Blog
When we don’t have Twitter, we’ll enjoy books again
Reading ‘Melancholic Parables’ as a parable of Twitter. Flash fiction by Dale Stromberg. One way to read it: who we are when we’re tweeting, who we think we are when we’re tweeting, and why we keep tweeting.
Gilbert Highet on censorship, 1954
A collage of his words. Cave man painting a running stag? Standards of good and evil? Transmuted into living flames? I’m in. Then I realize it’s an argument for censorship.
When you claim that experts don’t know their stuff
Jordan Peterson says climate scientists don’t define their terms. When a troll accuses someone else of bad-faith rhetoric, they’re usually only describing how they themselves operate. It’s spin. And it’s pure projection.
Why a homophobe displays a rainbow flag
They’re lying to themselves and others. The homophobe continues to share an occasional smirking rainbow and meanwhile gets away with spreading hate, disinformation, and physically violent imagery.
MAGA’s ‘not conservative’?
Well, is Trumpism conservative, or isn’t it? It doesn’t feel like natural order. It feels like state power. Some parts will be dismantled, and yet more monstrous heads will regrow.
The complicated joy of ‘Will & Harper’
Why did I wait so long to see it? The mood alternates between lighthearted and profound. Ferrell and Steele’s joy is complicated, but the film shines all the brighter for it.
How we appear, quivering
On the book ‘Deviant Matter: Ferment, Intoxicants, Jelly, Rot’ by Kyla Wazana Tompkins. We have ‘a wish to look directly at what is facing us,’ the oncoming blob, the mess we travel with and against.
GOP seeks to cut funding to U.S. hospitals supporting gender transition
Reporting by Jael Holzman asks if Democrats will allow it. If Democrats infight (‘bullying’ each other re: ‘cultural’ issues) and stop talking about the economy, they may lose even harder next time, says a pollster.
The anti-trans movement protested outside the U.S. Supreme Court
The Telegraph reports on a 17-year-old’s identity without asking them. Someday they may be ready to talk to sympathetic people who care about them, maybe including responsible journalists. It’s fine if they’re trans.