Posts from Popula

Some Personal News

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Over the decade-plus when I made my income mostly through online writing—here and there were a few short-term gigs, like P.A. work on commercials and odd-jobs like writing entrance exams for rich people trying to get their three-year-olds into illustrious pre-K schools—there was always the lingering idea that as long as I stayed afloat, it’d all work out.

From Popula
On August 13, 2021
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Is the “journalism crisis” just a capitalism crisis?

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A roundtable on addressing the structural breakdown of media

From Popula
On August 12, 2021
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“Commoners’ food”

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Fried chicken, the signature dish of Korean neoliberalism

From Popula
On August 10, 2021

Freedom to Make Art* (*restrictions apply)

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Afghanistan's troubled film history, examined in a new documentary

From Popula
On August 6, 2021
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Topic: Surprise, Drowsy Cows RIP, as Corrected (2,5,7,10)

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The magic of solving a cryptic crossword is in the joy of discovery. It’s a playful, thought-provoking, confounding, and strangely amusing pastime—a world away from solving standard crosswords, where, in all but the most subtle examples, cleverness and wordplay take a back seat to the exercise of memory and a kind of pattern recognition.

From Popula
On August 4, 2021
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Have You Ever Had a Crush???!?!

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A call for submissions from our friends at the new CAPE MAG

From Popula
On July 29, 2021
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Between Infodemic and Pandemic: The Paranoid Style in Taiwanese Politics

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Conspiracy theories are apparently a side effect of the Delta variant in Taiwan

From Popula
On July 22, 2021
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Loss For Words: A Meditation on the Ubiquity of Bizarre Corporate Language

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An entire, incredibly lucrative subsection of San Francisco was obsessed with its own specialness, obsessed with its own branding, obsessed with rhizomatically repopulating the place with the wealthy and the connected and the well-named and the delicious and the glossy and the expensive and the beautifully off-kilter and the minimalist and the carefully plated and the monetized history and sun sliding down over the ocean and the fig trees.

From Popula
On July 20, 2021
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Is Extinction a Tragedy, or a Crime?

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Crime and punishment in the illegal wildlife trades

From Popula
On July 12, 2021
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‘Zola’ is the Only Movie

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Who you gonna be tonight

From Popula
On July 9, 2021
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Closer to the Nursing Home

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Is this the last magazine I'll read before I die?

From Popula
On July 8, 2021
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The Last Dirty Picture Show

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A love letter to the Tiki Adult Theater: "When it’s gone, where will all these lost souls go?" While Los Angeles used to be a hot spot for smut shacks, the Tiki is now the last show in town — the Studs, née Pussycat, Theater down Santa Monica Boulevard was, for years, the only other holdout, but no longer plays skin flicks. The Tiki, however, continues, in spite of it all, to screen three “very recent” ones on an endless loop, operating 24 hours a day. Time is purchased in four, eight, and 12-hour blocks; bottles of poppers, the only concessions, are sold at the box office for $20.

From Popula
On July 5, 2021
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Wherefore, qua, bonum: decrypting Indian legalese

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The English language arrived in India with the British colonists of the 17th century, giving rise to unique genres and variants, including some that characterize formal communications on the subcontinent to this day. “It seems that some judges have unrealised literary dreams,” one former judge told me. “Maybe it’s a colonial hangover, or the feeling that obfuscation is a sign of merit… It can then become a 300-page judgment, just pontificating."

From Popula
On July 1, 2021
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