Hollywood invariably has trouble with unadorned representations of the poor and the disadvantaged whose life stories may not produce positive resolutions in the form of glamor, adventure, triumphant individualism, and social mobility.
Boyun Eğme // Don’t Bend Your Neck
I don’t know what’s going to happen to Gezi Park, to Istanbul, to Turkey, and I don’t know where I’ll be when whatever happens does, but it would be a shame to know that I lived in Istanbul for the protests in 2013 but missed out on revolution-köfte.
Is Emil Cioran an author to be feared?
Richard Dawkins and the Ascent of Madness
Wander too far down the path of rationalist dogma and it’ll be no surprise if you end up like Richard Dawkins, sunning his genitals in a world that no longer makes any sense.
Writing Decline: Detroit City in Print
Four books attempt to describe the Detroit of past and present: two good, one bad, one of such inconsequence its inclusion here is only justified as an act of collation.
Ash Amin’s new book Land of Strangers is “for an idea – that the stranger is neither friend not foe, but constitutive” of the health of societies.
How To Think More About Sex – Alain De Botton
Alain de Botton doesn’t think much about his own thinking, nor does the book encourage the reader to.
Our uncertainty about any ending is all the more reason why we should look at the recent past with holstered hubris, not revolutionary fervor.
These are the basic principles of organizing: you have to have a goal that’s winnable, do-able and reasonable, and you have to have a way of winning it. You can’t repeat strategies that don’t work.
Oblivion By Design: Drones and Social Media
In a digital age of digital warfare fought (on one side, at least) on computer screens, a reaction on computer screens is only natural.