2011
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Choice Propaganda
“This stupid little Facebook photo is not only ill-informed, it’s harmful. Nothing on it has anything to do with reality. It has everything to do with a false rhetoric that’s being promoted by people who either don’t know about the…
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Some Notes on Paranormal Activity 3 as a Structural Film
Earlier this year, I made a case for Paranormal Activity 2 as an avant-garde film,
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Share Ourshelves
“Founded by Kristina Kearns, Ourshelves was inspired by all the talk of the publishing industry’s impending death and Kearns’ personal desire to preserve books. ‘I wanted to create something between a bookshop and a library,’ Kearns said.” Today, Mission Mission…
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An Occupy Oakland Roundup
Holy crap. As many of you know, on Monday night, Oakland police raided the Occupy Oakland encampment, arresting and tear-gassing residents and destroying the entire camp. Last night, 500-1500 people reportedly came out to protest, and they were met with…
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Looking for Hymns of Seizure
There is some of Rilke’s spiritual longing in Basil, expressed most frequently through agonizing bodies and food.
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From Travel To War Writing
“The guidebook I researched last winter was never published, put on hold when the Arab Spring surged into Libya that February. I was writing a guidebook to a country that no longer exists; a country where busloads of Italian tourists…
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Dan Weiss’s Morning Coffee
Hey you guys, it’s totally almost Halloween. The mystery of the rapidly inflating volcano. I don’t really know about this whole “agriculture” thing. Let’s take a look at Sylvia Plath’s sketches. The Awl on the golden age of dirty talk.
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The Rumpus Interview with Laura Miller
In 1995, a small group of writers and editors met to plan Salon. Laura Miller, who became employee number 5, was involved in creating the prototype.
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Our Broken Legal System
“…Substantial wealth inequality is so embedded in American political culture that, standing alone, it would not be sufficient to trigger citizen rage of the type we are finally witnessing.” At Mother Jones, Glenn Greenwald looks back at the history of…
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Loss Aversion and Decisions
How useful is self-knowledge in decision making? Not very, according to Daniel Kahneman, author of Thinking, Fast and Slow. The Book Bench takes a look at Kahneman’s ideas—the most significant being that we suffer from loss aversion, which helps explain…