Never let it be said The Common Reader cannot glimpse the future. In June 2020 I wrote a satire that pretended a corporate dairy was “marketing and selling…milks, flavored milks, creams, sour creams, ice cream, ice-cream bars and sandwiches, and cheeses” in different ways for those with differing political beliefs, “as a way […]
The pro-choice rally at the last clinic in Missouri to offer abortions was held Friday evening in St. Louis. Hundreds of people packed the parking lot of the Planned Parenthood building on Forest Park Avenue; dozens more lined the sidewalk and median, waving signs and calling to traffic that honked back. Missouri became […]
I was not tuned in when Slimeheads became Orange Roughies; Patagonian Toothfish became Chilean Sea Bass; or in certain markets Whore’s Eggs reverted to Sea Urchins. But today I was there (virtually) when the problematic fish known as Asian Carp became known as Copi. At least that is what a consortium, led by […]
The second day of hearings by the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol was held yesterday. The focus of its argument was tighter than on the first day of hearings, as the committee moved from an overview of Donald Trump’s complicity in events to specific elements […]
The first of the public hearings of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol aired on multiple platforms tonight. It was two hours of preliminary case-building—ultimately against Donald Trump for trying to subvert the presidential election results—with testimony and taped depositions as evidence, and video […]
Theaters of War (2022) is a new documentary that reveals deeper connections between the Pentagon, the CIA, and American film and TV productions. It is not just the Top Guns these entities have a hand in, and their participation does not begin or end with providing war machines and personnel to make movies […]
The Babushkas of Chernobyl is a 2015 documentary produced and directed by Holly Morris and Anne Bogart, which emerged from Morris’ earlier journalism and TED Talk about elderly women living in the shadow of the destroyed Chernobyl nuclear plant. It is available on several streaming platforms. Chernobyl became a household word in 1986 […]
National Geographic’s Becoming Cousteau (2021), directed and produced by Liz Garbus, is an interesting and timely feature-length biography of Jacques-Yves Cousteau. (The Odyssey, a 2016 film, was a biopic on his life, based on a nonfiction book.) Becoming is not a deep dive, so to speak, but it does certain things very well. […]
Think of how frantic you would be if you discovered your child had swallowed part of a mushroom they found at the playground. Or what if you caught your cat eating a new houseplant, or your dog ran through a bed of something in the woods and was pawing its eyes? One resource […]
Some technologies seem to be more aggressive than others in changing their times. Automatic transmissions, for instance, are ubiquitous but fairly inconsequential; they did not significantly change the experience of driving, and I can still choose to drive a stick if I really want. The rise of synthetic fabrics meant little to me […]
