My War by Kurt Morris There are music lovers and then there are music lovers. To some of us, music is more than just something you play in the background, something that can be used to fill dead air, or something to decorate our day. To some of us, music can offer a deep sense of connection and help us understand ourselves. It can get us out of a tough spot. It has healing powers. Yes, not all of us...
Who Owns the Futureby Jaron Lanier I hate books that give away the ending in the title. I hate it more when they tell you there’s an ending then don’t show it to you. The problem with titles like “Who Owns the Future” is that it makes your book sound like a self-help book. Like “The Secret.” I understand that Jaron Lanier is supposed to sell books and maybe his publisher pushed for this title, but if he were so...
Marx at the Arcade: Consoles, Controllers, and Class Struggleby Jamie Woodcock It’s strange for me to think just how engrossed I was in the gamer lifestyle when I was a kid. I think it might have been because I was an unmotivated, unimaginative kid, but I was deeply tuned into video games for as long as I could remember. My brother was into them, so he got me started, and I just upped the ante. I would read magazines, carefully...
Rethinking Camelot: JFK, the Vietnam War, and US Political Cultureby Noam Chomsky Should Noam Chomsky be required reading for everyone? Of course. The man has written about so many topics, that anyone is bound to find something that appeals to them. And in reading Chomsky, you can always expect your entire understanding of the world to be flipped upside down. You can consider it a challenge for being exposed to an alternate perspective, or you can consider Chomsky someone who...
A deeper look at the grooves pressed into The Drowns’ Under Tension LP. While we could easily start this review of The Drowns’ debut album discussing the disparity between looks (the album cover – which is terrible) and content (the music on the album), let’s just start with this endorsement: no matter how much praise Under Tension receives, it deserves more. There are plenty of flaws in the packaging, but the music is absolutely peerless in its quality. From beginning...
Trotsky and the Problem of Soviet BureaucracyThomas M. Twiss Leon Trotsky should be known for a lot of things, but especially for having one of the greatest rises and falls in history. Rising to revered leader of the Soviet state to globally ostracized and being brutally murdered. The man’s life can never be analyzed enough. In fact, it has been time and time again, which is what makes Trotsky and the Problem of Soviet Biography such an interesting book. It’s...
Knives Out I haven’t breathed a sigh of relief quite like the one I did after seeing Knives Out. I’ve just been burned so often by movies. Either because the trailer misrepresented what it was about to see, or it spoiled too much of the movie, or because the hype (as always) was hyperbolic, or because a trusted filmmaker didn’t make something that resonated with me. When I saw the trailer for Knives Out, I thought it looked like a...