memory
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On Gabrielle Zevin’s ‘Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow’ and video games as art.
For better & for ill, games can welcome us into another world and show us the choices we would make.
art, bee swarm, Braid, children, computer games, emergent behavior, emergent gameplay, first-person shooters, Gabrielle Zevin, game design, game save files, games, Grand Theft Auto, GTA, Hiron Ennes, jail, jail classes, Jonathan Blow, Leech, Limbo, linear narratives, memory, Minecraft, parenting, Peleg, poetry in jail, Psalmist, Psalmist game, psychological effect of gaming, psychological effect of video games, rumination, Sara Levine, save files, save game files, school, swarming behavior, teaching in jail, teaching poetry in jail, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, Treasure Island!!!, video game, video game analysis, video game design
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On Constantine Cavafy’s ‘Body, Remember,’ and the mutability of memory.
Would your life be better if you mistakenly believed in past triumph?
addiction, alcoholism, Aliki Barnstone, assault, beer, Body Remember, Boltzmann brain, brain, Brett Kavanaugh, CBT, cognition, cognitive behavioral therapy, consciousness, Constantine Cavafy, drinking problem, episodic memory, Exhalation, failed seduction, Flirtation, incarceration, jail poetry, jail poetry workshop, Kavanaugh, Last Gods, mass incarceration, memory, misremembrance, missed connections, mutability of memory, opiate abuse, opiates, poetry, problem drinking, recovery, recovery from addiction, Remember Body, risque poetry, seduction, sexual aggression, sexual assault, sexy poetry, sultry poetry, Supreme Court, teaching in jail, Ted Chiang, Truth of Fact Truth of Feeling, violative assault
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On Tara Westover’s “Educated.”
How can you learn to trust in a world where your beloved family member’s visage might conceal a monster?
alternate histories, alternate history, apocalypse prepping, behavioral change, Charles Reznikoff, cocaine, coke, cultural knowledge, drugs, Educated, eels, endangered eels, etymology, gaslighting, government aid, Hillbilly Elegy, history, Holocaust, Hulk smash, J.D. Vance, jail poetry, Jekyll and Hyde, memory, paranoia, perception, poetry class, poverty, preppers, prison poetry, SNAP, storytelling, Tara Westover, teaching poetry, teaching poetry in jail, The Hulk, the mutability of memory, traumatic brain injury
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On parenting and short-term memory loss.
Caring for young children wrecks havoc on your brain. I’ve heard it’s temporary. And, to make a better world, more men need to do it.
Abdel Haleem, Abrahamic faiths, Anthropology of Childhood, attention span, banishment, banishment of Sita, Beverly Strassmann, childhood, Christian, Christianity, contract law, David Lancy, developing brains, Dogon, Dorothy Dinnerstein, Draupadi, Draupadi in the gambling hall, early development, Emily Wilson, emotional development, family, fatherhood, feminism, feminist, gambling, Garry Wills, gender equality, gender parity, gossip, inequality, Islam, Jewish, Judaism, Mahabharata, Mary Beard, memory, Mermaid and the Minotaur, misogyny, Muslim, parenting, patriarchy, Penelope, philosophy, polygamy, polygyny, preschool development, Quran, shirking responsibility, Sita, Telemachus, The Odyssey, value, what matters in life, What the Qur’an Meant, What the Quran Meant and Why It Matters, who should parent, Women and Power, women’s work
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On clarity, Matthew Zapruder’s “Why Poetry,” and reading Bruce Weigl.
We should strive for clarity, out of love for those willing to listen.
abuse, Billy Collins, blaming victims, Blast Furnace, Bloomington, Bruce Weigl, childhood, clarity, drug abuse, drug use, honesty, honesty in writing, Introduction to Poetry, jail, mass incarceration, Matthew Zapruder, memory, metaphor, Monroe County Jail, New Leaf New Life, poems, poetry, prison, psychiatry, psychology, PTSD, rape, recovery dorm, rehab, rehabilitation, repressed memories, say it clearly and you make it beautiful, sexual abuse, Spotlight, symbolism, The Impossible, Tom McCarthy, trauma, Why Poetry, writing
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On ethics and Luke Dittrich’s “Patient H.M.”
When scientists act unethically, it undermines trust in science … which breaks my heart, since the scientific method is awesome.
A Story of Memory Madness and Family Secrets, Arieh Warshel, biochemistry, brain surgery, cell biology, data, enzymology, epilepsy, ethics, fraud, GCC185, graduate school, human experimentation, immunofluorescence, ketosteroid isomerase, KSI, lobotomy, Luke Dittrich, medial temporal lobe, membrane trafficking, memory, MIT, MPR, Patient H.M., primary data, psychosurgery, publish or perish, reproducibility crisis, research, research ethics, RhoBTB3, science, scientific method, shredding files, Stanford, Suzanne Corkin
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On elephants.
We humans have treated elephants abysmally — not in spite of their magnificence, but because of it.
animal abuse, animal cognition, Animals Strike Curious Poses, broken families, Ciaran Berry, circus, dance, ecotourism, electricity, electrocuting an elephant, Elena Passarello, elephant brains, elephants, environmental destruction, exploitation, high school, hippocampus, Jumbo II, male role models, memory, post traumatic stress disorder, prom, PTSD, Ringling Brothers, tool use, torture, wayward youth
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On isolation.
When a government tortures people on *your* behalf, do you share the blame? If so, what should you do?
addiction, ADX, Bruce Alexander, cetacean communication, confinement, constitutional rights, deprivation tank, dolphin, dolphin communication, dolphin hand job, drug abuse, false confessions, Harry Harlow, Hell is a Very Small Place, innocent until proven guilty, isolation tank, Jeanne Theoharis, Jesse Wilson, John C. Lilly, Juan Mendez, laboratory animals, LSD, Margaret Howe, memory, morphine, opiates, Rat Park, Ray McGovern, Richard Feynman, sensory deprivation, social isolation, solitary, solitary confinement, solitary watch, stimulus deprivation, sunlight, supermax, Syed Fahad Hashmi, teaching dolphins to talk, terrorism, torture, Torture of a Student, Voices from Solitary Confinement
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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.
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On Stefan Hertmans’s ‘War & Turpentine.’
At the heart of Stefan Hertmans’s gorgeous ‘War & Turpentine’ is the gruesome knowledge that much pain and suffering underpin our beautiful world.
Frank Brown Cloud 