culture
“The contemporary man should not find it difficult to play a role in which modern life is casting him. Glued to his movie or television screen, fed his daily dose of scandals, always watching and never acting, he has become a Peeping Tom.”
Leo Nasskau • René Girard, mimetic desire, and society's biggest rat race
To me, what’s happening with teaching reading looks very much like what has happened with teaching writing, namely that we reduce something complex, human, and necessarily messy, to something smaller, discrete and oversimplified so it can be tested and measured, in order to provide comfort that we’re making “progress.”
We are courting a phenomenon... See more
We are courting a phenomenon... See more
John Warner • We Need to Make More Readers


In the early 2010s, a new phenomenon emerged called an “Instagram wall”. In part, it was an outgrowth of the street-art movement of the 00s, a gentrification of graffiti that saw clean, officially sanctioned murals take over city walls, particularly in neighbourhoods where decrepit warehouses were plentiful. Street art became an attraction in and... See more
Kyle Chayka • The tyranny of the algorithm: why every coffee shop looks the same
The simulacrum is never what hides the truth-it is truth that hides the fact that there is none. The simulacrum is true.
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RIP Baudrillard. You would’ve loved Sabrina Carpenter and ChatGPT.