Category: Politics

Speechless About Gaza

Screenshot from Twin Peaks - skinny man standing on stage facing a crowd saying "It is happening again."

“It is happening again.” A distressed old man on a mysterious stage speaks these words slowly and painfully in the climactic episodes of David Lynch’s brilliant “Twin Peaks”.

Genocide is happening again in more than one region of planet earth today. We talk about Israel’s violence in Palestine on the … Read the rest

Read More »

A Coder’s Long Quest: My Washington DC Years

Polaroid photo of the US Capitol in the distance and the shadow of the photographer across the Mall

I started publishing my memoir here on Litkicks 15 years ago. I wrote one new chapter a week for 53 weeks, covering the years 1993 to 2003 when I was a first-generation website developer participating in an amazing worldwide software revolution from inside the skyscrapers of Manhattan and my home … Read the rest

Read More »

Mockingjays on Morningside

A park bench and a vista in Morningside Park, New York City

I was already thinking about Columbia University, where courageous students are calling out the college administration’s support for genocide in Gaza, when I heard Paul Auster had died of cancer at the age of 77 in his home in Brooklyn. Paul Auster was widely celebrated as a Brooklyn writer from … Read the rest

Read More »

Chronicles of the Malediction [two podcasts]

On left, Marc Eliot Stein, Ted Shulman and friends with Regina Opera. On right, portrait of Jamelah Vincent.

I spent the final days of 2023 desperately scrambling to complete two episodes for the two podcasts that represent the clashing sides of my brain.

I was possessed by a superstitious idea that I needed to launch both episodes before 2024 began – a superstition I probably manufactured as a … Read the rest

Read More »

Waters Run Deep (A River Change)

jigsaw puzzle of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon

I really don’t know what happened to me about five years ago, when I suddenly found it difficult and annoying to write blog posts.

I suppose this wasn’t so strange, because it is difficult to write good blog posts, and difficult things can be annoying. What was strange is that I’d … Read the rest

Read More »