Tag: Premium

Reviewing Alex Dimitrov’s debut collection of poetry, Begging for It, Jeremy Glazier describes the use of Grindr as a literary device:

The three Grindr “poems” offer a peek into Dimitrov’s self-mythologization. Each is a screenshot of a smartphone conversation between the poet and an anonymous guy from Grindr, and in each case, Dimitrov’s contributions are limited to laconic replies to his interlocutor’s promptings. In the first, called “Poems actually,” the two words of the title are the poet’s only part, typed in response to the query, “What sort of stuff do you write?” The rest is the rather effusive effort on the part of the other guy to pin down Dimitrov’s poetic credentials: “Epic poems, limericks or like what? / And who is your poetry inspiration / Was that grammatically correct? I don’t think it was but you get what I am saying.” The humor resides partially in the contrast between Dimitrov’s terseness and the garrulousness of the other guy — and in the unexpected “literary” chat on an app that’s more usually reserved for swapping cock pics.

In another Grindr piece, “Proust’s Grave,” one of Dimitrov’s anonymous online admirers has figured out who he is and messages him out of the blue, at 1:22 in the morning: “One shouldn’t lie on Proust’s grave,” he texts — a reference to a photograph online of Dimitrov wallowing on said grave. Dimitrov’s response, “Who the fuck is this,” is immediate — and that’s the end of the conversation. Part found poem, part unwitting collaboration, the poem’s appeal for the reader is essentially voyeuristic: our sense that we are eavesdropping on something private and potentially intimate. For Dimitrov, the act of cruising online is charged poetically as well as libidinally, and like a sexed-up version of Stevens’s Hoon, he invites us into his private “palaz” for “tea.”

Doctor Science considers the controversial rating from the perspective of a fanfiction reader:

As you probably have heard, a majority of fanfic involves romance and/or sex. Most fanfic is read and written by women, and despite the conventional wisdom that women “don’t like porn”, it’s usually the case that, all other things being equal, more sexually-explicit fanfic is the most popular. This has been known ever since the late 90s at latest, when writers started putting hit counters up on their websites and saw that stories labeled “NC-17” consistently got the most hits. Women definitely *do* like porn, as long as it’s the kind of porn they like.

In fanfictionland, then, “NC-17” is not at all the kiss of death it is for movies — on the contrary, it tends to pull readers rather than otherwise. NC-17, MA, Explicit are all marks of the good stuff, not marks of shame. People still like and read plenty of things that are equivalent to G or PG movies, but there is no shred of community disapproval (and plenty of cheers of approval) for extremely sexually explicit material, at least if it’s marked clearly enough that Net-Nanny-type programs can keep the kiddies out if their parents think that will work.

On the 55th anniversary of Vertigo, Tom McCormack recalls the novel equipment used to create the film’s title sequence, an “obsolete military computer called the M5 gun director” from WWII:

[Computer animation pioneer John Whitney] was hired to complete the seemingly impossible task of turning [Saul] Bass’s complicated designs for Vertigo into moving pictures. A mechanism was needed that could plot the shapes that Bass wanted, which were based on graphs of parametric equations by 19th mathematician Jules Lissajous; plotting them precisely, as opposed to drawing them freehand, required that the motion of a pendulum be linked to motion of an animation stand, but no animation stand at the time could modulate continuous motion without its interior wiring becoming tangled. …

The M5 was used during World War II to aim anti-aircraft cannons at moving targets.

It took five men to operate it on the battlefield, each inputting one variable, such as the altitude of the incoming plane, its velocity, etc. Whitney realized that the gun director could rotate endlessly, and in perfect synchronization with the swinging of a pendulum. He placed his animation cels on the platform that held the gun director, and above it suspended a pendulum from the ceiling which held a pen that was connected to a 24-foot high pressurized paint reservoir. The movement of the pendulum in relation to the rotation of the gun director generated the spiral drawings used in Vertigo’s opening sequence.

The M5 weighed 850 lbs and comprised 11,000 components, but its movement was dictated by the execution of mathematical equations; it was very much a computer Whitney’s work on the opening sequence for Vertigo could be considered an early example of computer graphics in film—and a clever détournement of military equipment.

Maria Popova highlights several passages from Mark Pendergrast’s Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World:

From its original African home, coffee propagation has spread in a girdle around the globe, taking over whole plains and mountainsides between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn. In the form of a hot infusion of its ground, roasted seeds, coffee is consumed for its bittersweet bouquet, its mind-racing jump start, and social bonding. At various times it has been prescribed as an aphrodisiac, enema, nerve tonic, and life extender. … Beginning as a medicinal drink for the elite, coffee became the favored modern stimulant of the blue-collar worker during his break, the gossip starter in middle-class kitchens, the romantic binder for wooing couples, and the sole, bitter companion of the lost soul. Coffeehouses have provided places to plan revolutions, write poetry, do business, and meet friends. …

The modern coffee industry was spawned in late nineteenth-century America during the furiously capitalistic Gilded Age. At the end of the Civil War, Jabez Burns invented the first efficient industrial coffee roaster. The railroad, telegraph, and steamship revolutionized distribution and communication, while newspapers, magazines, and lithography allowed massive advertising campaigns. Moguls tried to corner the coffee market, while Brazilians frantically planted thousands of acres of coffee trees, only to see the price decline catastrophically. A pattern of worldwide boom and bust commenced. By the early twentieth century, coffee had become a major consumer product, advertised widely throughout the country.

John Timmer reviews new research that could change the way we treat heroin addicts:

Antibodies that latch on to drugs could keep them away from their sites of action in the brain, blocking any rewarding high. So far, the results haven’t been as promising as the idea, but a new vaccine against heroin appears to do better specifically because it’s designed to work with how the drug is processed by the body. …

The most intriguing test, however, involved rats that had been allowed to self-dose with heroin, which was accompanied by a blinking light.

After an extended withdrawal, the rats would go right back to self-medicating if they were given a single dose of heroin or shown the blinking light. Once they were treated to raise the dynamic antibodies, however, the dose of heroin would no longer set off a bout of drug-taking (though the blinking light still would). The antibodies appeared to block the drug efficiently enough that it no longer registered in the brains of these rats.

This isn’t an easy or simple solution. Vaccinating the rats required three doses within a month, and the rats still could get a hit off the drug—it just took a lot more of it. In human societies, addicts requiring a lot more of a drug can be a recipe for serious problems. But for those enrolled in supervised treatment programs, it could make a significant difference in keeping a momentary lapse from becoming a full relapse.

Stephen Marche thinks the critics miss the point:

[Director Baz] Luhrmann’s movie, and the vast array of marketting that surrounds it, is phony. But so is Gatsby. Gatsby is tasteless and vulgar and spends too much money. Gatsby is the original icon of hype. Which is why his story remains so relevant. The movie could easily have been set in Silicon Valley today. The illusions that Gatsby and Luhrmann create are lies and ultimately cheap and corrupt, but their spell is nonetheless powerful. The critics are unintentionally paying Luhrmann a compliment, I think; his version is not so much a film about Gatsby as the film Gatsby would make about himself. It’s the most Gatsbyesque Gatsby possible. What better standard is there for adaptation?

Richard Brody differs:

For all of its lurching and gyrating party scenes, for all the inflated pomp of the Gatsby palace and the Buchanan mansion, for all the colorful clothing and elaborate personal styling, Luhrmann takes none of it seriously, and makes none of it look remotely alluring, enticing, fun. His whizzing 3-D cinematography offers lots of motion but no seduction; his parties are turbulent and raucous without being promising, without holding out the allure of magical encounters. …

That notion brings to mind what is perhaps Fitzgerald’s most famous sentence, from the essay “The Crack-Up,” in which, preparing to describe his own breakdown, he adds:

Before I go on with this short history, let me make a general observation—the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise.

The movie conveys the sense of waste but not of what was wasted, of the superfluous but not of excess, and of the phony but not of the gloriously theatre of life. In its reductive way, it not only doesn’t display two opposed ideas; it offers no ideas at all.

Ariane Lange illustrates the “8 Meanest Things 1920s Critics Said About ‘The Great Gatsby'”.

(Image: Lines from Arrested Development mashed up with Gatsby scenes via Book Riot)

Mark Kleiman illustrates the need for it:

It appears that one local grower developed a strain sold under the “Purple Urkle” label. It was widely held, by producers and consumers alike, to be truly righteous weed, and it flew off the shelves.

Then the fashion for chemical testing came in. Purple Urkle tested at a mere 7% THC – perhaps twice the THC content of what was called “marijuana” when I was in college, but well below the 12-18% that current products claim (more accurately in some cases than in others). Result: even the consumers who had already experienced and enjoyed Purple Urkle, and had been asking for it by name, wouldn’t touch it. They were so used to the idea that quality is defined by THC content that they didn’t want to smoke what they now “knew” to be weak weed. So the brand more or less died.

In principle, a legal cannabis market could improve consumer satisfaction and safety by delivering products of known chemical composition. But if the heavy users who dominate the market in terms of volume have a prejudice in favor of maximum THC content, the practical outcome could fall well short of the promise.

McArdle lists other areas in which transparency hasn’t helped the market.

Mark Oppenheimer expresses anxiety over talking to his children about artificial insemination – “to be more precise, I don’t want to talk about sperm donation.” He thinks through his “very specific revulsions toward what I perceive to be the misuse, or over-use, of science” and ultimately chills out:

My anxiety about lesbian mothers with strollers is silly. I know that. It scapegoats the lesbian for the choices of the straight couple: Plenty of sperm donation leads to non-lesbian parenting, after all. And I am obviously relying on an incoherent distinction between what is “artificial” and what is “natural,” in an age when the technologies everyone likes—the ultrasound, the prenatal vitamin, the autoclave to sanitize surgical instruments, Purell—are seen as beneficial, and are granted honorary “natural” status. No doubt I am also engaging in the sacred parental rite of judging other parents for anything I can find, assuring myself that whatever deviates from what my wife and I do, including different means of conception, is at least a little bit worse. That, too, is silly. But what’s really silly is worrying about the conversations sperm-donor mothers will provoke with my children. Because, as any parent knows, conversations with young people about sex never go as badly as you fear. In fact, they don’t go anywhere you could possibly predict.

My wife tells this story.

About a year and a half ago, she was returning from dropping our eldest daughter off at kindergarten; the baby was strapped to her chest, and she was pushing our middle daughter, Ellie, then almost three years old, in the stroller. Out of nowhere, Ellie asked that question, the one that all children ask at some point in their toddling years: “Mommy, how do you make a baby?” My wife was a bit surprised to get this question—why now? so early in the day?—but it didn’t matter, for there was only one possible answer, the straightforward, clinical, correct answer. “Well,” she said, “the man puts his penis in the woman’s vagina, seed comes out, and the baby begins to grow.” At this point Ellie turned around in the stroller and squinted at my wife with skepticism, her eyes narrowed and her lips puckered. “Mommy,” she said, “if the man puts his penis in the woman, how does he put it back on?”

After stifling a laugh, my wife explained the situation to Ellie’s satisfaction, at which point the topic was dropped—presumably in favor of more important questions, like whether she had earned back the dessert she had lost in that morning’s tantrum.

Leon Wieseltier jumps into the debate. There is nothing there but moral preening and a refusal to engage in the actual arguments of the opponents of intervention. More to the point, a public intellectual who backed the Iraq War actually writes the following sentences:

A “senior American official who is involved in Syria policy” plaintively said this to Dexter Filkins of The New Yorker: “People on the Hill ask me, ‘Why can’t we do a no-fly zone? Why can’t we do military strikes?’ Of course we can do these things. The issue is, where will it stop?” The answer is, we don’t know. But is the gift of prophecy really a requirement for historical action? Must we know the ending at the beginning? If so, then nobody would start a business, or a book, or a medical treatment, or a love affair, let alone an invasion of Omaha Beach.

Or the Iraq war. Perhaps he has some way of relating his previous massive error of judgment to his current position. But no: the word “Iraq” appears nowhere in the piece. It is as if it never happened. How about the massive problem of how to find the right insurgents to arm? Easy as pie:

We can still create pro-Western elements in the struggle for Syria after Assad, and deny Al Qaeda a government in Damascus, and stem the tide of the refugees that is shaking the entire region.

Notice how Wieseltier echoes the worst hubris of neoconservatism here: we can “create” pro-Western elements. Just like the Bushies told us we could “create” reality. How do you prevent those pro-Western elements from being outclassed by al Qaeda elements who are now the most effective fighting force in the country? Wieseltier doesn’t say. Why does he have to? Why indeed does he need to think at all about where jumping into a war we cannot control might lead?

All this talk of exiting is designed only to inhibit us from entering. Like its cousin “the slippery slope,” “the exit strategy” is demagoguery masquerading as prudence.

Actually, it’s the exact opposite. It’s prudence against the kind of self-righteous recklessness that gave us the Iraq catastrophe. Then this further act of amnesia:

Seventy thousand people have died in the Syrian war, most of them at the hands of their ruler. Since this number has appeared in the papers for many months, the actual number must be much higher.

Does he recall how many Iraqis died in a sectarian civil war, while the US was nominally occupying the entire country? Over to Fareed Zakaria:

From 2003 to 2012, despite there being as many as 180,000 American and allied troops in Iraq, somewhere between 150,000 and 300,000 Iraqi civilians died and about 1.5 million fled the country. Jihadi groups flourished in Iraq, and al-Qaeda had a huge presence there. The U.S. was about as actively engaged in Iraq as is possible, and yet more terrible things happened there than in Syria.

But never mind. Let’s do it all over again! This infantile column would simply be simply another dumb, shallow piece if it weren’t for the moral superciliousness:

The moral dimension must be restored to our deliberations, the moral sting, or else Obama, for all his talk about conscience, will have presided over a terrible mutilation of American discourse: the severance of conscience from action.

Again, note the absolute amnesia. Because of prudent reluctance to enter a sectarian civil war in a failed Middle Eastern state, Obama has suddenly severed “conscience from action” in American government. Not the authorization of torture by Cheney (I have been unable to find a single sentence Wieseltier has written about torture or enhanced interrogations and you can see his basic acquiescence to it in this soft-ball exchange with Condi Rice, where Wieseltier echoes Rice in saying that torturing prisoners is “never a morally easy question,” when obviously it was); and not the criminal lack of preparation in occupying Iraq: these did not sever conscience from action. The only sentences I can find tackling American torture were these in his foul, McCarthyite attack on yours truly:

As far as I can tell, Krauthammer’s position on torture is owed to a deep and sometimes frantic concern for American security, and his position on the war in Gaza to a deep and sometimes frantic concern for Israeli security, and his position on Iran to a deep and sometime frantic concern for American and Israeli security. Whatever the merits of his views, I do not see that his motives are despicable.

My italics. But my essay tackling Krauthammer’s support for a new torture elite corps for the US did not question the sincerity of Krauthammer’s motives either. It merely argued passionately against his case. But notice Wieseltier’s refusal to address the substantive question of the morality of the Gestapo’s “enhanced interrogations.” A public intellectual so constantly vigilant about breaches of morality by the American government never got around to that subject, but is now claiming a moral Rubicon may be crossed because we don’t invade Syria?

I can only echo David Rieff:

Is it really too much to ask that those who supported the invasion and occupation of Iraq so enthusiastically at the time, and whose second thoughts have been far less fierce and full-throated than their initial enthusiasm, not deploy virtually the exact same crusading rhetoric about the necessity of the use of U.S. power in the name of overthrowing tyrants, and of America serving as an armed midwife to the birth of democracy in the Middle East, with regard to Syria as they did a decade ago with regard to Iraq?

Yes, apparently, it is far too much to ask.

After encountering a doberman at his gym, Farhad Manjoo throws up his hands:

Sometime in the last decade, dogs achieved dominion over urban America. They are everywhere now, allowed in places that used to belong exclusively to humans, and sometimes only to human adults: the office, restaurants, museums, buses, trains, malls, supermarkets, barber shops, banks, post offices. Even at the park and other places where dogs belong, they’ve been given free rein. Dogs are frequently allowed to wander off leash, to run toward you and around you, to run across the baseball field or basketball court, to get up in your grill. Even worse than the dogs are the owners, who seem never to consider whether there may be people in the gym/office/restaurant/museum who do not care to be in close proximity to their dogs. After all, what kind of monster would have a problem with a poor innocent widdle doggie?

As a dog-lover, I think he’s actually right about the owners. In all urban public situations, outside a dog park, you should have a leash on your dog. Where we now live – the West Village – feels at times like a very expensive dog complex. And that’s where the difficulty comes in. For many passers-by, greeting and cooing over the beagle and basset-mutt is one extreme of the problem. There, the trouble comes from humans, not dogs. But every owner should know the temperament of their dogs, keep them away from strangers if they are “unfriendly”, and make sure that any stranger feels comfortable. It’s called manners. Like cyclists who routinely violate traffic rules, these dog-owners make the rest of us look bad.

Manjoo compares his feelings about dogs to how some people feel about kids:

I realize that, although [my two-year old is] impossibly cute, it’s possible he might aggravate some people. For this reason, whenever I go into public spaces with my toddler, I treat him as if I were handling nuclear waste or a dangerous animal. I keep him confined. I shush him. If he does anything out of turn—screams, touches people—I make a show of telling him to quit it and I apologize profusely. And, finally, there are some places that are completely off-limits to my son: nice restaurants, contemplative adult spaces like grown-up museums and coffee shops, the gym, and the office. Especially the office.

I couldn’t agree more.