It was New Year’s Eve. I had a 20%-off- wine coupon that was set to expire at midnight. I went to the grocery store that issued the coupon and pulled a case of wine—4 bottles […]
Culture / Drugs / Media / Technology
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Bored, Lonely and Safe
We’ve finally taken notice of how safe and boring things are. How our experience of the world has become predominantly digital and life strangely devoid of ground-breaking music, literature and art. How culture is cannibalizing […]
Art / Culture / Media / Politics
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Art and Politics, Apples and Oranges
The other day I met up with an old friend in downtown LA and visited the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA). The exhibition was called “Monuments” and featured a dozen or so statues that had […]
Academia / Culture / Literature / Politics / Technology
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Books Will Abide, Though Readers May Not
James Marriott’s essay on the “dawn of the post-literate society” supports what to me has been evident for over a decade: in the wake of the smartphone, book readership has diminished and so has the […]
Culture / Media / Politics
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The Bad News Is the Good News
I grab the remote and turn on the PBS Newshour. Because I need to catch up on the latest failures of civilization. The scandals, disasters, crimes, wars, abuses of power, class conflict and sundry forms of […]
Media / Politics
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No TACO on This POTUS
It’s hard to be popular. But I think a good way to do it is to say a lot of things that aren’t true and see if it excites people. You tell them that you’re […]
Class / Culture / Politics
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Are We in Decline Yet? The Wikipedia Page
It’s obvious that the United States is in decline. But what does decline mean? According to Edward Gibbon, it’s a loss of virtue, particularly a decay of public service and civic duty. In the case of the […]
Consumerism / Culture / Labor
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Area Consumer Thinks About Brick and Mortar
Today I went into Staples to buy a ream of paper. I immediately noticed that the store layout was identical to that of every other Staples I’d been in: the red panels and white lettering, […]
Class / Culture / Literature / Politics
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Reflections on the Narrative of Frederick Douglass
Years ago, I heard a passage from Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass on Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History podcast. It was in episode 68, “Human Resources.” What impressed me was not only its power […]
Politics
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Who’s the Cooler Dictator?
The other day Trump staged a hang sesh with Salvadorian president Bukele. He got the party rolling by saying that Bukele “is a friend of mine and we went through this together and got along […]