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scheinman.bsky.social
d.e.i., claudius
@scheinman.bsky.social
680 followers 360 following 55 posts
senior editor, smithsonian mag. preorder 'jolt' now: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Jolt/Ted-Scheinman/9781668075593
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scheinman.bsky.social
latest jessica winter is great: www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...
"The squishier centrist side has no such certainties. Galloway, in both his podcasts and “Notes on Being a Man,” presents masculinity not as one side of a fixed binary but as a state of mind and a life style, one equally available to men and women, and therefore impossible to define. (It’s a feeling, and we know how Trump supporters feel about those.) Within this amorphous framework, men’s biggest problem is, likewise, a feeling—an unreachable itch, or a marrow-deep belief—that men should still rank above women in the social hierarchy, just not as much as before. This belief may be misguided or unconscious, but it is nonetheless insuperable, and it must be accommodated, for the good of us all." "The deeper one sinks into our nation’s alleged man-boy problem and its potential solutions, the more the woman reader may begin to feel something stronger than resentment or intellectual disdain. She may begin to feel a chauvinistic gratitude in her sex. The familiar flatness of feeling a little degraded seems preferable to the anger, entitlement, and alienation that (we are told over and over) gnaws away at so many male specimens. What a gift it is, really, to have no choice in the matter. To have to move out of your parents’ house, to show up for your shift, to change the diaper, not because any of it is gender-affirming but because life is full of tasks that need doing, and you are the person who does them. At least then you know who you are. Reading Galloway, one gets the sense that men last knew who they were about seventy-five years ago. Much as the Trump Administration does when it vows to revive the coal industry, or when it shares fascist-lite iconography that would be at home in a Paul Verhoeven film, Galloway appeals to the reader’s nostalgia for mid-century “Peak Male.” It was young men, he reminds us, who stormed the beaches at Normandy and who won the Battle of the Bulge: “When Germans or Russians are streaming over the border or firing from the beach, big-dick energy isn’t just a nice idea; it’s fucking mandatory.” Of course, the German soldiers were young men, too. And it isn’t clear which border Galloway thinks the Russians were crossing, or if he realizes which side they were fighting for."
November 10, 2025 at 4:23 PM
scheinman.bsky.social
also here is sophie aka squeeps, who will be making regular appearances per @pilgrimdear.bsky.social’s polite encouragements
November 19, 2024 at 7:05 PM
scheinman.bsky.social
leave it to meta to remove all wit from jane austen smh www.nytimes.com/2023/09/27/t...
"In a WhatsApp text conversation this week, we asked Jane Austen — yes, the 19th-century British author — how she felt about Mr. Darcy, a character from one of her most famous works, “Pride and Prejudice.” "After a few seconds, Ms. Austen responded. “Ah, Mr. Darcy. Everyone remembers him as one of my characters,” she said, her face appearing in a small window above our conversation. “But fewer people have read one of my books,” she added, with an arched eyebrow and what seemed like a hint of resentment. Ms. Austen was not actually talking to us. But a modern interpretation of her likeness was used by Meta, which owns WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram, as part of an artificially intelligent character that could chat across the company’s messaging apps."
October 3, 2023 at 2:48 PM
scheinman.bsky.social
surprise visitors today at the offices of smithsonian magazine:
panda statue outside smithsonian mag office random skeleton inside smithsonian mag office
September 19, 2023 at 2:59 PM
scheinman.bsky.social
skimming the inaugural issue of time magazine (march 3, 1923). highlights: mussolini vs. the masons, a secret method of instantly aging wine, and a critic whinging about joyce + eliot ("there is a new kind of literature abroad in our land, whose only obvious fault is that no one can understand it.")
"Fascismo and the Masons: Press attacks launched against the Masons by the Catholic, Nationalist, and Fascisti parties absorb the attention of all Italians. The Grand Fascista Council, at a meeting in Rome, requested its Masonic members to choose between Fascismo and Freemasonry. A sequel to this "order" was enacted at a meeting of the Rome Municipal Council, at which a motion was presented that only Nationalists, Fascisti, or Liberals not belonging to the Masonic Order should be eligible to fill existing vacancies in the city administration. The motion also included a statement that if for any reason it was found necessary to nominate members of other parties, they should be required to sign a declaration stating on their honor that they were not Freemasons. Mussolini, always against the Masons, has been drawing closer to the Catholic Party. He is becoming almost subservient to the Vatican....." (Time mag, 1923) "A French professor, Charles Henri, has discovered a method of "aging" wine in a few minutes. In a demonstration before the Academy of Sciences, he took a bottle of new wine, and by placing it for a few minutes in an electrostatic field of from 60,000 to 100,000 volts, changed it in a short time so that in all respects —strength, color, bouquet—it could not be detected from old wine. Steps have been taken to commercialize the new invention." (Time mag, 1923) "Has the Reader Any Rights Before the Bar of Literature? There is a new kind of literature abroad in the land, whose only obvious fault is that no one can understand if. Last year there appeared a gigantic volume entitled Ulysses, by James Joyce. To the uninitiated it appeared that Mr. Joyce had taken some half million assorted words— many such as are not ordinarily heard in reputable circles—shaken them up in a colossal hat, laid them end to end. To those in on the secret the result represented the greatest achievement of modern letters—a new idea in novels...." (Time mag, 1923)
August 10, 2023 at 4:45 PM
scheinman.bsky.social
a nice lil mantis has posted up in my car
July 25, 2023 at 8:24 PM