Join 📚 Jim's Highlights
A batch of the best highlights from what Jim's read, .
White stars often fold trap beats or rap into their songs, but, as the scholar Tressie McMillan Cottom has noted, the music still counts as country—it’s “hick-hop.” When Black men sing that way, their music is often characterized as R. & B. or pop.
Country Music’s Culture Wars and the Remaking of Nashville | The New Yorker
Emily Nussbaum
In investigating the lumpings that have shaped societies past and present, we should, I believe, be charitable toward those who merely inherited the classifications that were dominant in their own times. But we should be less patient with those, like Calhoun and Sanger, who pressed to enforce their preferred categories, to encode them in law and make them permanent.
Peter Norvig says, “When the only information on the topic is a handful of essays or books, the best strategy is to read these works with total concentration. But when you have access to thousands of articles, blogs, videos, and people with expertise on the topic, a good strategy is to skim first to get an overview. Skimming and concentrating can and should coexist.” Norvig is Research Director at Google, so he might be expected to say something like this, but I still think he’s right—except, I would argue, concentrating has rarely received equal billing with skimming.
The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction
Alan Jacobs
...catch up on these, and many more highlights
Readwise