Political-Party Consumerism
marketing to political affiliation
By John Griswold
Roe Falls, and Missouri Bans Most Abortions
Missouri became the first U.S. state to ban abortion after Friday’s Supreme Court ruling overthrew Roe v. Wade.
Copi: “If You Can’t Beat ‘Em, Eat ‘Em”
Asian Carp have become a serious problem in midwestern rivers and lakes. They overpopulate; drive out native species; decimate food supplies such as plankton, algae, and endangered mollusks; and, as you have probably seen in videos, often swarm the surface and fly through the air, hitting boaters.
Second Day of January 6th Hearings More Propulsive
Former White House Political Director Bill Stepien, from the January 6th hearings, courtesy US House 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…
My Mother the Book
Her strength was both poise and pose, and her independence had to be on her own terms, because no one else cared about her terms but me. She had no standing, within a few years of my birth, socially, financially, professionally, or personally. Truth is, she may have felt a kind of freedom in not working for years, not having to deal with people, puttering in her ruined house and curating her family junk.
Six Reasons the First Hearing of the Jan. 6th Committee Did Not Go Well
General Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, in taped testimony in the first night of hearings, courtesy US House 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.
You Can Be My Wingman Any Time
“Top Gun: Maverick,” the second movie in the now-franchise, broke the Memorial Day weekend record for a movie release and is Tom Cruise’s new “biggest domestic box-office debut,” earning $550 million globally in only a week. Somewhere there are admirals celebrating the range of their wingmen.
Babushkas of Chernobyl a Film of Iron Will
Still from ‘Babushkas,’ Chicken and Egg Pictures 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.
Becoming Cousteau a Documentary about Emotion Shaping Stories
‘Becoming Cousteau,’ National Geographic Documentary Films 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 Good Emergency Resource
Header from the group’s Facebook page 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…
The Aggression of Technologies
Typesetting machines, courtesy Printhusiast, CC 4.0 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…
Jack Higgins, Good Germans, and the Problem of Sympathy in Fiction
“Sympathy” in narrative usually means something more like “complex interest” than “pity.” The goal is (often but not always) to make characters as human as possible, within constraints of form, so audiences will find them meaningful. This requires treating characters with respect, at least to the point of trying to understand them, even if they are crooks, sadists, torturers, murderers, or Nazis. But if a narrative dramatizes very well, it risks justifying bad people or making us feel we “understand” or “identify with” them. This too is sometimes called “sympathy”—though it is more like empathy—for the devil.