Pop Culture/Film/Literature

The Root of Fear is Madness: On Black Mirror’s “Playtest”

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Black Mirror, Film, Film Reviews, Philosophy, Pop Culture/Film/Literature, RMWMTMBM Archive, Technology and Human Values, Television 0 Comments

[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”…

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#ImWithSusan: Finding Friends in the Black Mirror “Nosedive”

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Black Mirror, Film, Film Reviews, Philosophy, Pop Culture/Film/Literature, RMWMTMBM Archive, Technology and Human Values, Television 0 Comments

[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…

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“Grace and Frankie” and the Right to Die

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Ethics, Philosophy, Politics, Pop Culture/Film/Literature, Public Philosophy, RMWMTMBM Archive, Women and Gender Issues 0 Comments

There are so many things about Netflix’s original comedy series Grace and Frankie (now in its second season) to recommend it, not least of which is its pitch-perfect gallows humor.  Orbiting around the decidedly 21st century lives of four septuagenarians– the eponymous Grace (Jane Fonda) and Frankie (Lily Tomlin) and their now ex-husbands, Saul (Sam Waterston)…

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Twitter: Now With More Characters, Less Character

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Pop Culture/Film/Literature, RMWMTMBM Archive, Technology and Human Values 0 Comments

Twitter has changed a lot over the last few years, but until recently there was one inviolable rule to which all users were obliged: tweets must be limited to 140 characters or less. Because a computer “character” is a unit of information that roughly corresponds to a grapheme– letter, number, punctuation mark, or whitespace– the…

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Email

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Open Source Pedagogy, Pop Culture/Film/Literature, Public Philosophy, RMWMTMBM Archive, Teaching, Technology and Human Values 0 Comments

I can’t quite remember exactly when email became such a nuisance in my life, but it must have been a long time ago now since I can barely remember it not being a nuisance anymore.  I think I got my first (AOL) email address in 1994.  Then, the familiar modem-screeching and you’ve got mail! alert were the…

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Adulting

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Ethics, Philosophy, Politics, Pop Culture/Film/Literature, Public Philosophy, RMWMTMBM Archive 0 Comments

As a general rule, I’m not a fan of the contemporary obsession with gerunding (#seewhatIdidthere), i.e., turning words that were perfectly fine being nouns, perfectly fine accepting the assistance of helping verbs to make sense of some phenomenon, into stand-alone verbs themselves. My allergy to this practice is, for the most part, a consequence of countless, maddening…

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Motivation

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Aesthetics, Music, Philosophy, Pop Culture/Film/Literature, Public Philosophy, RMWMTMBM Archive 0 Comments

It’s Saturday, the hardest day of the week to find motivation to get things done.  Luckily for me, I have almost unrestricted access to all the music ever written (thanks, Google Play!), a stereo with a volume dial that goes all the way up to 10 (thanks, technology!), and neighbors who don’t mind my loudness because…

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Horror

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Aesthetics, Film, Philosophy, Pop Culture/Film/Literature, Public Philosophy, RMWMTMBM Archive 0 Comments

I do not enjoy horror films. Not even a little bit. They genuinely terrify me. I hate them, I won’t voluntarily go to them, and no amount of cajoling or ridicule will change my mind about that. Now, I should note here at the start that I don’t believe that ghosts or spirits or devils…

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Anonymity

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Codifying Civility and Collegiality, Digital Humanities, Ethics, Philosophy, Politics, Pop Culture/Film/Literature, Public Philosophy, RMWMTMBM Archive 0 Comments

What difference does a signature make? I’ll assume that the phenomenon of trolling is one familiar to most of us on the interwebs, a phenomenon that is, in turns, infuriating, exasperating, unpleasant, and often genuinely hostile and threatening. There’s much to abhor about trolls– their pettiness and vitriol, their disregard for basic conversational decorum, their…

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Against Political Futility

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Democracy, Philosophy, Politics, Pop Culture/Film/Literature, Public Philosophy, RMWMTMBM Archive 0 Comments

Yesterday, at a rally in advance of the upcoming Iowa caucuses, GOP Presidential candidate and frontrunner Donald Trump said (in his outside voice): “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters. It’s, like, incredible.”  My first thought was: yes, that IS incredible, as in not credible. It’s almost…

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