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On Mat Johnson’s Loving Day and wanting to fit in.
My condolences to those who feel as though it’s their heritage never to fit in. Growing up, I didn’t fit either. But I had no expectation of fitting in. I was an outlier by virtue of who I was, not who my parents were. And presumably I could’ve learned to talk differently, to act differently,…
ancestry, brain imaging, brains, Caitlyn Jenner, choosing our identity, contemporary literary fiction, Danzy Senna, differences between male and female brains, differences between men’s and women’s brains, Elinor Burkett, feminism, feminist, Gina Rippon, identity politics, Loving Day, Mat Johnson, mixed-race, multicultural, nail polish, race, review of Mat Johnson’s Loving Day, rudely claiming that all black art is “urban”, The Mulatto Millennium, The Sympathizer, tribes, urban, urban fiction, urban graphic novels, Viet Nguyen, what does it mean to be black, What Makes a Woman, what should a black man look like, who is black
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On sex work, reparations, a global wealth tax, and the connection between the three.
Many people are upset that Amnesty International finally came out in favor of decriminalizing sex work. Not me. I think decriminalizing sex work is a step in the right direction. Sex workers’ lives are often miserable. Their underground status denies them police protection; instead, they are often actively abused by the police. The philosophical rationale for…
a good idea in theory, abuse of power, Amnesty International, amphetamines, arguments against legalizing drugs, Ayn Rand, Behind every great fortune there is a crime, black market heroin is unsafe, childhood nutrition, communism, cotton, creepy parallel between gene duplication and oppression, decriminalization, decriminalized prostitution, decriminalized sex work, economic reparations, empirical evidence, feminism, feminist, free school breakfasts, free school lunches, global wealth tax, guaranteed income, heroin, heroin overdoses, history of United States, how did the United States become a superpower, how high would the wealth tax need to be to guanantee everyone a subsistence income, how much money do people need to live, human dignity, human rights trading cards, immigration, immigration laws, income inequality, inequality, justice, land entitlement, legalized prostitution, legalized sex work, link between current wealth and slavery, Lydia Cacho, misogynistic culture, misogynists, misogyny, original sin, police abuse, poverty, Poverty Impedes Cognitive Function, price and demand, price equilibrium, prostitution, quality control, racist home loans, racist lending policy, reparations, school funding, selling organs, sex slavery, sex work, slavery, Slavery Inc, supply and demand, Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Case for Reparations, United States, violence in Mexico, War on Drugs, War on Drugs harms Mexico, wealth begets wealth, wealth inequality, wealth tax, welfare, where did United States wealth come from, which laws are fair, which laws are just, who should receive reparations, why are drugs illegal
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On mental architecture and octopus literature.
I might spend too much time thinking about how brains work. Less than some people, sure — everybody working on digital replication of human thought must devote more energy than I do to the topic, and they’re doing it in a more rigorous way — but for a dude with no professional connection to cognitive…
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On slow driving as protest.
My apologies to anyone who has been stuck driving behind me recently. I’ve been driving very slowly. As in, actually following traffic laws. Whereas most people drive between one and fifteen miles per hour over the posted speed limit, I’ve been driving about two miles per hour below posted speed limits. It can be frustrating. …
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On depictions of (non)violence for the cause of justice.
Graphic novelist Nate Powell, alongside his March co-authors John Lewis & Andrew Aydin, will be speaking in Bloomington next month. I’m excited about the talk. I first learned about Powell’s work by reading The Silence of Our Friends about the civil rights movement in Texas. That book was especially meaningful for me because I’m generally non-confrontational, preferring…
Andrew Aydin, armed rebellion, Between the World and Me, Charles Deslondes, civil rights movement, graphic novels, human violence, John Lewis, March, March book one, March graphic novel, Nat Turner, Nate Powell, nonviolence, protest, racism, racist high school history curriculum, Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Silence of Our Friends, violent rebellion against slavery, when is violence justified -
On child pornography & an odd coincidence in timing.
Reading about the prosecution of a well-known fast food spokesperson has felt unnerving to me. In part because it’s always sad to hear about the type of activity he was convicted of. And in part because that particular well-known fast food spokesperson is featured in my (unpublished) book & is described in dialogue as being…
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On playing outdoors, and allergies.
K has been on a big kick reading books about sending students outside. Obviously, I approve. Being outdoors seems to make most humans happier, and people who spend time outside seem more likely to care about preserving our environment. Plus, K even has scholastic reasons to ask students to sit contemplatively outside — it’s reasonable…
allergies, allergy, allergy epidemic, AP biology, asthma, autoimmune disorders, cute kid photos, David Strachan, eating peanuts to cure a peanut allergy, expecting to fight makes us more aggressive, farm animals, farmed-animal sanctuary, fatherhood, fieldwork, Hay Fever Hygiene and Household Size, hygiene, hygiene hypothesis, immune system, immunology, let your kid eat dirt!, oral immunotherapy, outdoor learning, outdoors, outside, parasites, parasites as medicine, parenting, pathogens, peanut, play, spending time on a farm to prevent allergies, The Watchmen, Uplands PEAK, vegan animal sanctuary -
On uncertainty (with cartoon ending).
I solved equations Robert Johnson crossroads style, except I had a Texas Instruments graphing calculator instead of a guitar.
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On witchcraft and mass psychogenic illness.
Because she is N’s best friend’s grandmother, I recently had the pleasure of meeting the researcher who first proposed that the Salem witchcraft trials were inspired by ergot poisoning of rye crops. And that, of course, is one of the papers I read while researching mass psychogenic illness / conversion disorders / violence against women. Does…
bistable switch, Caporael, conversion disorder, dancing sickness, did drugs cause the Salem witch trials, did PTSD cause the Salem witch trials, ergot, ergot poisoning, history of women not being taken seriously by medical doctors, how to explain complicated mathematics to people without a math background, hysteria, Intoxication, Le Roy, lysergic acid, mass psychogenic illness, oppression, ordinary differential equations, pop psychology, post traumatic stress disorder, PTSD, Ronald Siegel, Salem witch trials, self-reinforcing behavior, stress, tarantism, the tipping point, tics, witchcraft
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Links to my writing elsewhere: On Darth Vader and the Homunculus Theory of the Mind.
This piece went up on Literary Orphans‘ “Tavern Lantern” blog a few weeks ago, but now it has a stable link. Here’s the entire LO issue, or you can click the image to go directly to my essay (thanks to Rashard and Erika at LO for the cool pic): I learned about Literary Orphans from reading their…
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Frank Brown Cloud 