The original reason why circumcision became popular in the United States was the desire to prevent masturbation. Yes, really. Supposed hygienic benefits etc. were rationalizations that came long after circumcision became a tradition. The late 19th/ early 20th century was obsessed with ineffective ways to curb…

Maybe you should have, because the review states it's more about a coming out than circumcision.

Okay, first of all, you should know I live in Germany, so the pop music I'm exposed to differs a bit to yours, and CVS doesn't exist here. The Lidl & Aldi stores I shop in don't have music playing. I am too poor & lazy to go to restaurants. I don't have a driver's license. I put commercials on mute. I don't play video…

I highly doubt that.

Mårten and Torkel Knutsson did a publicity stunt where they appeared naked on the red carpet of Cannes and got arrested. You can Google the pics if you're into Dad bods.

I have never heard of world-famous DJ Diplo.

"Be yourself" is a correct & necessary moral, one just has to accept that living in radical authenticity will lead far away from ideals of any kind, may they be societal or individual. When the protagonist in Sartre's La Nausée discovered himself, he didn't became a particularly pleasant or moral person, but the…

Exarchopoulos is Greek for "son of an exarch"; an exarch is a bishop in the orthodox church who ranks lower than a patriarch and higher than a metropolitan.

Since I am the resident etymology nerd:
The 'faze' which unfazed is derived from is first attested 1830 in American English, it's from Kentish dialect 'feeze' "to frighten, alarm, discomfit" (mid-15c.), from Old English fesian, fysian "drive away, send forth, put to flight," from Proto-Germanic *fausjan (source also of…

Oops, overlooked that. My point about boomers still stands though.

Seinfeld was a show about how a comedian finds his jokes for his stand-up. The whole "show about nothing" thing was just catchy marketing.

I am a German and never visited a concentration camp, but you're right that young Germans are well aware of the Nazi past. The problem with the movie though is that not only are young Germans aware and talking about it, their parents are too. Our 68er generation, what you'd call boomers, demanded vehemently to…

Here's Paul Verlaine’s “A Poor Young Shepherd”, for those who are interested:

Same. This is also why It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia's prominence in pop culture annoys me so.

"Saudi/Qatari shills" is very funny, given that Saudi Arabia is trying to isolate Qatar right now.

Oh look, an Assadist.

FYI, until the 14th century there was no standard Italian language, just many regional dialects of equal validity. This changed with Dante Alighieri, whose Commedia was for Italy what the Luther Bible was for Germany, an extremely influential work that became the standard. Dante wrote in the Florentine subdialect of…

"Beatles song where the lyrics are in Esperanto"

Munro Leaf’s book was banned in fascist Spain because it was seen as promoting pacifism, and Adolf Hitler had it burned as "degenerate democratic propaganda". So obviously a new adaptation is good antifascist praxis and should be supported.

The amount of comments isn't really a metric for success, though. Most people just click.