How did a magical, spiritualist, mesmerized Europe ever convince itself that it was disenchanted? Josephson-Storm traces the history of the myth of disenchantment in the births of philosophy, anthropology, sociology, folklore, psychoanalysis, and religious studies. Ironically, the myth of mythless modernity formed at the very time that Britain,... See more
The young would-be feminists flocking to “WitchTok” for advice on how to conjure love and manifest success are hardly atheists. Neither are the young men of the right who, if not crowding back into traditionalist churches, grope for a spirituality of strength, vitality, and meaning among the aesthetic ruins of ancient warrior cults. These are... See more
This process directs anti-patriarchal, feminist sentiment into the narrow channel of the mirror, rather than outwards, towards communal, longer-term feminist goals. The soft smiles and high-pitched giggles are admittedly alluring after the disappointments of earlier feminist movements, but the ecstasy of idiocy reveals a darker sentiment than even... See more
But this Google trial? By far the most important moment was when Judge Mehta denied a third-party motion to broadcast a publicly accessible audio feed of the trial for fear that information Google wishes wouldn’t be disclosed become public. Indeed, Google lawyers have explicitly argued that the judge should avoid allowing documents to become public... See more
That is, of course, more or less the rub: if the Xerox machine is somewhat of a troubling invention, everything about our modern-day computer-rich ecosystem is a thousand times worse. My phone syncs to my tablet syncs to my laptop; the value proposition of every device on my person is that it instantaneously and unquestioningly shares copies — of... See more
If the Tech Right sees this fight as the inevitable march of progress, the Populist Right is writing an entirely different anthem. Nowhere is this more visible than in Tennessee, where Governor Bill Lee signed the ELVIS Act, a landmark law recognizing an artist’s voice and likeness as a protected property right, specifically to block unauthorized... See more
Though their advocates and spokespeople have a tendency to use the word union loosely, they’re better understood as advocacy and lobbying groups than labor unions in the traditional or legal sense. Despite UMAW’s robust social media presence, their numbers and structural leverage are fractions of those of the AFM.
You must go down into the world of mortals like a ray of light, like a shower of refreshing rain; you must illuminate it like Apollo, shake it to its depths and give it a new life like Zeus, otherwise you are not worthy of your heaven.
New technologies may be disruptive to the existing population of working musicians, but even more irresistible to the general public than new technology are new forms of music, which may introduce new classes of musicians who don’t fit neatly into the existing professional categories. Take the rise of rock and roll.