Camille Paglia about Revenge of the Sith and why it's so good
https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=Ibkmh72_1pwCamille Anna Paglia (/ˈpɑːliə/ PAH-lee-ə; born April 2, 1947) is an American academic, social critic and feminist. Paglia was a professor at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania from 1984 until the university's closure in 2024. She is critical of many aspects of modern culture and is the author of Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990) and other books. She is also a critic of contemporary American feminism and of post-structuralism, as well as a commentator on multiple aspects of American culture such as its visual art, music, and film history.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camille_PagliaI grew up in San Francisco, walking with my family by the Golden Gate Bridge. I still remember the thick and iconic chain railing that gave the place a sense of distinctiveness. Now the chains are gone, and they've been replaced by a soulless metal railing that's colder than a hospital waiting room. I'm sure some bureaucrat somewhere justified it with a tidy spreadsheet, but they stripped away a little piece of San Francisco's soul in the process. This is how a culture loses its charm: slowly, quietly... one small decision at a time. Ok, the poet Dana Gioia explained the problem better than I ever could. This rips: "The failure of the public sector in this nation is embodied in thousands of ugly buildings and public spaces. These places have been built practically. They are practical and functional in every respect except in practice, since they communicate to the average person that the citizen is just a number in a game of cost efficiency and crowd control. The experience that Americans have with walking up the steps of the Lincoln Memorial is the experience of beauty, the embodiment of our political vision of the beauty of democracy, expressed in great architecture, great sculpture, great landscaping, and great language, carved calligraphically in the very walls of the memorial. Just look at a Depression-era post office with marble floors, carved wooden counters, brass fixtures and often an original mural. This was a vision of a beautiful society to which any citizen who entered could participate in. Today the post office is all vinyl and plexiglass. It offers no vision but expediency. We are not citizens, but customers in a cut rate 99 cent store vision of democracy. No wonder the public doesn't believe in the government. The government seems not to believe in them as alert, intelligent, sensory human beings." @DanaGioiaPoet
https://x.com/david_perell/status/1933258908191371307Crypto: The World’s Greatest Scam.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORdWE_ffirgWhy This Computer Scientist Says All Cryptocurrency Should “Die in a Fire”
https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/2022/05/why-this-computer-scientist-says-all-cryptocurrency-should-die-in-a-fireWeaver’s Iron Law of Blockchain], which is: When somebody says you can solve X with blockchain, they don’t understand X, and you can ignore them.
Why I'm Quitting the Japanese Duolingo Course (An Honest Review)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jf-SbSfiXn4This Is Why Everything SUCKS Now - Sam Hyde, Nick Rochefort & Charls Carroll
https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=YJlzbWHZYsk