Culturally Determined

Sophie's exploration of the use and misuse of "the Irish goodbye" ... The strange joy of watching a Picasso painting fall to the ground ... NFTs and the question of authentication ... What makes an object a valuable collectible? ... Sophie investigates the hidden melodies of subways ... The pathos of lost pet signs ...

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Katie's recent essay, "Nickelodeon’s Generational Divide" ... Children's entertainment that didn't pander ... The early '90s as a midpoint in the shifting cultural battle of kids vs. parents ... The ultimate childhood dream: the Super Toy Run ... The people behind Nick's creative ferment ... Aryeh's brief childhood encounter with Nickelodeon stars ...

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Joe's new essay on online disinformation ... Does advertising actually work? ... Joe: Maybe the real critique of Facebook is that it's a worthless product ... The ivermectin craze and the end of media gatekeeping ... How do you solve a problem like Bret Weinstein? ... The indigenous American berserk and the Internet's garbage ouroboros ...

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Why John hated The White Lotus ... Is the show more of a farce than a satire? ... Debating whether the staff was thinly characterized on purpose ... John critiques the show's treatment of race and class ... Why the 1619 Project made so many people mad ... The controversial idea that Black Americans are the truest Americans ... Will we ever agree on what America means? ...

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Joshua's new novel, The Netanyahus ... How Harold Bloom inspired a novel about Bibi Netanyahu's father ... Other influences: Philip Roth, classic sitcoms, and Yiddish anecdotes ... Jewish assimilationism vs. Jewish identitarianism ... The semi-forgotten history of Revisionist Zionism ... Those shameless Netanyahu boys! ... Why Aryeh thought the novel was targeted at his personal demographic ...

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Laura's essay, "What the Hell Happened to the Claremont Institute?" ... Background on Harry Jaffa and the West Coast Straussians ... Why did many East Coast Straussians become NeverTrumpers? ... Michael Anton, the cosplaying conservative intellectual ... A recent "crazy rant" published by Claremont's house organ ... The tendentiousness of the 1776 Commission Report ... Trump's very strange idea for a "Garden of American Heroes" ...

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Rebecca's essay on how Hannah Arendt was misread during the Trump years ... A capsule biography of Arendt ... The real meaning of Arendt's famous line about "the ideal subject of totalitarian rule" ... Rebecca: Trump's lies were mostly "boardroom bullshit" ... Are Trump's post-election machinations approaching "big lie" territory? ... The banality of evil vs. grotesquerie of Trump ... "Post-truth" in the run-up to the Iraq War ... The banality of Robert McNamara and Donald Rumsfeld ... Rebecca cofounded The Drift as an antidote to the monolithic media narrative ...

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Leigh's new poetry collection, What to Miss When ... How the collection emerged from lockdown ... Leigh's poem "Simulation Theory," which was inspired by a MeaningofLife.tv episode ... Leigh's essay, "Sympathy for the Girlboss" ... Women taking down other women in the name of feminism ... Michael Jordan vs. Lebron James as a marker of generational change ... Is a better version of the Internet possible? ...

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Barrett embeds at a TikTok "collab house" ... Pleasant young people who are starstruck at themselves ... Why are so many college students anxious and depressed? ... Joan Didion and despair ... Barrett and his brother's unusual journey to a spiritualist enclave ... Barrett's new book of essays, Lost in Summerland ...

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John's new book, Nine Nasty Words: English in the Gutter: Then, Now, and Forever ... The original profane words: damn and hell ... The four-letter big ones ... How donkeys and buttocks got the same name ... The nasty word we still euphemize ... How profanity can become pronouns ...

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