All posts
-
On post-apocalyptic historical fiction (and Neanderthals).
Neanderthals were human, and now they are gone. How did the last survivor feel?
apocalypse, cannibalism, Collapse, cross-species mating, depression, DNA sequencing, extinction, food taboos, homelessness, Homo sapiens, human evolution, human extinction, Moore’s law, Neandertal, Neandertal DNA, Neandertal genes, Neandertal religion, Neanderthal, Neanderthal DNA, Neanderthal genes, Neanderthal religion, Paul Kingsnorth, post-apocalyptic historical fiction, religion, symbolic behavior, The Wake
-
On the history of time travel.
Sometimes we have to prove ourselves wrong.
Back to the Future, best time travel movies, Chronocriminales, closed timelike curve, free will, Godel, James Gleick, John Hospers, Kurt Godel, Looper, Nacho Vigalondo, Oedipus, paradox, philosophy, Stephen Hawkins, Terminator, time travel, time travel films, time travel paradox, Time Travel: A History, Timecrimes, Trump, who built the pyramids
-
On writing poetry in English.
Throughout the month of November, in “celebration” of betrayals both past and present (Thanksgiving, land grants, sovereignty, smallpox, Christianity, Standing Rock), my co-teacher and I brought poetry by contemporary Native American writers into the jail. One week, my co-teacher (JM) began class with an impromptu riff about the fact that, although English-speaking people had betrayed…
-
On wasted ingenuity.
Everyone strives, but we force some to waste their efforts reinventing the wheel – or the water heater, or the piano, or…
Albany, Attica, automation, Blood in the Water, capitalism, childhood trauma, criminal justice, Deirdre N McCloskey, Demetrius Cunningham, economics, Growth Not Forced Equality Saves the Poor, Heather Anne Thompson, imprisonment, injustice, jail, Learning to Hear on a Cardboard Piano, Lori Milks, New Yorker, one sheet per day, poverty, prison, prison writing, punishment, punitive justice
-
On psychedelic drugs as medicine.
Would a sudden jolt away from our minds’ ruts help treat depression? Or — complacency in general?
acid, acid trip, addict, addiction, autism, ayahuasca, CBT, CIA, clinical trials, cognitive behavioral therapy, David Foster Wallace, depressed, depression, DMT, drugs, ecstasy, entheogen, experiments on children, experiments on orphans, habit, In Search of Lost Time, Infinite Jest, Intoxication, involuntary experimentation, junkie, Lauretta Bender, learning, lost love, LSD, lysergic acid, Marcel Proust, MDMA, mescaline, MK Ultra, molly, mushrooms, neurology, organic synthesis, orphans, peyote, placebo, placebo effect, psilocin, psilocybin, psychedelic, Remembrance of Things Past, Ronald Siegel, Schedule I, shrooms, suicide, virtuous cycle, William Burroughs, you must change your life
-
On Facebook and fake news.
Fake news is frustrating, but Facebook makes your brain worse *by design*.
Archaic Torso of Apollo, big ideas take time, boredom, branding, Brawndo, building a website, Cal Newport, climate change, distraction, Donald Trump, duping Facebook users, fabrication, Facebook, fake news, family band, faux-politically-conscious liberals, Franz Kafka, Google, Google ad dollars, holiday album, holiday record, Hotmail, Idiocracy, Indiana Prisoners’ Writing Workshop, irony, Johnny Fuerza, mass incarceration, Myspace, obsession with fame, Pages to Prisoners, persuasion, philosophy, Rainer Maria Rilke, Silicon Valley stole the election, social media, The Recognitions, the signature is worth more than the art, Twitter, undergraduate degrees, vegan, vegetarian, William Gaddis, Yahoo, you must change your life
-
On the future of sex (& Emily Witt’s ‘Future Sex’).
Do-it-yourself, artistic, activist, maker culture … or sexual experimentation & psychedelic drugs? I know which future I’d prefer.
Breakfast of Champions, Burning Man, desensitization, Emily Witt, erotic art, extramarital daliance with consent, feminism, future sex, Gerewol, human evolution, human planet, hyperbolic optimism, James Joyce, Kilgore Trout, Kurt Vonnegut, Lydia Cacho, penis bone, polyamory, porn culture, pornography, responsible hedonism, Rodin, sexuality, Slavery Inc, Ulysses
-
On pain.
Habitual drug use ruins lives. But the War on Drugs ends them.
-
On literature as a weapon for social change.
Reading Sergio De La Pava’s “A Naked Singularity” will make you want to change the world. If enough of us do, maybe we’ll succeed.
-
On human uniqueness and invasive species.
On evolutionary timescales, we are a slow-moving meaty wrecking ball. And our spread, apparently, resembles that of any other invasive species.
Adolph Lyons, animal cognition, animal teaching, Black Lives Matter, brain size, cooked food, excessive force, Homo erectus, Homo sapiens, homogenizing brains, human evolution, human extinctions, human migration, human migratory patterns, invasive species, Lyons v. Los Angeles, McCleskey v. Kemp, Neanderthal, neural circuitry, number of neurons in human brain, origin of knowledge, overcrowding, overpopulation, police chokeholds, quintet of hate machines, r-type population growth, racial injustice, sexual dimorphism, Stanford Graduate School of Education, starfish evolution, starvation, supreme court nomination, Suzana Herculano-Houzel, the plow brings misogyny, Trump supreme court appointment, u.s. supreme court
Frank Brown Cloud 