It’s much smaller list this year, probably because of all the madness: Covid, homeschooling, a book manuscript, grant applications, illness. For all these reasons I did a lot less of my usual idle and aimless reading. The stand-out article is Married (Happily) With Issues (even though it was published yonks ago), and I loved the poem Good Bones by Maggie Smith. 

Academia

• The glut of prizes is undermining the true value of research and teaching
• Hindsight’s hoard: What academics most wish they had known earlier
• On Quitting Academia
• Jan Blommaert: Looking back: What was important?
• Keep doing what you love – Essay – Twentieth-century history & later – TLS

Anthropology/ethnography

• COVID 19: The Apocalypse and African Dimensions of Victory, by… | CenSAMM
• ABC Religion & Ethics: The relevance of Aboriginal political concepts: Autonomous selfhood 
• Gender Is What You Make of It – Issue 88: Love & Sex – Nautilus
• Racialization, language science, and nineteenth century anthropometrics

Ethics & the examined life

• What if Instead of Calling People Out, We Called Them In?
• America and Its Discontents | Gary Greenberg
• Married (Happily) With Issues
• Is Social Media Good For Anything At All?
• Kanye West Is Publicly Struggling. We Need To Give Him Grace.
• That Discomfort You’re Feeling Is Grief
• It is absolutely fine to rip your books in half

Funny

• To the Enemies Surrounding Our Castle, Please Understand That I Often Privately Disagreed With Macbeth’s Policies
• The Laughter Of These Masked Revelers Begins To Grow Grotesque
• How Australia’s ‘fake genuine Russian choir’ Dustyesky went viral during the coronavirus pandemic
• Now Is the Time to Cherish the Little Things, by Jeff Bezos
• All I need in life is this Facebook group where everyone pretends to be ants
• If Your University’s Administration Ran a Polar Expedition

History

• The Distinguished Medieval Penis Investigators
• What rude jibes about Caesar tell us about sex in ancient Rome | Psyche Ideas

Investigations

• The Accusations Were Lies. But Could We Prove It?

Journalism

• Sixty-two of the Best Documentaries of All Time
• Opinion | How Western media would cover Minneapolis if it happened in another country
• What if modern conspiracy theorists are altogether too media literate?

Kids & parents

• I Was a Screen Time Expert. Then the Coronavirus Happened.

Language

• Why language remains the most flexible brain-to-brain interface – Mark Dingemanse | Aeon Essays
• Utopian for Beginners

Politics

• America’s Next Authoritarian Will Be Much More Competent
• How President Trump Ruined Political Comedy
• How the Pandemic Defeated America
• Private gain must no longer be allowed to elbow out the public good
• Terror, hope, anger, kindness: the complexity of life as we face the new normal

Science

• Opinion | The Human Experience Will Not Be Quantified
• A hypothesis is a liability
• The World’s Most Annoying Man | Current Affairs
• How I Rewired My Brain to Become Fluent in Math – Women in Science & Engineering on Nautilus

Writers & their writing

• Good Bones by Maggie Smith | Poetry Foundation
• You Can’t Have It All
• Promised Words

[How I made this (a note to self). Favourite articles were archived using instapaper and then downloaded as html via the settings page]

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