It takes an extremely charismatic actor to hold down a 2.5 hour film with no scene partners & nearly no dialogue. Tom Hanks did it about as well as it’s ever been done when he earned an Oscar nomination for Cast Away. The Hanks-Robert Zemeckis partnership has resulted in a lot of great Cinema over a handful of decades. This is film is perhaps their biggest achievement together, even above Forrest Gump.
your daily reminder that ppl are almost biologically drawn to:
- belonging
- certainty
- status within a tribe
- a charismatic interpreter of reality
- rituals & shared language
- an enemy or out group
- a story that makes suffering meaningful
- the feeling that we know something they don’t
religions, political movements, startups, fandoms, fitness communities, crypto, even certain friend groups can all activate pieces of this same machinery. & some companies are doing it brilliantly well right now.
Can elected leaders ever really control the bureaucracy?
From Trump to Milei, politicians promise to rein in unelected officials. Max Weber saw the charismatic leader as the cure for rule by experts—someone to set the state's goals and keep officialdom in check.
But philosopher Sandy Berkovski argues this is a fantasy. Elections can't pick a wise ruler, only remove a bad one peacefully.
Real control, Berkovski argues, comes from officials checking each other, while voters exercise their freedom by choosing one bureaucracy over another.
Read the full article here.
Few U.S. Senate races have captured the public's attention like the battle in Michigan between Republican Mike Rogers and Democrat Abdul El-Sayed. It pits a 63-year-old former FBI agent and former congressman who has strong backing from President Trump against a charismatic doctor and political newcomer who, if elected, would become the first Muslim U.S. senator in American history.