The David Foster Wallace Disease Partly, I’m writing about Wallace’s high-powered self-hatred machine because it’s a way of making his disappearance from the earth seem like an inevitability—a curse he was born with. Although there’s some validity to the view that he’s a kind of martyr, he was really just an animal in an environment, […]
Category Archives: serious stuff
seals
Tuesday, January 10, 2017
Atlantic cod study renews debate over grey seal cull The failure of the cod to rebound even without an active fishery has only bolstered that theory. Yet, all official research seemed to disprove it, with field studies pointing to other unexplained causes of cod mortality, and the limited influence of seals. But now, a study […]
Russia
Tuesday, January 10, 2017
Rethinking the Big Russian Revolution What would Zygar like people to conclude after their fifteen-month journey, through Russia’s hundred-year-ago history? All he will say is that: “Everything that happened to us, in the 20th century, and is happening now is a consequence of the events of 1917.”
Drumpf as blunt instrument
Friday, October 14, 2016
How Half Of America Lost Its F**king Mind i am usually loath to comment on specifics of American politics. As a Canadian, i am conscious that i have no standing in the affairs of another country. Mostly though, i wish for a Canada where those affairs don’t matter to us. More than enough politics that […]
“Blood and Guts TV”
Thursday, October 13, 2016
MOVIE REVIEW: Christine is an arresting biopic about a reporter’s on-air suicide Indeed, seeing both movies is a richer experience than seeing either one alone. One says nobody should make a Christine Chubbuck movie. The other defiantly says, “We’re gonna make it after all.”
Chabuduo
Thursday, October 6, 2016
What Chinese corner cutting reveals about modernity If what you’re making represents a world utterly out of reach to you, why bother to do it well? via reddit
bad record contracts
Saturday, August 27, 2016
Why Canadian bands (sometimes) can’t make it in the States “It doesn’t fucking matter that The Hip had limited success in the U.S.,” wrote music journalist and broadcaster Alan Cross in the days after Downie’s diagnosis went public. “There’s only one reason why things didn’t work out: bad record contracts. It had nothing to do […]
A nightmare of the future
Saturday, August 6, 2016
[Almost a year since i’ve used this. Facebook is too comfortable.] Priced out of rental market, Simon Fraser students sleeping on campus – The Globe and Mail “There is a lot more going on, with people who just want to keep their kids in school. We’ve all lowered our expectations. I don’t know anybody who […]
postcapitalism
Monday, August 24, 2015
The end of capitalism has begun | Books | The Guardian New forms of ownership, new forms of lending, new legal contracts: a whole business subculture has emerged over the past 10 years, which the media has dubbed the “sharing economy”. Buzzwords such as the “commons” and “peer-production” are thrown around, but few have bothered […]
Social science as sin
Monday, August 10, 2015
The ideological roots of Stephen Harper’s vendetta against sociology So what does Harper have against sociology? First, Harper is clearly trumpeting a standard component of neo-liberal ideology: that there are no social phenomena, only individual incidents. […] But there’s yet another reason this ideology is so hostile toward the kind of sociological analysis done by […]
