Jozef Imrich, name worthy of Kafka, has his finger on the pulse of any irony of interest and shares his findings to keep you in-the-know with the savviest trend setters and infomaniacs.
''I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center.''
-Kurt Vonnegut
- Mark Twain Diversity of thought is the lifeblood of philosophy. Nothing is more exciting than a fresh idea. Yet academic philosophy in America shuns diversity Diversity of Yammerites The past is not a foolproof guide to the future. It is, however, the only guide we have. So why are historians reluctant to comment on contemporary affairs? Whatever you do do not mention the past cold and hot wars
"Yes, at the moment the concept is seen as little more than another bit of self-referential young person slang, used only in the deepest recesses of the web. ... But irony poisoning should be entered, we think, into the pantheon of social science concepts that are used to rigorously measure, study and perhaps one day understand how social media platforms can rewire your brain and alter society." Max Fisher and Amanda Taub explore the concept and how it works. … Read More
This year’s champion, Jared Miller, of Leon, Iowa, took home a customized 2018 Chevrolet Silverado truck to drive for his yearlong reign; he also won six thousand dollars, a world-champion belt buckle, a world-champion ring, a money clip, and a bespoke leather briefcase. In interviews, Miller, like many successful auctioneers, appears personable and polite. When he begins his chant, his mouth only opens so much — when you’re talking as fast as he is, the tongue does most of the work — but what comes out sounds something like a undulating yodel, or a less guttural take on the Inuit tradition of throat singing. Once you tune in to its particular rhythms — and it can take a few minutes to acclimate to the crests and swells — the prices become discernible: “One dollar bid, now two, now two, would you give me two?”
“Facebook’s rising dominance as a referrer led to … content that was optimized for social media. … The problem with social-optimized content is that its overt, eerie familiarity drapes a kind of lowest-common-denominator cynicism across the internet … [and favors] exaggeration over subtlety. … SEO content, on the other hand, dispenses with the emotional in favor of the mechanical. It can be stilted and awkward — but it’s more honest and transparent.”
If you’re an adult who has trouble making friends, your problem may start with your own flakiness
Thread by @citizensmediatv: ““Then why does the military budget keep going up as social programs keep getting cut?” Now that’s a good question Thread Reader The Spring 2017 issue of The Fiddlehead: Atlantic Canada's International Literary Journal includes a special feature on 2016 Griffin Prize internationalwinner Norman Dubie. Editor Ross Leckie introduces the section of twenty-three poems, including five new ones, with "Norman Dubie: The Details of Winter That Upset Us." Leckie writes, "No poet I can think of writes as much about dreams as Dubie, and no poet ought to be able to, as dreams are so often adduced as the moment of epiphany, as the encoded truth that underlies all the banality that consumes our daily lives. In Dubie’s work, however, dreams seem as one room in the mind’s library, in which there is also an astonishing array of books and the lives of their authors, and details of plot and character that are not there, but could be. There are landscapes both from memory and from imagination, scenes of history in the grotesquerie of its filth and muck, and assorted friends and family who demand attention, or simply stop by for a chat."
This cover photo "Fête de la Rose" by Rebekah West introduces readers to Cargo, an online nonfiction journal featuring work with strong narrative and interior journey, such as immersion reportage, memoir, and personal essay as well as photography and visual art.
After the 2016 election, artist and writer Paul Chan wrote the following poem that he called “New No’s”.
No to racists No to fascists No to taxes funding racists and fascists
No mercy for rapists No pity for bigots No forgiveness for nativists No to all those
No hope without rage No rage without teeth No separate peace No easy feat
No to bounds by genders No to clickbait as culture No to news as truths No to art as untruths
No anti-Semitic anything No Islamophobic anything No progress without others No meaning without meaning
No means no No means no No means no No means no
I ran across this several times at The Whitney; it’s part of their great exhibitionAn Incomplete History of Protest. The exhibition is closing next week and the poem is difficult to find online (Chan’s own publishing company, which was selling posters of the poem, seems to be defunct at the moment), so I wanted to preserve a copy here.
