Weekly Digest #101

Something for the weekend:

1. ‘Our reactions to prostitution are steeped in what Melissa Gira Grant calls “the prostitute imaginary.” They may feel visceral, rooted in some primal disgust reflex, but often derive from a combination of American puritanism and second-wave feminist rhetoric. Increasingly, we project our helplessness in the face of capitalist exploitation onto the sex worker, using her to signify human commodification distilled to its basest form. This collective psychic baggage primes us to see certain stories as more satisfying, more palatable, and more true’ Link

2. The Enduring Influence of Marx’s Masterpiece

3. Only Idiots Care about IQ

4. Orwellian equality: What can this philosophical outsider teach us about how to live

5. Out of Breath: Toward a New Origin Story of Public Health

6. The Oldest University In Every Country In The World

7. Bigger cars kill more people than they save

8. ‘Power is founded on the introduction of death as an everyday possibility into life – without the threat of death, the idea and practice of power could not obtain. … Power is the continual effort to make death present for life’ Link

9. 1 in 7 scientific papers is fake, suggests study that author calls ‘wildly nonsystematic’

10. The consolations of history

11. ‘As the linguist Emily M. Bender has noted, teachers don’t ask students to write essays because the world needs more student essays. The point of writing essays is to strengthen students’ critical-thinking skills; in the same way that lifting weights is useful no matter what sport an athlete plays, writing essays develops skills necessary for whatever job a college student will eventually get. Using ChatGPT to complete assignments is like bringing a forklift into the weight room; you will never improve your cognitive fitness that way’ Link

12. The Practice of Medical Dissection in Third-Century BCE Alexandria, Egypt as a Heterotopia of Deviation

13. International Society for Critical Health Psychology (ISCHP) Conference 2025

14. Human Selves are Superior to Animal Selves

15. The promise of artificial intelligence in health: Portrayals of emerging healthcare technologies