PicoBlog

Welcome back, Riverdale-heads! Before we get into the recap proper, I want to take a moment to plug cinema cauldron and their incisive piece, Archie’s Weird Multi-Media Fantasy. Archie's Weird Multi-Media Fantasy The line between television and film has been blurry since the ‘60s and ‘70s, after Walt Disney smudged it beyond recognition it in the ‘50s with the Wonderful World of Disney program. While Papa Rat can hardly be credited with pioneering the television movie - let alone putting movies o…

Judge Frederic Block has served as a federal judge for the Eastern District of New York since 1994. During his nearly three decades on the bench, he has presided over high-profile cases involving organized crime, terrorism, financial fraud, and the death penalty. He is also the author of three books: a memoir, Disrobed: An Inside Look at the Life and Work of a Federal Trial Judge; a legal thriller, Race to Judgment; and a nonfiction book about federal sentencing, Crimes and Punishments: Entering the Mind of a Sentencing Judge.

Originally published October 2018Before you say anything, I'm two steps ahead of you, listening to Michael's laughter echo through the chambers of my mind. I know, who in their right mind makes apple cider vinegar when you can buy a jug of it for a few bucks at the grocery story? Well, the brief answer is me. One day Michael smirked at me, and said, "when you are going to make your own water?

I didn’t like school much growing up. For starters, I wasn’t a good student. I couldn’t pay attention, and found the whole thing extremely boring. However, there was one school day I always looked forward to, field day. Field day happened once each year, in the spring. It was on a Friday. It was a half-day. And instead of being stuck inside all morning, we assembled at the school soccer field.

These days, I (as well as my Bloggingheads sparring partner Glenn Loury) am asked several times a day what we can do to prevent the modern distortion of antiracism from destroying our schools. The desperation from parents, teachers and even students is heartrending – and quite challenging, given that I am a linguistics professor and editorialist rather than an educational administrator. However, I consider myself responsible for at least trying to offer solutions instead of doing nothing but analyzing from the sidelines (the new organization FAIR has a similar mission.

I’ve had a blog for four or five months now and never actually written a blog post. Short spanking stories? No problem. Long spanking stories? No problem. Real world accounts of spanking events and experiences? No problem. Blog posts? Scary. Really scary. It has taken me almost 19 full weeks to pluck up the courage to actually get on and commit to writing a blog, in addition to all of the usual shenanigans I already share here.

The conversation surrounding Helldivers 2 has been a curious one, and I’m still a bit perplexed at what appears to be a lot of people simply not getting the joke. In the space-shooter, you play as the bad guys. It’s basically the movie version of Starship Troopers as a live-service video game, and much more obviously satire than Paul Verhoeven’s campy, misunderstood movie. In the game, you are from Super Earth which is now a united planet under a “managed democracy”—an authoritarian state with the trappings of democracy and plenty of propaganda to make its citizens believe they’re free, when the opposite is very clearly the case.

Are we all living in a simulation? If you were to ask the French philosopher Jean Baudrillard this question, his answer would be a resounding yes. Although what he means by simulation and what you mean by simulation might be two very different things (which is funny considering the most influential example of a simulation — The Matrix — was directly ins… ncG1vNJzZmismJq5qsLIp56poJmhvLS7z6GwZ6ull8C1rcKkZZynnWS9cLDOZq6eZZyew6Z5yKdkmmWjnrq2uMCtoKimXZ%2ByorqMm5iunKKeua2t0Z0%3D

Bears seem be something many people dream about. When these powerful beasts began showing up in my dreams on a regular basis, I got curious and dove into studying dreams in earnest. I took classes, joined dream circles, and read lots of books. Still, the bear dreams came, and still I did not understand them. None of what I was finding in dream dictionaries or Jungian interpretations felt right to me.