As a little boy, I had a bit of a crush on Ariel without ever realizing the issue with being attracted to a supernatural creature. if you had said there was an issue then, I probably would have thought it was something about curses.

In terms of Lovecraft being canonized, I don't think you have to look further than his influence. For whatever reason, his themes continue to resonate with people to this day. Being the possessor of a Big Idea carries a lot of weight among historians.

Our English department back in high school was generally very good. We had a number of experienced and open-minded teacher. Said teachers, however, had this (to us) bizarre sort of benevolent contempt towards science fiction. It was basically the usual idea that genre fiction was fine for entertainment, but not in…

TCATHR is on myreading list, so I haven't got to it yet. That said, if I understand correctly, Ligotti's specific approach to anti-natalism more or less disregards environmental concerns and focuses entirely on the notion that consciousness inevitably causes suffering and that creating conscious beings through…

That's so often the way with breakups. You try to be fine with it - totally fine with it, in fact. More fine with it than any other human that has ever lived. So fine with it that it obviously hasn't affected you at all and it'd be silly for anyone to suggest otherwise, what with how you're keeping all your shit…

It's weird how it goes. You were a tomboy, so you were emulating the "right" gender, which was fine until you were suddenly supposed to put boyish things away and start being a sexual object. I was a little boy with long hair and garish fashion, so I clearly needed to be mocked into acting a bit straighter (didn't…

I love the sax player saying "I'm black and I'm proud" to the confused children with the beatific smile on his face. I need to see that movie again.

God, Domino sucked so much at times. It acted so clever while everything in it was visible from a mile away. I didn't mind Knightley's performance, though.

Didn't he kill a cyclops? Dude must be massive.

"Sorry for the realness, Keira."

Treating dating like having something to do has its charms. I have a friend who does that with me sometimes (met on OKCupid, started meeting for real, didn't get romantic but became good friends). I find the lack of tension refreshing, as we can just talk and do whatever we went out to do.

In a sense, I think it's possible that they're always stress-induced (once I started monitoring myself for it, it was pretty obvious that they correlated with the stressful parts of my days). It's just that various things can cause a person to be subjected to internal stresses more easily.

That's terrible. I'd like to think that that's going away a bit; the current generation of adults seems to be a bit less inclined towards openly talking to people about their appearance, so hopefully that'll translate to them being less damaging to teens (who, as I recall from my teenage years, do not need help when…

That's conflating a whole lot of things into one ideology. "Rule of law" and property rights are hardly limited to capitalism. As well, being a Canadian, I'm not certain what you mean by us having implemented free market reforms. The country became a confederation as capitalism was becoming a major global force. …

You also have the last half-century of successes in Scandinavia and Canada, where socialist sympathies run stronger than in the US. These are countries with remarkably stable economies, high life expectancy, high literacy rates, and reliable spots on lists of countries with high standards of living. These are also…

It is tricky. I haven't found it much in my own life. I think that outside factors can stifle it, like being busy, exhausted, or depressed. If you're not finding much interest in your dating life, maybe there's something going that's making it hard for you to get into the spirit of things. On the other hand, it…

This is where I think that the standard line on capitalism is wrong. I don't think that it rewards self-interest so much as it rewards self-indulgence. Time and time again, people have shown that they want things now instead of later regardless of the consequences. Capitalism doesn't check to see if what you're…

What then, though? After capitalism has had its salutary effect, it still has problems. If you see it as an improvement on older systems, then surely there's further possibility for an improvement on capitalism.

By definition, you wouldn't actually be dying alone in that scenario. They'd probably even try to keep you warm for a while.

Thank you! That's some news I can use.