culture

The Pandemic of/and Poverty

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If I were king** for a day of these less than United States, I would mandate UBI and the only requirements to receive it for those subjects of mine so impoverished would be for the entire household to receive regular health checkups and for all school-age children within the household to stay in school…

Where do all the dreams go

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In the 12-month period that ended in April, more than 100,000 Americans died of overdoses, up almost 30 percent from the 78,000 deaths in the prior year, according to provisional figures from the National Center for Health Statistics. The figure marks the first time the number of overdose deaths in the United States has exceeded … Read more

If You Believe It, You’ll See It

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I really, really wish I could believe all the bizarre hocus pocus things like astrology and palm readings and other pseudo-sciencey, pseudo-religiousy things so I could lay all my blame for all the unpleasantries going on all over this pretty yet petulant planet of ours (those dang locusts in Africa are biblically unrelenting) on a … Read more

Empty Words of the Privileged

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It’s hard to believe so many people have to live so miserably in the richest, most powerful country in the world. This has become cliché and empty to say, especially from those of us speaking from our privilege, but since there are so many pockets of wretched poverty all around the country such as described … Read more

Say what you will…

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Be it be an exploration of loneliness or light or whatever, but ”Nighthawks,” to me, is the most colorful expression of the beautiful bleakness of noir that I know… From Those who say Edward Hopper is the artist of social distancing may be wrong: But while some Hopper experts appreciate the wave of [social media] … Read more

Just Imagine

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Imagine what the response would have been if these heavily armed “protesters“ were of any other race than white… – A lot of dead and incarcerated non-white “protesters,” that’s what the response would have been for those of you with failed imaginations. Now, try to imagine that none of these “protesters” are trump cultists emboldened … Read more

Regarding That Which Despicable Beings Create

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Always a conundrum — what to do with something good created by someone bad.

I mean, take HP Lovecraft for instance. Are horrors authors and readers still praising him so for his early contributions to the genre? Fortunately for me, having read his work long before learning he was such a virulent racist, I find his writing flat and uninteresting and way, way overrated so shunning him to the dustbin of the disgraced is no problemo.

But there are a lot of other types of situations and scenarios out there that can put one in such an unpleasant conundrum…

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