Is it okay to be intentionally ignorant?
“Know thyself,” read the maxim carved into the Temple of Apollo. And while that imperative holds today, what are we to do with all the other knowable things — polling data, step counts, box office tallies, oh my — that sometimes get in the way of modern living. In the latest installment of Your Mileage May Vary, Vox’s philosophical advice column, guest columnist Shayla Love advocates for a practice of selective, thoughtful ignorance. When you take a break from knowing too much, Love suggests, it may just leave room to know other things better.
What an Abdul El-Sayed win means for Muslim American voters
With his primary victory this week, Abdul El-Sayed becomes the first Muslim Senate nominee from a major party. To better understand the significance of that development, Christian Paz spoke with Abdullah Hammoud, mayor of Dearborn, the first majority-Arab American city. Hammoud argues that El-Sayed’s willingness to come to people where they are, and to present a politics that resonated with their needs, mattered most. “People in Dearborn didn’t vote for Abdul because he’s Muslim,” Hammoud told Christian. “They voted for Abdul because he showed up, he knocked on the doors, he went to places of worship.”
The people who got rich disrupting your life want to help
As the AI boom continues, and more companies prepare for IPOs, a new class of tech entrepreneurs is about to get even richer, and their growing wealth might well transform global philanthropy forever. In a new feature on the topic, Sara Herschander explores what this charitable windfall might mean, tracing some of the intellectual currents that guide these would-be humanitarians, as well as the downstream effects that their contributions might have on existing charities.
The truth about rent control
In a time when countless Americans struggle with often-onerous housing costs, rent control may seem like an ideal solution. But as Marina Bolotnikova explains in her latest article, many economists hate it, partly because “it merely moves costs onto others and makes them less visible.” As Marina shows, we would benefit from a broader set of policy solutions that would help cash-strapped renters without threatening to reduce the supply and quality of housing stock.
The FOMO of not seeing The Odyssey in 70 mm IMAX
The Odyssey may be one of the hugest theatrical hits of the summer, but there are only 41 theaters in the world that are capable of screening it in Christopher Nolan’s preferred format: 70 mm IMAX. That very scarcity may, Alex Abad-Santos writes, be driving the mania for tickets to those scarce screenings, even when the actual viewing experience of watching the film in more conventional formats isn’t all that different. “Laistrygonians, Cyclops, / angry Poseidon — don’t be afraid of them,” C.P. Cavafy famously apostrophizes the absent Odysseus in his poem “Ithaka.” But maybe you should be afraid of seeing The Odyssey in the wrong format, lest you, like one of Alex’s sources, end up feeling “like a loser.”
