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You and I probably each know someone in our lives that embodies the Boss Bitch. We all know one of those, a shimmering capitalist chimera who allegedly “has it all” and reminds the rest of us plebs that we, too, could rise and grind our way into the annals of hashtag empowerment. But that dream…
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Only light spoilers ahead… Terry Pratchett’s The Shepherd’s Crown isn’t wrapped like the neat little bow one might expect at the end of a long-running fantasy series. It’s more like the last cup of tea Granny Weatherwax didn’t quite finish—still warm, still with a bit of strength, but missing the hand that always knew exactly…
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“The limits of my language mean the limits of my world” – Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations For years, I’ve felt that nearly every single word I utter is but a shadow of the thought I wish to convey. Indeed, human expression is often forcibly funneled into the narrow alleyways of symbols and allegory, what we colloquially…
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It was another day at the office, in the Year of Our Lord 2012, yet another one of those days where the universe seemed to conspire against me. My inbox overflowed with social media updates and inconsequential emails. The news app on my smartphone blared an endless stream of doom and gloom. As I rocked…
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I’m turning 38 today, and I’m officially fresh out of patience for nonsense and performative pleasantries. The training wheels are off, my gloves are gone, and so is the leash I once wore to make other people comfortable. If you’ve read my work before, you already know I don’t suffer fools. As a Phoenix, I…
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This video from Kate Cassidy this week got me thinking about a topic I’ve sort of meant to talk about in the past, but never got around to. Is YouTube Social Media or something much more than that? Well, I’ve always thought of YouTube as a discovery platform, which has social media elements, but can…
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There was a time when I felt that books could change the world. Indeed, books have had a great impact on world culture and society, but often not in the ways that immediately impact what they were intended to when they were first written. Of course, few authors ever gain any sort of significant celebrity.…
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The World State society presented in Brave New World might appear radically different from our own. However, there are some striking similarities, yet simultaneously it’s fascinating to see how certain things in our present culture have been totally done away with in the World State. Art, as we know it, no longer exists. However, the…
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Let’s put our futurist caps on for a moment. It’s 2035, and the New York Times Bestseller list is dominated by AI-generated novels.*War and Peace 2.0* by GPT-10 is the most talked-about book of the year, lauded for its “emotional depth” and “stunning insight into the human condition.” Meanwhile, human writers everywhere drown their sorrows…
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Today, we dive headfirst into the alluring, baffling, and often pretentious concept of aesthetics. After all, what could be more exhilarating than meticulously dissecting the very essence of beauty and taste with all the gusto of a sleep-deprived philosopher? Aesthetics are those tiny, nagging details that shape not just our tastes but our very sense…