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Culture

Critical takes on film, television, music, and the art we consume together.

28 posts
A title card reading 'The Next Day' in large black sans-serif text on a white rectangle, overlaid on the same minimalist fan art of an anime girl with long dark brown hair and a yellow headband. Only the top of her head and the lower portion of her dark school uniform and flowing hair are visible behind the text block. The background is flat grey. A small artist's signature appears in the lower right corner.

Groundhog Day, Groundhog Day, and Variations on a Theme

I love time loops in media—from Groundhog Day to...hey, wait a minute. Does anybody else feel a weird sense of déjà vu? It can't just be me. Do you ever get up in the morning and feel as though you've already lived the same day?
A minimalist vector-style illustration of a young anime girl with very long, flowing dark brown hair swept loosely to both sides. She wears a yellow headband and matching yellow ribbon ties near the ends of her hair. Her outfit consists of a dark navy or black school blazer over a white dress shirt with a pink bow at the collar. Her face is a flat, featureless peach shape. The background is a flat medium grey. A small artist's signature appears in the lower right corner.

Groundhog Day, Savescumming, and Our Endless Numbered Days

I love time loops in media—from Groundhog Day to Haruhi's Endless Eight. What do they reveal about mortality, memory, and the human desire to escape consequence through Nietzsche's eternal recurrence?
A dark oil painting depicting a man's head lying at the edge of a luminous turquoise river, his eyes half-open and expression serene or unconscious. The surrounding landscape is rendered in deep blacks and earth tones, with the vivid blue-green water serving as the primary light source. Three pale birds fly through the dark sky above him. The brushwork is loose and expressive, evoking a Romantic or Symbolist style. The overall mood is ethereal and elegiac.

On Being a River

Sixty thousand miles of blood vessels run inside each of us, more than twice around the Earth. 330 billion cells are replaced every single day. Humanity has always built civilization beside rivers because we are rivers. Always in motion, never stepping into the same current twice, carrying cells that live only days alongside neurons that will last precisely as long as we do.
Two arms, one with darker skin, one with lighter skin, clasp together against a near-black background, bound by a single red thread that wraps around both. Dramatic low-key lighting isolates the hands at the centre, the red yarn the only point of vivid colour.

What We Lose with Cultural Extinction: The Red Thread Cut

In 1995, China abducted six-year-old Gedhun Choekyi Nyima—the recognized 11th Panchen Lama—severing the chain of mutual recognition at the heart of Tibetan Buddhist succession. Meanwhile, Michif, a language born from Cree verbs and French nouns that belonged to no one but the Métis People, has nearly vanished within living memory. Both losses are the same act: colonialism's weaponization of continuity. On the extinction of languages, the cutting of red threads, and what it means to inherit a chain with links already missing.
Several playing cards fanned out face-up on a dark wood surface. Visible cards from left to right include the 8 of Hearts, 10 of Hearts, 10 of Clubs, 8 of Diamonds, 10 of Spades, 9 of Clubs, and 9 of Hearts. Prominently displayed near the center is a Joker card depicting a jester figure in a colorful blue, green, and gold costume with a red and black jester's cap, holding letter blocks. Additional Joker and number cards are partially visible beneath the spread. All cards bear the text '117 Anos — Cuidando de Você,' a branded Brazilian playing card deck.

Video Games that Secretly Teach Mathematics

A love letter to the mathematics hiding inside video games, and a protest against the expression 'I'm just not a math person'. From parallel universes in Super Mario 64 to the technical exegetes mapping Animal Crossing, The Sims 2, Pokémon, and Paper Mario. Then Balatro and the IEEE 754 double-precision ceiling, tetration, Knuth's up-arrows, Conway chained arrows, Graham's number, TREE(3). A history of notation catching up to the infinite.
A trompe-l'œil painting depicting a scattered arrangement of printed papers, pamphlets, and book pages pinned to a light wood-grain surface by a vertical red stick or stylus. At the centre is a crumpled blue card bearing a detailed botanical illustration of a pink cabbage rose with green leaves on a dark background. The surrounding papers include fragments of English, German, and Latin text — visible phrases include 'LONDON,' 'WORK,' 'EVERY M[ONTH],' 'Printed for W. Griffin,' 'ELLARMINUS GENERTVS,' and a German title in red Gothic script reading 'Helmstädt, 1689.' The papers vary in style from English pamphlet typography to German blackletter, suggesting a multilingual 18th-century scholarly or publishing context. The overall composition mimics the look of real layered documents with careful attention to shadow and paper curl.

The IndieWeb is Wonderfully Dionysian

A personal plea from me to you to write your own comments. On the genAI plague of LinkedIn, Meta ads, and Medium, and the human warmth of the IndieWeb. From deviantART's old comment culture to Seneca's letters and the Vindolanda tablets, through Nietzsche's Apollonian/Dionysian divide, the Renaissance of Real in A/W 2026/27 fashion, and Charli XCX's Brat. A call to write the messy, human, from-the-heart comment only you can write.
A hand-coloured mezzotint depicting a scene set in a moonlit forest. At centre, a fair-skinned woman with auburn hair, a laurel crown, and a star-spangled pink gown, gazes adoringly at a man who sits beside her with the head of a donkey, eyes closed, crowned with pink roses and dressed in a rust-red jacket. The woman holds a rose toward him. Behind them, a small winged fairy peers out from the foliage. In the foreground, a naked figure stands with his back to the viewer, watching the scene. To the right, two winged fairies ride atop a pair of white rabbits, while a third fairy floats upward in the upper right. Pink roses are scattered across the moss-covered ground.

Right-wing Conservatives Cannot Make Good Art

Why does reactionary, conservative art in modernity fail? A look at God's Not Dead, the Daily Wire's $100 million entertainment collapse, and how resentment produces derivative, hollow work that cannot generate any cultural magnetism.
A composite image layering two public domain works. In the background, a desaturated version of Joe Rosenthal's iconic 1945 photograph of U.S. Marines raising a flag on Iwo Jima. Overlaid in the foreground, a hand-drawn magenta sketch of a boxy computer monitor displaying a blue-and-yellow globe icon—the cover of a 1994 NIH poster titled 'Internet: Today and Tomorrow' in bold blue and yellow type, with a pink cursive subtitle. The computer screen replaces the raised flag, equating the internet with an act of triumphant planting.

Memes, Metal Gear Solid, and You

A history of the word 'meme'—from Richard Dawkins coining it in *The Selfish Gene* in 1976 to Advice Dog and the death of shared internet monoculture—and what happens when you take memetics seriously as a theory of culture. Metal Gear Rising's Monsoon delivers the most honest account of how memes shape who we become. The lyric essay resists this process by design.
Hand holding a poetry chapbook titled “sinkhole,” the cover clipped at the top with a black binder clip. The light blue cover shows a loose black-ink drawing of a swirling vortex or whirlpool, with the title written in rough, hand-lettered lowercase at the top and “Jake Beka” handwritten at the bottom. Patterned tape tabs stick out from the right edge of the booklet. The background is softly blurred with warm yellow string lights forming curved lines.

REVIEW: Falling Into Sinkhole (Jake Beka, 2026)

A review of Jake Beka's sophomore poetry chapbook SINKHOLE—eleven poems across four continents and three generations, tracing patrilineal damage as a force that reshapes geography, contaminates water tables, and follows you across borders. A chapbook with genuine cosmological ambition that succeeds everywhere it refuses comfort.
A collection of 3.5-inch floppy disks arranged in an overlapping, flat-lay pattern filling the entire frame. The disks span a wide range of colours — yellow, blue, red, teal, orange, dark brown, purple, and grey — creating a vibrant, saturated composition. The metal write-protect shutters and circular hub windows are visible on several disks, shot in close-up with bright, even lighting.

How has a lack of ownership changed art?

On the subscription economy, Walter Benjamin's aura, Pokémon scalpers, the rot of physical media, and the person at the photocopier making what the streaming model cannot touch.
A dramatic expressionist oil painting depicting a figure with long, wildly flowing auburn and flame-orange hair that bleeds into the surrounding darkness. The figure's face is rendered in sickly yellow-green and white highlights, with an intense, brooding downward gaze. One eye caught in shadow, the other luminous. The chest and throat glow as if lit from within by fire. Dark, massive wing-like forms sweep across both sides of the composition, merging with a deep blue-black background. The overall palette contrasts volcanic oranges and golds against cool dark blues and greens, evoking a fallen or defiant supernatural being.

Incels Won the Culture War

Looksmaxxing. Redpilled. Sigma. Mogging. Cope. Seethe. Malding. Goyslop. Gooning. Memes from image boards became cultural foundation for Generation Alpha. How rich, powerful men have coordinated a harmful online culture for nearly twenty years.
Cover image for a movie review of Poeta. A close-up portrait of a middle-aged bearded man in glasses, flat cap, and striped scarf, rendered entirely in deep red tones. The word 'POETA' is set in large white serif type across the lower half of the image, with 'a movie review' in smaller italic text on the right side.

REVIEW: To be Un Poeta (2025, dir. Simón Mesa Soto)

A devastating character study of a washed-up Colombian poet who discovers a gifted teenage student, exploring the toxic dynamics of artistic mentorship, racial exploitation in the literary world, and the difference between dedication and self-destruction in the name of art.
A early-2000s home computer setup featuring a beige CRT monitor displaying Windows XP with MSN Messenger open, alongside a matching beige tower PC with a DVD drive and blue accent panel. The desk is covered with a striped cloth, and a beige keyboard sits in the foreground next to a metal cup. Small figurines and a photo are propped on top of the monitor. A speaker is visible to the right, and red curtains hang in the background. The photo has a warm, faded green-yellow tint

CHILDHOOD: Hypercapitalist Nostalgia & Unsupervised Internet Access

My nostalgia is hypercapitalist. My nostalgia is the worst of the unregulated Internet. I cannot decouple my fondest memories from the corporations and the loss of innocence that produced them, and I'm not sure there's anything wrong with that.
Exterior of A Room of One's Own Bookstore, a brick storefront with a blue sign above the entrance. A blue bicycle with a basket is parked at a bike rack in front. Large display windows flank the central entrance, with cars visible through the windows and additional storefronts visible on either side.

A Room of One's Own in 2026 in 6 Parts: The Domain, the Material and the Immaterial

What do we do with Virginia Woolf's concept of creative space in the digital age? Examining how domains, Queer dance halls, and collective spaces redefine what it means to have a room of one's own for contemporary writers.
A dramatic 19th-century illustration depicting a fantastical nocturnal scene with supernatural elements. In a dark, cavernous setting lit by orange flames, several figures engage with demonic or mythological creatures.

REVIEW: Light Joy Writing, On Elizabeth Gilbert's Big Magic

A delightful surprise from an author I initially dismissed. Gilbert's Big Magic explores creativity as sacred play, rejecting the tortured artist myth for a lighter, more joyful approach to creative work.
Upward view of a baobab tree with a thick, pale trunk and sparse canopy of branches with green leaves against a bright blue sky, with power lines crossing diagonally through the frame and a bird in flight visible in the upper left corner.

REVIEW: How do we reckon? On Yiyun Li's 'Things in Nature Merely Grow'

CONTENT WARNING: Suicide | A matter-of-fact memoir about the endurance of loss, where Li considers grief to be regarded as having an end-point, as though there could be a finite amount felt when both of your only children choose death instead of life.
Black and white photograph of a misty forest with tall trees. A person in a coat stands alone among the trees in the foggy woodland. Text overlay reads 'taylor swift' in italic script font, with 'folklore' written below in a similar style with an underline.

How a Taylor Swift Lyric Gave Me an Existential Crisis

The lyrics 'You know the greatest films of all time were never made' is obviously not about films. It is, somehow, about how we’re living on this planet for a fragile, finite amount of time and we have something inert within us to give, to gift.

A colorful collage of vintage cultural works from 1930 celebrating Public Domain Day 2026. There are movie posters, film stills, book covers, and other cultural artifacts.

What Can We Give One Another? On Public Domain, Preservation, and Living Without Copyright

Could you only consume public domain work for a year straight? With the new year coming up and various IP being released to the public domain, I thought I'd muse on copyright and the future of art and culture.
Chris “Taco” Padilla, fighter, Hardbody MMA, strikes Kenny Wyckoff, fighter, Fight Ugly MMA, during Summer Fight Night V at Del Valle Field, June 20, 2014 via Wikimedia Commons

The Only Real Sport

Romance and Mythology in Mixed-Martial Arts and the Ultimate Fighting Championship
“Little critters that love to live, laugh and love” by Tumfuleri via DeviantART (used with permission)

No, Smiling Friends WON’T Become the Next Rick and Morty

That’s the Whole Point
Bon Iver—Shepherds Bush Empire 11/09/08 via Flickr (I was 13 at the time)

I Started Listening To Justin Vernon In Grade School. Now, He’s Retiring As I Turn 30.

Growing Up With Bon Iver
Fandom is Awesome. Furries are Awesome. Bronies are Awesome. Cringe is Awesome. Fuck You.

Fandom is Awesome. Furries are Awesome. Bronies are Awesome. Cringe is Awesome. Fuck You.

What is cringe? The feeling when you see somebody deeply love something you don’t understand.
What I see on a consistent basis on YouTube.

Gen-Z love dumb phones, the analog, e-ink screens, slow living, community, and longform work.

This will give you the most amount of hope you’ve had in a long while.
So I leave you with a smile, kiss you on the cheek, And you will call it treason

BoJack and the Temptation of Suicide

I watched BoJack Horseman from when it premiered in 2014 when I was seventeen up to when it ended. I have grown up with BoJack.
Source (edited by the author)

In Defence of Rupi Kaur

The Necessary, Complicated Legacy of Canada’s Best-selling Poet
You really only get one shot at this.

Be prolific. Accept every thought. Mythologize yourself. Show up.

How to write like the Mountain Goats to create your own body of work you’ll be proud of.
Disability in Adventure Time

Disability in Adventure Time

Growing up alongside Adventure Time over fourteen years, this academic analysis explores Finn's permanent amputation as a radical moment in children's animation—examining fatalism, trauma, prostheticization, and the cultural discomfort with non-normative bodies through disability studies theory.
The Great Forgetting

The Great Forgetting

Our Memory is Disappearing Before Our Eyes
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