “The Dunwich Horror.”

Lovecraft’s stories continue to captivate readers with their atmospheric descriptions, intricate mythologies, and the sense of cosmic dread they evoke.

 

 


What We Are Reading Today: ‘Algorithms for the People’ by Josh Simons

What We Are Reading Today: ‘Algorithms for the People’ by Josh Simons
Updated 25 November 2024
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What We Are Reading Today: ‘Algorithms for the People’ by Josh Simons

What We Are Reading Today: ‘Algorithms for the People’ by Josh Simons

Artificial intelligence and machine learning are reshaping our world. Police forces use them to decide where to send police officers, judges to decide whom to release on bail, welfare agencies to decide which children are at risk of abuse, and Facebook and Google to rank content and distribute ads.

In these spheres, and many others, powerful prediction tools are changing how decisions are made, narrowing opportunities for the exercise of judgment, empathy, and creativity. 

In “Algorithms for the People,” Josh Simons flips the narrative about how we govern these technologies. 


What We Are Reading Today: ‘The Physical Nature of Information’

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Updated 24 November 2024
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What We Are Reading Today: ‘The Physical Nature of Information’

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Author: Gregory Falkovich

Applications of information theory span a broad range of disciplines today.
It teaches the tools universally used by physicists working on quantum computers and black holes, engineers designing self-driving cars, traders perfecting market strategies, chemists playing with molecules, biologists studying cells and living beings, linguists analyzing languages, and neuroscientists figuring out how the brain works.

No matter what area of science you specialize in, “The Physical Nature of Information” unlocks the power of information theory to test the limits imposed by uncertainty.

 


What We Are Reading Today: ‘The Organic Line’

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Updated 23 November 2024
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What We Are Reading Today: ‘The Organic Line’

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  • Once recognized, however, the line has seismic repercussions for rethinking foundational concepts such as mark, limit, surface, and edge

Author: IRENE SMALL

What would it mean to treat an interval of space as a line, thus drawing an empty void into a constellation of art and meaning-laden things? In this book, Irene Small elucidates the signal discovery of the Brazilian artist Lygia Clark in 1954: a fissure of space between material elements that Clark called “the organic line.”

For much of the history of art, Clark’s discovery, much like the organic line, has escaped legibility. Once recognized, however, the line has seismic repercussions for rethinking foundational concepts such as mark, limit, surface, and edge.

 


What We Are Reading Today: Citizen Marx by Bruno Leipold

What We Are Reading Today: Citizen Marx by Bruno Leipold
Updated 22 November 2024
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What We Are Reading Today: Citizen Marx by Bruno Leipold

What We Are Reading Today: Citizen Marx by Bruno Leipold

In Citizen Marx, Bruno Leipold argues that, contrary to certain interpretive commonplaces, Karl Marx’s thinking was deeply informed by republicanism.
Marx’s relation to republicanism changed over the course of his life, but its complex influence on his thought cannot be reduced to wholesale adoption or rejection. Challenging common depictions of Marx that downplay or ignore his commitment to politics, democracy, and freedom, Leipold shows that Marx viewed democratic political institutions as crucial to overcoming the social unfreedom and domination of capitalism.
One of Marx’s principal political values, Leipold contends, was a republican conception of freedom, according to which one is unfree when subjected to arbitrary power.
Placing Marx’s republican communism in its historical context—but not consigning him to that context—Leipold traces Marx’s shifting relationship to republicanism across three broad periods. One of Marx’s great contributions, Leipold suggests, was to place politics (and especially democratic politics) at the heart of socialism.


What We Are Reading Today: ‘Elusive Cures’ by Nicole Rust

What We Are Reading Today: ‘Elusive Cures’ by Nicole Rust
Updated 21 November 2024
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What We Are Reading Today: ‘Elusive Cures’ by Nicole Rust

What We Are Reading Today: ‘Elusive Cures’ by Nicole Rust

Brain research has been accelerating rapidly in recent decades, but the translation of our many discoveries into treatments and cures for brain disorders has not happened as many expected. 

We do not have cures for the vast majority of brain illnesses, from Alzheimer’s to depression, and many medications we do have to treat the brain are derived from drugs produced in the 1950s—before we knew much about the brain at all. 

Tackling brain disorders is clearly one of the biggest challenges facing humanity today. What will it take to overcome it? Nicole Rust takes readers along on her personal journey to answer this question.