CALL ME MAGGIE

popular culture

  • I asked Google Bard to explain…

    Google Bard helps folks understand how all social media and tech companies get SO VERY MUCH free labor from all those who use it. Continue reading

    I asked Google Bard to explain…

  • Health as Shame Generator

    Lots of shame comes out of the Health Industrial Complex. Whether it’s a physician measuring your failure in pounds or a fitness guru manipulating your desire to “look fit and attractive,” shame plays a HUGE role in keeping most people… Continue reading

    Health as Shame Generator

  • The Psychology (and Philosophy) of ‘No Regrets’ – Pacific Standard

    YOLO has essentially become the over-used watchword for every toxic manifestation of masculinity looking to throw off the crushing yoke of personal responsibility. But, at its core, YOLO is also the current manifestation of a fundamental human sentiment: I want… Continue reading

    The Psychology (and Philosophy) of ‘No Regrets’ – Pacific Standard

  • Saint Stephen The Ironist « The Dish

    Some good points from Sullivan on Colbert as an example of what happens when one is capable of intelligence and irony while being a person of faith. If I were to sum up the various forms of popular culture that… Continue reading

    Saint Stephen The Ironist « The Dish

  • The Way We Talk | Louis C.K.

    Of course, NSFW.   Continue reading

    The Way We Talk | Louis C.K.

  • Public Art, Private Expression | Advocate.com

    The history of authors and artists who are attracted to others of the same gender is long though still not very well known by many. I make the rather clunky “attracted to others of the same gender” because a) homosexual… Continue reading

  • How to Spot Propaganda

    propaganda (n.) 1718, “committee of cardinals in charge of Catholic missionary work,” short for Congregatio de Propaganda Fide “congregation for propagating the faith,” a committee of cardinals established 1622 by Gregory XV to supervise foreign missions. The word is properly… Continue reading

    How to Spot Propaganda

  • George Zimmerman, Propriety, and Losing Way

    Got up this morning and began looking through the reactions about the George Zimmerman acquittal. As usual, Charles P. Pierce over at Esquire magazine’s Politics Blog caught my eye… Thought experiments are useless now. Of course, if the races of… Continue reading

    George Zimmerman, Propriety, and Losing Way

  • No Room for Improvements

    You would find your own life and the lifeworld itself flourishes with more gracefulness if you just let-go the need to improve yourself. Wait, wait: Don’t misunderstand me. Not recommending that you stop doing Yoga or meditating or learning skills… Continue reading

    No Room for Improvements

  • More than One Direction in which Millennials Can Thrive

    Yestereve, I contemplated so much how today’s youth can survive the world wrought by their parents and grandparents, that I dreamed about it. I especially want to thank my friend Matthew for asking for further clarification. Below you will see… Continue reading

    More than One Direction in which Millennials Can Thrive

  • Situating Street Artists

    Cool. Filmmakers Z.S. Grant and John Carr have spent the better part of the past year ricocheting around the country, capturing the stories of politically minded street artists for their documentary series, “Voice of Art.” Their eight-episode Web series —… Continue reading

  • Camille Paglia, George Lucas, & the Work of Art

    Thanks to my beautiful friend Joy Harris who told me about this article. Time to pull out my own writings on this and dust them off. Who is the greatest artist of our time? Normally, we would look to literature… Continue reading

  • Rigorous Quantification and Disciplinary Rigidity

    Epistemology can be translated as the study of how we know or an account of how we know. In the article I link to below, UT PhD candidate Mark Coddington does a nice job delineating the different situations which generate… Continue reading

    Rigorous Quantification and Disciplinary Rigidity

  • Garbage and Gravitas Continued

    I would like to thank my good brother & cherished cousin Carl Beck Sachs for this longer quote from Adorno which really nicely situates the article on Ayn Rand that I posted a while ago. I think it really speaks… Continue reading

  • In the beginning, there was fan fiction: from the four gospels to Fifty Shades | Books | guardian.co.uk

    I always a enjoy a good piece of sober thinking that points out the implicit slippery slope fallacy lurking in so many Jeremiah like wailings of the “end is nye”… It’s tempting to get caught up in paradigm-shift apocalypticism, but… Continue reading