My child-brain pictures a monster waiting to consume me, but black holes are not monsters. They are not even things. A black hole, explains astrophysicist Janna Levin, is nothing: “pure empty spacetime—no atoms, light, strings, or particles of any kind, dark or bright. It’s empty space—or, in physics slang, the vacuum.”
A screenshot from ‘Tulpan,’ starring Askhat Kuchencherekov as Asa. A stampede of camels groan in the red dust; a dog barks as it streaks past a yurt, in pursuit. This is the opening of Tulpan (2008), a Kazakh narrative film streaming now as part of Filmatique’s Foreign Language…
The German language invented the most complicated, somber, interesting words for life in a pandemic. And French added the most nuance. And Spanish emphasized sociability. As for us? Quite a few of our neologisms sound like a spoiled kid pouting.
A still from ‘The Booksellers,’ distributed by Greenwich Entertainment. The documentary The Booksellers was set to release theatrically in 2020, but the pandemic hit, and it made its way to Amazon Prime. The film is a group portrait of lovesickness—the ecstasy, labor, and sometimes disappointment of the…
Criticize their politics all you like, the French know how to savor life. Foibles that create delicious little whirls of scandal and drama here, they dismiss with an amused shrug. They save their energy for protecting their culture, their language—and now, their roosters.
How did we become so averse, when mud was the stuff of creation? God scooped it up to sculpt himself a little Adam. In Jewish folklore, a golem is made the same way. A goddess made Gilgamesh a companion out of clay. The Egyptian god Khnum made children of the same stuff, then tucked them into their mother’s womb.
As it happens, modern nail polish was inspired by the tough, glossy lacquer sprayed on cars. And the first nail polish was worn by men—Babylonian warriors were painting their nails green and black in 3200 BCE. Given the human propensity to find violence sexy, I suppose it was natural that women would eventually follow suit.
Theodore Dreiser, courtesy of National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution (CC0) One of the literary figures whose association with St. Louis has been mostly forgotten is Theodore Dreiser, author of the novels Sister Carrie and An American Tragedy. Dreiser lived and worked in St. Louis for 16 formative months, from November…
The threat is apocalyptic and terrifying, and then humanity is saved by triumphant scientists. Rather than think about nature as indifferent to us, we need to imagine an enemy. Rather than focus on public health and social inequity, we need an epic battle. Social justice does not play on the big screen or the small one.
Work done by Eileen Mayberry, at the ‘Find A Grave’ site. The website Find A Grave was started in 1995 by a man named Jim Tipton, as an amateur tribute site for celebrity graves. It became a commercial site in 1998 and began posting photos, submitted by…