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Notes -
So, what are you reading?
I'm still on the Iliad and Dialectic of Enlightenment, which has turned out to be much more interesting than I expected.
Just finished Misbelief by Dan Ariely. He was brought in to consult the government during lockdowns on how best to encourage mask wearing and how to boost engagement with remote learning, but played no part in the decision to require masks or close schools.
Conspiracy theorists on the internet became convinced he was one of the evil masterminds behind the plandemic. He reached out and engaged with several and wrote a book about it. One interesting insight was that if someone gets deep into a conspiracy theory — to the point it causes them to become ostracized by their family and (former) friends — it is exceedingly hard to pull them out of the conspiracy, as their new social circle consists of other people who have experienced the same, and they don’t want to go through a second social death.
The people sending Ariely death threats, were to his surprise, quite supportive of one another in their Telegram chat groups. One, after lengthy one-on-one communication, conceded he realized Ariely was not an evil power broker, but acknowledged he could not say so lest he lose the only social circle he had left.
Currently reading Moss Hart’s autobiography Act One after it was highly praised in both Graydon Carter’s memoir and a recent New York Magazine article on the history of Broadway. The rags to riches story has been quite good so far, blending an interesting memoir with insights into acting, directing, playwrighting and the theater business, living up to the hype.
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