Posts by author
Adam Keller
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Broadway-Blues-Bad Casting
Ever since Zoe Saldana was set to play Nina Simone in the upcoming biopic Nina, controversy has surrounded the casting choice. Writing in the Atlantic, Ta-Nehisi Coates says that the issue isn’t just about Saldana’s lighter skin tone, but the…
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GoDefundMe
There’s no denying that crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter and Indiegogo have brought resources to artists and causes that wouldn’t have found support a decade ago. However, according to Emma Hoffman at WIRED, a dark side is emerging. Everything—from academic research…
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Talking Heads
Department store mannequins may be creepy, and automated customer service calls may take forever, but at least we don’t have to deal with the Euphonia these days. Inhabiting the lowest point of the uncanny valley, this machine mimicked human speech…
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Forget-Me-Not
Literature is a graveyard, and Brad Bigelow is digging up corpses. His blog, Neglected Books, covers forgotten published works—it currently has over 700 installments. Bigelow’s scavenging has resulted in renewed attention and even new printings for some of his subjects, such…
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Less Is Pottermore
Since the Harry Potter series ended, the Potter universe has continued to expand with tie-in books and lore published on the website Pottermore. However, Rowling’s magic-based historical revisionism was challenged this week by Native American activists responding to her latest…
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Introducing Allen Ginsberg
Over at Lit Hub, Bill Morgan introduces a selection of Allen Ginsberg’s poems from the upcoming Wait Till I’m Dead: At times he grew weary of the work and complained that he was overburdened, but the complaint often took the…
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Dylanology
Several of Bob Dylan’s old journals, in which he painstakingly drafted the lyrics of some of his classic songs, are set to reside at the University of Tulsa for future study. Tulsa is also home to the collected papers of…
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Why Are You On Your Knees? That Looks Boring
In an essay for The Toast, Anne Marquette reveals the parallels between living as asexual and living as an atheist. In both cases, society surrounds you with guidelines to peak experiences—salvation, true love—that don’t apply to you. The only sensible…
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The Way Things Gugg
Even if you don’t know the names Peter Fischli and David Weiss, you’ve probably seen some of their work. Their short film “The Way Things Go,” in which everyday objects collide with each other in an apparently seamless chain reaction,…
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The Noise Came From Here
With the recent addition of the album MartyrLoserKing, artist and activist Saul Williams’s versatile body of work shows no signs of slowing its growth. In an interview with The Fader, he talks about technology, #BlackLivesMatter, and his writing process: [E]ven…
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The Pyrite Age Of Television
Prestige dramas like Breaking Bad and The Wire have set the standard for narrative TV programming on streaming services and premium cable networks, but network TV is another story. The Atlantic reports that ABC fired its entertainment president over low…
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He Never Sleeps, The Judge
In the wake of Justice Antonin Scalia’s passing, many online commenters have critically examined his record of pro-choice and anti-LGBTQ positions in pivotal Supreme Court cases. Others have examined his penchant for colorful, literary language in court opinions: jiggery-pokery, argle-bargle,…