If you were a young woman between 1930 and 1960, there was apparently a worrying non-zero chance you’d end up as an experiment inside a giant glass tube. As a visual trope, the glass tube […]
Category: Thought
Cyberpunk I: Cyberpunk as Retrofuturism
Cyberpunk and its offshoots (biopunk, solarpunk, etc.) are still our significant cultural vision of the future. And yet, it hasn’t aged particularly well. This is the vid-phone from Blade Runner (1980), which was supposed to […]
On Perversion
Pervert can be noun or verb. When we pervert something, we alter it from its intended course — we distort or corrupt — while a pervert is the thing distorted or corrupted. As a noun, […]
Textbook Examples
It’s never the theory that trips people. By now, anyone who’s spent a decent amount of time on the internet can explain confirmation bias, or Dunning-Kruger. Rather, it’s the application — not just what those […]
The Curious Tragedy of the Batavia
The Batavia was a merchant ship which set sail on its maiden voyage in 1628 from the Netherlands to Java under the command of Dutch East Asia Company official, Francisco Pelsaert. The ship, for its […]
The Social Dilemma
We watched The Social Dilemma on Netflix last night, which is totally worth the time. At one point, Tristan Harris plays off a quote from Steve Jobs, who famously remarked that computers should be “a […]
Western Gothic
My parents have been binge-watching the Paramount show Yellowstone, which is not about the infamous National Park but rather is a kind of cowboy Game of Thrones in the modern American West. I can’t stomach […]
The Burden of Insight
As my mother, a counselor and clinical social worker of 30+ years, often notes: Most people are not burdened with insight. I love that observation and have quoted it often, but of course it’s a […]
III. The New Rules
Earlier this week, I summarized both Orwell’s and Umberto Eco’s views on a species of thought, which we might call ideological factionalism, that has always been with us but which seemed to be in retreat, […]
II. The Unending Task
Yesterday I wrote about Orwell’s 1945 essay “Notes on Nationalism,” where nationalism meant a manner of thinking that could attach itself to more than just a state. Orwell says he chose the word because it […]
