July 2021
Blank Page Theory
![Blank Page Theory](https://berfrois.s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/uploads/2021/07/18163250/Revelations-small-400x90.png)
At first I wanted to write only at night. The great romantic writers I admired wrote mostly in the witching hours. Can you imagine Kafka lugging his laptop to Starbucks at seven in the morning?
Read MoreBullying 2.0
![Bullying 2.0](https://berfrois.s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/uploads/2021/07/18163306/Box-Lobby-Hero-detail-400x90.png)
The obvious righteousness of these online crusaders meant they rarely recognised themselves as the aggressors or bullies...
Read MoreThe Grand Danger!
![The Grand Danger!](https://berfrois.s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/uploads/2021/07/18163951/Panthoen-detail-frontpage-400x90.png)
Why was the family heir sent abroad, often when still a teenager, at a time when travel was indisputably and widely acknowledged to be dangerous?
Read MoreCulturally Embedded Sanctimony
![Culturally Embedded Sanctimony](https://berfrois.s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/uploads/2021/07/18164054/NYT-night-400x90.png)
Moral superiority and cancel culture only further alienate the people already excluded from meritocracy and elite cultural capital...
Read MoreGurped Out
![Gurped Out](https://berfrois.s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/uploads/2021/07/18164041/Prison-400x90.png)
On any given day, walking around the yard, one was almost certain to hear one prisoner ask another, “Hey, man, got any gurps?” I knew it had something to do with drugs...
Read MoreCow Banker
![Cow Banker](https://berfrois.s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/uploads/2021/07/18163405/Cows-400x90.png)
At first, users paid real money for the upkeep of virtual chickens, sheep, bees, and cattle, earning cash back in the game by keeping the animals alive. Riding high on the good publicity, Farm Bank soon went one step further, launching real-life farms...
Read MoreBooked Out
![Booked Out](https://berfrois.s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/uploads/2021/07/18164049/Covers-400x90.png)
These books destined me to an unbalanced life, like a poorly packed U-Haul that leans too far to one side...
Read MoreLamenting the Obsolescence of the DVD and Its Distinctive Viewing Practices
![Lamenting the Obsolescence of the DVD and Its Distinctive Viewing Practices](https://berfrois.s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/uploads/2021/07/18164234/The-Birds-1-400x90.png)
After the local video-game arcade and the local comic-book store, the finest establishment on earth was the local video-rental outlet, a paradise of garish rectangular boxes leaning precariously on wooden shelves divided roughly by genre...
Read MoreMoon Ponderous
![Moon Ponderous](https://berfrois.s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/uploads/2021/07/18163446/Untitled-1-400x90.png)
It’s argued that you feel all those things at other moments in the month but take note of the full moon because full moons are memorable, and then make a mistaken connection...
Read MoreIt’s All Argentinian to Arturo Desimone
![It’s All Argentinian to Arturo Desimone](https://berfrois.s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/uploads/2021/07/18163506/Buenos-Aires-400x90.png)
Have they clocked our nocturnal ways that bite at kleptomaniac clockhands in our capitals?
Read More‘Another time, they talked about mermaids’
![‘Another time, they talked about mermaids’](https://berfrois.s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/uploads/2021/07/18163548/Stellaris-400x90.png)
It is hard to distinguish what Chinese gamers truly want, and what the industry, or the Chinese Communist party, has decided for them...
Read MoreSupply-Side Innovations and the Opioid Cycle
![Supply-Side Innovations and the Opioid Cycle](https://berfrois.s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/uploads/2021/07/18164345/Poppy-statue-1-400x90.png)
There are two competing perspectives about the cause of the opioid explosion, and they lead to different policy prescriptions...
Read MoreFor Van Gogh, the Camargue huts were active…
![For Van Gogh, the Camargue huts were active…](https://berfrois.s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/uploads/2021/07/18164329/Cottages-frontpage-400x90.png)
Humble dwellings like the Camargue huts invite us to tell a different kind of story about human-environment relationships, one less focused on human beings’ mastery of nature...
Read MorePeter Pans
![Peter Pans](https://berfrois.s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/uploads/2021/07/18163911/Pan-400x90.png)
Who or what is Peter Pan? Peter stands for a deep psychological desire in all of us to return to childhood and escape into an earlier, freer state of being...
Read MoreThe tea should be strong. For a pot holding a quart, if you are going to fill it nearly to the brim, six heaped teaspoons would be about right...
Read MoreThe thing about new blooms is that they tend to bleed— / Those petals birthed / hugging close / that come warmer weather are tricked into jumping away...
Read MoreI spent a good part of my childhood at home staring outside my bedroom window, following the trail of planes approaching the nearby Paris airport in the sky from my banlieue. I envied the passengers...
Read MoreThe tea should be strong. For a pot holding a quart, if you are going to fill it nearly to the brim, six heaped teaspoons would be about right...
Read MoreThe thing about new blooms is that they tend to bleed— / Those petals birthed / hugging close / that come warmer weather are tricked into jumping away...
Read MoreI spent a good part of my childhood at home staring outside my bedroom window, following the trail of planes approaching the nearby Paris airport in the sky from my banlieue. I envied the passengers...
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