Every Monday on Global Comment, we share the slow, thoughtful, considerate words that our brains – and souls – need but that it’s easy to miss in our busy world. We distil the best of the web and recommend just three links every week that you absolutely must see.
No fluff, no fuss, just three exceptional reads.
Here are this week’s recommendations:
Cops on Substack: How Police Are Using PR to Combat Criticism (Julia-Simone Rutgers / The Walrus)
While the police may see their newsletter as a long-form platform to tell their own story, others see a police department scrambling to control the narrative amidst eroding public confidence in their work. Where other social media platforms can offer an opportunity for a back and forth between the police and the public at large, Substack is a one-way street.
“It’s not opening it up to other experiences, it’s dialling down and saying, ‘Look at us, I want you to hear my position,’” says Shenher.
The Right-Wing Bid to Capture the National Trust EXPOSED (Brian Cathcart / Byline Times)
But it turns out that tracking Restore Trust’s activities has something in common with following a Boris Johnson election campaign: by the time you have chased up one claim and found a problem, two more claims have been made. It’s hard to catch up and, since the group itself doesn’t seem to be concerned about correcting things, the risk that people might vote on the basis of incorrect information is high.
The larvae of the angled sunbeam butterfly have a strange shape (Fascinating)
The larvae of the angled sunbeam butterfly have a strange shape. When they get angry or startled, they instantly shoot tentacles from the two protrusions on their back and swing them around. pic.twitter.com/Ggvwr8Q88a
— Fascinating (@fasc1nate) October 27, 2022
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Image: Hin Bong Yeung