Berfrois

January 2022

Rodeo Relationship

Rodeo Relationship

In Genesis 21:8, Abraham’s making a great feast. There’s lots of hamburgers. Oh, yeah. And spaghetti...

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Douglas Penick on Louis-Auguste Blanqui

Douglas Penick on Louis-Auguste Blanqui

In his extremity, Blanqui saw an infinity of parallel universes...

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Then Amy Died

Then Amy Died

Yes, I drank at the Hawley Arms and the Good Mixer in Camden, went to Trash, saw the Strokes at a tiny secret gig...

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Rachel Howard: Paradise Was Ash

Rachel Howard: Paradise Was Ash

The men stayed one year, then another. Where else to go?

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Way Back When

Way Back When

Despite the fantastic silliness of the in-game time-travel logistics, the promise of historical accuracy has been a major selling point of Assassin’s Creed since the eponymous first installment in 2007...

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Torments of Unclarity

Torments of Unclarity

Why did Husserl begin thinking about movement? What was it that inspired him to make what one might call “the movement turn”?

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The room refrigerator had gained five…

The room refrigerator had gained five…

I don’t mean to complain, but the thrice-daily knock-on-the-door announcing the delivery of food was no longer welcome...

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Orwell’s Perfect Boozer

Orwell’s Perfect Boozer

My favourite public-house, the Moon Under Water, is only two minutes from a bus stop, but it is on a side-street...

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Susan Daitch on Natan Mendelson, Jef de Wulf and Mazarin

Susan Daitch on Natan Mendelson, Jef de Wulf and Mazarin

Where do you put that memory as you sit in a café in Dizengoff Street, when it taps you on the shoulder and asks if this seat is taken?

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Wonderful Schrebergartens

Wonderful Schrebergartens

Through the plague year, nature has been the only permitted escape: the parks, the hikes...

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God, Justice, Love, Beauty: Remembering Jean-Luc Nancy

God, Justice, Love, Beauty: Remembering Jean-Luc Nancy

For Nancy, democracy is not a given form of government, with a fixed meaning, but a term whose meaning is in contestation...

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Wit, Sarcasm, Satire

Wit, Sarcasm, Satire

The Dud Avocado follows the period young Sally Gorce chooses an expat existence in Paris over college...

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America’s Ecstasy of Sanctimony

America’s Ecstasy of Sanctimony

Tribalism is binary: the grey zone of subtlety, ambiguity, complexity and hesitation shrinks almost to nothing. Mistakes become crimes...

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London’s Top Tips

London’s Top Tips

Concentrate your sweat on one story, rather than dissipate it over a dozen...

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Conservation of Conservation

Conservation of Conservation

The book runs the gamut of conservation techniques: specimen collection and field research, zoos and nature preserves, assisted colonization, and de-extinction via genetic rescue...

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A Spinozan Reading by Simon Calder

A Spinozan Reading by Simon Calder

Seventeenth-century Christian churches might have been better fortified against the challenges of modernity if they had embraced Spinozism...

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