Interesting Things on the Internet: August 12th 2024 Edition

• Do not adjust your reality: how slick Team GB played its part in dividing Britain.

  Medals are key to this. Medals are public money, goodwill, merch, the maintaining of the illusion that this success represents something other than simply itself. This is the basic contradiction in a national high-performance culture.

  Gold medals have been stockpiled. But these golds are the work of those involved in winning them. Victory without context means nothing more broadly. The only societal value in a medal is where it expresses a physical culture, is the final evidence of a working system, of public access, fertilising the soil, encouraging participation, seeing what grows.

• How Norway’s public broadcaster overhauled its climate coverage

  But “the important societal debates now revolve around how to adapt to, or brake, global warming,” the guidelines declared. “Our coverage should primarily be about how action is being taken, not if action is necessary.”