Mini-Heap: recent items from the Heap of Links, collected in groups of 10, here for your perusal and discussion.

If you have suggestions for the Heap of Links, send ’em in.

1. A contest to name Crayola’s new crayon, based on a previously missing shade of blue — someone has already submitted “Hume’s Blue”
2. Not nice. Not necessary. Not sexy. — John Corvino (Wayne State) on racial preferences on dating apps/sites
3. “Machiavelli’s advice for rulers was ruthless and pragmatic—and he may have intended for it to secretly destroy them” — he wore “a variety of masks” but his ideas had “remarkable consistency,” writes Erica Benner
4. “There is no subject so imbued with drama, intrigue, and fast-paced action as 17th-century Western philosophy” — perfect for a graphic novel (a chapter of which you can read at the link)
5. “Racialized… liberalism has been the problem rather than liberalism as such, but… it is understandably hard to appreciate this considering that the former has been the dominant form of liberalism for hundreds of years” — an interview with Charles Mills (CUNY)
6. If you have one thought too many, the many think you’re less good — new social psych research: “participants rated an impartial actor as less morally good and his or her action as less moral compared to a partial actor”
7. The next president of France was once an assistant to Paul Ricoeur — do the philosopher’s ideas provide insight into how Emmanuel Macron will govern?
8. “Why is the idea that optimal performance occurs in a state of flow so widespread, if it’s wrong?” — it sounds appeallingly effortless, says Barbara Gail Montero (CUNY), but doing ballet or philosophy well is not
9. Rather than complain about political correctness as such, “we might usefully distinguish among five categories of attitudes towards speech,” says Michael C. Dorf (Cornell)
10. Study? Student in duct shuns it, having successfully stolen exam before — but this time, he gets caught