Category: Notes
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“Cultural Moneyballism, in this light, sacrifices exuberance for the sake of formulaic symmetry. It sacrifices diversity for the sake of familiarity. It solves finite games at the expense of infinite games. Its genius dulls the rough edges of entertainment. I think that’s worth caring about. It is definitely worth asking the question: In a world…
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“In the karaoke universe, we can be whoever we want. We express ourselves by turning into colorful and disastrous parodies of pop stars who are already appalling parodies of human beings. And somehow, that’s how we end up as our most sincere version of ourselves. When you step into the song, you’re not sure who…
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Is Langston Hughes a Modernist poet? That question, once handed to me in a college classroom, now strikes me as too small for the man who so clearly saw poetry as a public force. Labels like “Modernist” tend to flatten voices into movements. But Hughes resists neat categorization. Yes, he wrote in free verse. Indeed,…
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Today, let’s figure out just how a little symbol is now @ the top of the English dictionary. Yes, that curly little character that lives rent-free in your email address. Somehow, it managed to tango its way to the very beginning of the Merriam-Webster online dictionary. How does this happen, you ask? Once, the ‘@’…