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Comic Books as Floppy Pamphlets or Graphic Novels: The Reader as Collector and Patron
I wonder if young kids buy comic books. The stapled pamphlet periodical comic books sold at comic book shops. At around five dollars for 24 pages, somehow it seems unlikely that’s where a kid would spend their money. My guess is they’d more likely encounter comic books these days as graphic novels in book stores…
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Retreating from a catastrophe makes sense
We’ve heard about the sixth mass extinction event and yet somehow people seem to believe that we can lose all those plants and animal species and humans will escape unscathed. Transformational change. Facing the end of yourself, you tell a story. It is an existential crisis, and that story has to be told. Even rational…
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We Tell Stories that Reinforce Power: God, Royalty, and Professionals in Popular Culture
The stories in our culture reinforce the power structure of society. And western culture has become so globally dominant that it’s big enough to contain any story of rebellion against authority (emphasis on contain) without itself being threatened. Anyone want to buy an Occupy T-shirt? Even protest can be commercialized. True story: I met someone…
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Women in Translation in the U.S. and Only One of Us Is Sleeping
Waiting for Josefine Klougart in the bookstore, I overheard a man talking about Three Percent and searched online, finding the journal dedicated to literary work in translation. By the number that gives the publication its name, only 3% of books published in the U.S. are works in translation—but that is all books, the majority are…
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Precedent for Digital Democracy: Comedy, the Best Party, and the Mayor of a Large City in Iceland
Reading Jón Gnarr, How I Became the Mayor of a Large City in Iceland and Changed the World, I found that a platform for citizens to inform each other and vote on issues had been implemented in Reykjavík beginning in October 2011. He has a chapter called “The World is Getting Better and Better” where…
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The Nordic Countries and a Winnable Campaign for Women’s Rights in the US
From the audience, listening to Sanders, it sounded like harangue. This is completely different, the opposite of the inspirational tone delivered by Obama, and it was different in another way. Sanders, in an early televised debate, lauded Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. This is the real difference between the candidates: Sanders didn’t present an amorphous hope,…
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Networked Humanity: How Do We Know What is Right or Wrong?
In The Anatomy of Inequality, author Per Molander describes one of the ways conservatives defend the status quo, a tactic called knowledge skepticism. By saying we can’t know a thing for certain, over the years conservatism has attempted to undermine egalitarian theories from advancing an alternative to the status quo. In human history, the status…
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Cinematic Experience: From Spectacle to Empathy
A new housemate once told me she didn’t like movies, and I was surprised, how could she not like movies? She said she didn’t like having her emotions manipulated. And sure, I’ve cried at the movies. Even a good documentary can move me. It’s empathy happening. Say you’re watching a movie at home and you…
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Why Mars? A Multiplanetary Species, But It Won’t Be Humanity: Outer Space as Salvation Myth
It’s powerful, practical even, to charge your employees with great purpose. Scientific discovery, satellite communications, asteroid mining are all useful and practical reasons to launch rockets, and where humanity steps back in awe, Elon Musk takes his SpaceX employees further by saying they’ll make us a multiplanetary species. Granted our technology will explore and work…
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Facebook Credits: Getting Paid to View Ads and Creating an In-Platform Economy
Attention, our free time, is the only scarcity online. With so many pages, videos, and podcasts to experience, no one wants to waste time on ads—unless it pays. Let’s say the advertiser pays people to view an ad. Currently advertisers pay Facebook to get their ad in front of customers. What if along with the…