I’ve written before about identity – and in particular, the forces (or “modules”) in our mind and how we can organize them. I’ve also written about making sure no one else hijacks your mental A/I – our interface between those forces and the world. But what if someone can hijack your modules? Not an ad…
the good place
We are all Agatha: Practicing Dark Magic Too Soon as a Species
Caution: Contains spoilers for “WandaVision” Episode 8 Do we know too much? Can a person know too much? I think maybe. After all: Banning books = bad. But: Showing inappropriate material to young people = bad. Right? And yet these things are kind of mutually exclusive. Lest we think we are for totally free flowing…
How to Cope, by 2019’s Fandoms
It’s a heck of a time. Our institutions have largely failed us and we all are quivering like the dog in the meme in the burning house. “This is fine,” we also say, although our twitchy eyes say otherwise. Fortunately, we have also had some fabulous popular art to help us through. Here are some…
The Top Plants of Fandom
Plants are such a happy little weird phenomenon – especially plants in pots. They are like little green alien visitors that we hardly understand from another, better, more beautiful world – except that it’s our own world too. (Except for Audrey II, which is super cool but but is none of those things except alien….
It’s 4:00 in my life – time for a tattoo and a hysterectomy
*Spoilers for season 3 of The Good Place and season 4 of Crazy Ex Girlfriend ahead, as well as for year 40 of my life. Last year I turned 40. Last week I got my first (and only?) tattoo. In two days I’ll get my first and definitely only hysterectomy. It’s a time of change,…
Taking a Transgression Vacation
Breaking the rules is fun. It always has been. From the moment you realize your parents don’t want you to do <blank>, and you actually in fact CAN do <blank>, you know the tingling rush of doing it anyway. You anticipate it. And even if you see great value in rules, the feeling of rebellion,…
Exorcising Your Modern-day Demons
What demons are haunting YOU? You certainly have some. They may not look like the red devil below, but then again, the red devil below wasn’t actually a devil, it was Captain Picard messing with holographic projectors to prove an important legal point, as you do: A demon, broadly interpreted, can be any force in…
We are all Guinan, Moana, Eleanor, and Mrs. Maisel in Plato’s Cave
Picture Guinan from Star Trek: The Next Generation, Moana, and Mrs. Maisel (the marvelous one) sitting in a cave and staring at a wall. That, in a nutshell, illustrates our battle with existential motion sickness. Bear with me. In philosophy, Plato’s cave analogy is used to show the challenges inherent in how people perceive the…
Do androids malfunction after electric stress?
Stress saturates our lives: its omnipresent messy little tendrils so much a part of our life that we can hardly remember a time without it. It’s a bit of a bragging point these days, actually, we sigh but we believe it’s the price paid for a life lived to the fullest. And, we note with…