In the last couple of weeks, Kirsten Lepore’s brilliant claymation short “Hi, Stranger” has taken the internet by storm. It features a nameless, gelatinous, nude, humanoid protagonist (pictured left) with a soothing, gender-ambiguous voice who engages in a spontaneous, quasi-therapeutic, and strangely intimate conversation directly with you, the viewer. Reactions to Lepore’s short have been…
Read MoreOh, hey there, strangers! It’s been a minute– and by “a minute” I mean more than three months– since I showed my (digital) self ’round these parts, so I figured an explanation for my ghosting is long past overdue. The nunya story is that I’ve spent the last several weeks/months being more or less held…
Read More[NOTE: This is the second in a series of reviews of Black Mirror. These posts DO include spoilers. Stop reading now if you don’t want to know!] The second episode of Season 3 (“Playtest”) is what I imagine many people who have heard about Black Mirror but never actually watched the series would expect the show to be like. “Playtest”…
Read Moreby Edward Kazarian and Leigh M. Johnson A little over two years ago, more than 600 philosophers petitioned the American Philosophical Association to “produce a code of conduct and a statement of professional ethics for the academic discipline of Philosophy.” The immediate motivation for the petition was several high-profile cases of sexual misconduct by philosophers, which…
Read More[NOTE: This is the first in a series of reviews of Black Mirror. These posts DO include spoilers. Stop reading now if you don’t want to know!] All of the episodes of Charlie Brooker‘s brilliant sci-fi series Black Mirror take place in a near-distant future, but in the first installment of the third season (“Nosedive”) that future is far…
Read MoreThere’s an old anecdote about boiling frogs that is often employed by philosophers to explain the sorites paradox. If you drop a frog into a pot of boiling water, the story goes, it will immediately sense the heat and the danger, jump out of the pot, and be spared its life. But if you put…
Read MoreOk, at this point– I’m writing this on June 37– I’m already six days behind on the 30 Day Song Challenge. I was just about to give up and call it quits, but then I remembered that I’ve been doing this for a long time and, even if this year’s iteration ends up being the…
Read MoreIt’s funny how quickly pop songs start to sound “old.” In order to figure out what I was listening to this time last summer, I’ll admit that I had to consult iTunes and a couple of music blogs to see what the top tracks were for June 2015. In almost every case, my first thought…
Read MoreWomen’s voices, ideas, engagements, and critiques are constantly being erased and/or appropriated– in academia, on the internet, at workplaces of every ilk– sometimes through slick and malicious moves, but much more often as a consequence of careless inattention. Also, water is wet. I was just recently “disappeared” in an essay by my friend Joshua Miller…
Read MoreI don’t usually listen to music when I’m trying to sleep, mostly because I find it difficult to not actively listen. At the same time, I absolutely cannot abide total silence. When I’m in my office, I always have earbuds in. When I’m at home or in my car, there is always something playing. And so, against…
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