The Depressing New Corporate Metaverse
A Review of Luis Bravo Martins’ and Samantha G. Wolfe’s Metaversed: See Beyond the Hype (December 2022) The term metaverse was coined by Neal Stephenson in his 1992 sci-fi novel…
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Culture & Media
315 posts
Defining Masculinity
If it is sometimes hard to be a woman, being a man is hardly a walk in the park either. Men die earlier than women, are more likely to be…
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The Great Reboot: In Memoriam Mark Fisher
“We remain trapped in the twentieth century,” claimed theorist Mark Fisher. “The future has disappeared.” It’s hard to believe that it’s been six years since Fisher’s suicide, at the age of…
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Thank You for Offending Us: In Praise of Satirists
Yes, I am proud; I must be proud to see Men not afraid of God, afraid of me.—Alexander Pope, 1738 To function in society, we rely on our ability to…
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When Fiction Is Truer Than Fact: Hunter S. Thompson’s Gonzo Journalism
Just over fifty years ago, in 1971, Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was published and instantly became a countercultural classic. However, people have always struggled to…
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The Optimistic Nihilists
Life is utterly meaningless, but this is a great opportunity to have fun creating our own meanings—that’s the latest postmodern self-help mantra. The trend known as optimistic nihilism is a…
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Cardi B and our Censorious Culture
Cardi B used to be my dirty little secret. I first heard about her in graduate school, and she immediately captured my interest. Not only did I feel a connection…
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Homo Mobilis
Home, we are often told, is where the heart is. However, this adage admits of varying readings. Does it mean that there is a particular geographic location for which each…
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Altered Carbon: An Interview with Author Richard Morgan
In this episode of the Two for Tea podcast, our editor-in-chief Iona Italia talks to novelist Richard K. Morgan about his classic novel Altered Carbon, which raises philosophical questions about the…
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Against the Sexual Revolution: An Interview with Louise Perry
In this episode of our Two for Tea podcast, editor-in-chief Iona Italia talks to writer Louise Perry about her new book, The Case Against the Sexual Revolution: A New Guide to Sex…
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Gender Policing on the Left
What makes a man, if not masculinity? What makes a woman, if not femininity? These questions arise out of modern feminist theory, where scholars first drew a distinction between biological…
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Queer: A New Narrative
Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.—Ludwig Wittgenstein When early twentieth-century philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote the above quotation, he was cautioning readers that…
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Rainbows and Hypocrisies: LGBT Activism in Football
In recent years, international sport has become immensely commercialized and professionalized. But these trends have undergone rapid change with the intervention of woke activism. People from all walks of life…
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Reasons to Be Jubilant
On 2 June, I travelled down to London to attend one of those unusual events that somehow manage to be at once an embodiment of the stereotypical idea of what…
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What’s Possessed Us? “The Story Paradox” by Jonathan Gottschall
Many movies feature characters with dissociative identity disorder, formerly known as multiple personality disorder. But when researchers combed through all the psychiatric records from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries for…
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Ancient Archetypes and Modern Superheroes
Nothing is said that has not been said before.—Terence, Eunuchus. We live in an age of superheroes. In every one of the past five years, with the exception of 2020…
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Ricky Gervais and the Manuel Problem
The only thing more predictable than the transphobic jokes in Ricky Gervais’ new Netflix special, SuperNature, was the criticism they elicited.
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Surviving Dave Rubin’s “Don’t Burn This Country”
January 15th, 2019 was the night I got wasted on a livestream downing shots of Patron. It was also the time I accidentally disclosed my private, personal, email address to…
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