Memes can be fun, witty, stupid, or offensive, but they are also used by right-wing and other hate groups to spread propaganda, and their use has increased. A report was released last week on the danger to our country from this “memetic warfare.” “Cyber Swarming, Memetic Warfare and Viral…
A new documentary, Cooked: Survival by Zip Code, is now streaming on PBS. Directed and produced by Judith Helfand, the film is an adaption of Eric Klinenberg’s first book, Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago. Cooked “tells the story of the tragic 1995 Chicago heatwave, the…
Pity the poor writer, still in jammies, fourth cup growing cold, reclined on the couch as people head off to honest jobs. (An argument the night before with his teen son, who said Bill Gates’ talent and his having to code in a garage justify the billions the unwashed do not…
George Steiner, critic, essayist, and fiction writer, died this week at the age of 90. He published more than 40 books, including The Death of Tragedy; Language and Silence: Essays 1958-1966; In Bluebeard’s Castle: Some Notes Towards the Redefinition of Culture; and After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation. He…
Peter Jackson, who made the restoration “documentary” They Shall Not Grow Old, has announced he will release a new, happier, edit of the documentary film Let It Be this year. The film Let It Be was made by director Michael Lindsay-Hogg from the Beatles’ January 1969…
Family, friends, and other trusted people often serve as back-ups to parts of ourselves we hope to return to. They are our satellite campuses, our branch libraries, our outposts in wildernesses where we do not often go. The other day I posted a screed on social media by a dead…
A friend told me he would visit a Chuck Berry house museum if it was filled with guitars. I said it was likely never filled with guitars when Berry was starting out, and it was important that the music came despite (or due to?) a lack of things.
“Minimalism champions living with less, but Marie’s tidying method encourages living with items you truly cherish,” says the site for Marie Kondo, the self-help guru you are probably familiar with, if only as a reader. For a few days last year, some viewers of her Netflix show took to social…
Last week I finished three of Pico Iyer’s recent books: Autumn Light: Season of Fire and Farewells (an anatomy of a single season, over the years, in Japan); A Beginner’s Guide to Japan: Observations and Provocations; and The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere. All are nonfiction, and…
It is the season of wooing, in which film studios send their directors and stars to make the circuit of “tastemaker screenings” and build support for Oscar campaigns. Director Bong Joon-ho’s film Parasite, which won the Palme d’Or at Cannes and Best Foreign Language Film at the Golden Globes,…
For many of us who grew up in Illinois, the legalization of marijuana feels weird. Illinois banned cannabis in 1931, and in my little town, in the ‘70s and ‘80s, we called it dope, as if it was a serious thing indeed. My kids make fun of me now for…
The House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Consumer Protection and Commerce held a hearing this week on the Digital Age and Disinformation, but it was the same morning President Trump spoke, live, about Iran’s retaliation for the Soleimani killing. The hearing on online tech got lost as we all…