The cyberspace in our backyard and the gardens in our cyberspace
Up in the iCloud, innocent bubbles of data glint under the sun’s heat; from here, they slip frictionlessly into the cool vacuum of space. Adrian Mackenzie describes this new-age phenomena as one of perceived “wirelessness”: the chasmic disconnect between our screens and the moving networks tha
All Quiet on the Culture Front
To say that all politics is sex may seem like a rather pubescent position. A very radical albeit pubescent position. But it is not an unsubstantiated one, for in a social environment tainted by the ‘Culture Wars’ our politics is undoubtedly pubescent. The Western psyche seems to be in something
Constant Screaming: A Review of The Zone of Interest
“Are you sleeping well?” asks the white-coated SS doctor. “Yes,” replies Rudolf Höss. Jonathan Glazer, the man behind Sexy Beast, a heist film about a retired English gangster with skin sunburned to the colour and texture of red crocodile leather; Birth, in which a ten-year-old (graphically
Resurrecting Killed Darlings: “Write, Cut, Rewrite” at the Weston Library
Joan Didion needed a drink before she edited her writing. She admits as much to an audience packed into the New York Public Library one day in November 2011. “The drink loosens me up enough to actually mark up my work, you know”, she twangs as she gazes, unblushing, into the crowd. Dry humour is
Why I Wear Clown Makeup to Prep School
Val and I met on Tinder in January of 2021. I was at my lowest then—I mean, I was on Tinder in Massachusetts, home of MIT and Harvard students (shudder), crazed Patriots fans, and the Pilgrims. The city is still pretty puritan: no drinking till 21! Gasp! We value modesty, “neighborly concern,”
Going the Whole Hog: Rembrandt and the Art of Butchery
Below, there hang four flayed brutes. Some taut as if the paint was pulled thin like latex, others like heaps of wax. Each brings to mind the feverish glow of something coldly sweating, all seem to hug the gloam. Attributed to either Rembrandt or a nondescript ‘follower of Rembrandt’, the mass r
The First Last Words of Fyodor Dostoevsky
“ ‘It was just a minute before the execution,’ began the prince, readily, carried away by the recollection and evidently forgetting everything else in a moment, ‘just at the instant when he stepped off the ladder on to the scaffold. He happened to look in my direction: I saw his eyes and und
In conversation with: Maggie Nelson, author of The Argonauts
“I write the thing I think is best, not the thing I think will please the most people.” When my friend gifted me a copy of Maggie Nelson’s bestseller The Argonauts for my birthday, I mentally placed it onto my ‘to read’ pile. It was a hot summer’s day, and frankly, I wasn’t quit
Painless Consequences: Cisgender Women’s Pain and Why We Ignore It
Women are born with pain built in—it’s our physical destiny … We carry it within ourselves throughout our lives, men don’t … We have pain on a cycle for years and years and years … and then … the fucking menopause comes, and it is the most wonderful fucking thing in the world … then