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Technology in the Age of Inequality
Last week, I attended the Technology, Privacy, and the Future of Education symposium at NYU’s Media, Culture, and Communication department. One panelist, NYU Sociology’s Richard Arum, addressed the...
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Starry Nights, Science, Atheists
Richard Dawkins’ head is fizzing with mad thoughts.. . . Outside a shimmering band of turquoise near the horizon brings a soft sparkle to the beads of dew hanging from trees in early bud; the heavy...
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Privacy and Power
Two weeks ago I wrote about the relationship between privacy and power, and how may of today’s spokespeople for the oppressed focus more on stopping surveillance in the name of privacy than daring to...
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Look Rich or go Bankrupt Trying
I’m not the only person who finds 50 Cent a fascinating figure. His landmark album, Get Rich or Die Tryin’, is one of the top ten best selling albums in rap history, and is perhaps the only rap album...
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Fascism American Style: Il Duce, Il Donald
As Alexander Hamilton watched the French Revolution unfold, he feared in America what he saw play out in France — that the unleashing of popular passions would lead not to greater democracy but to...
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Politics, Death Threats, Decency: The Roosevelts
Mr. Trump hangs scapegoats like piñatas and invites people to take a swing. — Arizona Republic, September 28, 2016, lead editorial A friend is watching the PBS series, The Roosevelts. She’s taken in...
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Sontag, Hell, Thinking, Politics
To designate a hell is not, of course, to tell us anything about how to extract people from that hell, how to moderate hell’s flames. Still, it seems good in itself to acknowledge, to have enlarged,...
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Donald Trump the Fascist?
Seemingly every statement regarding Donald Trump in recent weeks either explicitly or implicitly compares him to Hitler. It’s almost as though both social and mainstream media are trying to pay homage...
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Narrative, Performance, Selves & Solitude
Nothing is more fascinating — and frustrating to others — than our capacity to manipulate the image or story we present to others. In an acute way this capacity to pretend or impersonate raises the...
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Lynch Mobs
Shortly after posting my previous week’s article about Donald Trump, fascism, and communal violence, the New York Times published footage of a woman being lynched in Kabul, Afghanistan. The preceding...
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