Early Transnational Astronomy in Chile
Improvisation was part of the technological expedition: a mule was responsible for the Danjon telescope while the astronomer lit a fire to make some smoke...
Read MorePitch, Please
If the Premier League was to market itself as a slick global brand, it needed a product that looked good on television. Muddy, bobbly, patchy pitches would not do...
Read MoreFar Sparklers
Tonight I walked under the stars through the snow & stopped & looked at my far sparklers & heard the voice of the wind so slight & pure & deep as if it were the sound of the stars themselves revolving...
Read MoreSeeing the Light
They say that people at the last moment experience a bright light as they enter into a realm of brilliance. You see it represented in paintings of the Resurrection. Everything I was on the verge of losing flew through my imagination...
Read MoreAnimal Trials by B. Alexandra Szerlip
Before writing off animal trials as irrational acts of an ignorant and superstitious past, consider some recent examples...
Read MoreCapital Discourse
Now that the Americans have also shown themselves capable of committing to a Maoist-like species of cultural revolution, how much more intensely might we expect their French counterparts to get wrapped up in this new frenzy?
Read MoreTransgender Rights in Hong Kong
Chan is among a growing number of young people speaking out about gender identity and fighting for inclusion in Hong Kong, where LGBTQ+ issues remain largely taboo...
Read MoreGerman Africans or Germans Abroad?
Those in the African colonies, had created a new national identity for themselves as German Africans (Deutsch Afrikaners), rejecting the label of Germans abroad (Auslandsdeutsche) that the metropole used...
Read MorePeacebuilders
Peace is far more egalitarian than war, requiring not expensive arms, but simply the freely available, sometimes suppressed human spirit...
Read MoreStoop Space
If your apartment is too small and familiar to have people over, and your parks and commons are threadbare and inhospitable by incompetence or intent, you go out to restaurants. Here you find public privacy and urbane intimacy...
Read MoreFilming the GDR
It was not just in liberal consumer societies that families recorded vacations and rites of passage. Home cameras and projectors were also available in socialist societies like the German Democratic Republic...
Read MoreThe Appearance of Goodness
There are many social-media-savvy people who are choking on sanctimony and lacking in compassion, who can fluidly pontificate on Twitter about kindness but are unable to actually show kindness...
Read MoreThe industrial revolution was the turning point in global history…
In the bigger picture, the economic history of Britain since the mid 19th century is, inevitably, a history of relative economic decline...
Read MoreUnderstudied Dimensions of Japan’s Imperial Project
Although it continued to live on in the memories of its former victims or enemies, in Japan itself memories of empire were excised from the public imagination through selective commemoration and emphasis on the victimhood of ordinary people...
Read MoreBoth Derrida and Ronell suggest that saying yes is “telephonic,” both in the sense that it resounds over a distance and therefore always is affected by distortion and delay, and that the telephone as technological apparatus not so much adds to these inherent obstructions as it stands model for them.
Read MoreI don’t even care about secrecy, usually, because the scenario of exposing what’s unjustly censored has always seemed overdramatic to me, a distraction: all communication amounts to a defense.
Read MoreToday I ran without music. When I run this way my head boils out, matter shooting everywhere like water on hot oil. Phrases reach me and mostly move away before I can trap and extend them into actual thoughts.
Read MoreToday I introduced Facebook to someone older than me and had a long conversation about what the point of networking amongst “friends” is. The person was so skeptical because to her stranger and distance-shaped intimacies are diminished forms of real intimacy.
Read MoreMost of the writing we do is actually a performance of stuckness. It is a record of where we got stuck on a question for long enough to do some research and write out the whole knot until the original passion and curiosity that made us want to try to say something about something got so detailed.
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