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I have Type 2 diabetes. It didn’t happen overnight. It began quietly: elevated liver enzymes, then cholesterol. Each problem had a fix. A pill. A specialist. Statins brought the cholesterol down—but, I later discovered, at the cost of insulin sensitivity. No one was managing the whole system. Each intervention made sense in isolation. But taken… Continue reading Not Everything Can Be KISS’d
At 5 in the afternoon above Dubai,the sun hovers at twenty-three degrees—a pale apricot smudge in a post-storm sandy haze,draping Bluewaters in a light that flatters ruin.I’m reclined—gently, necessarily—on a chaise longue angled for recovery.My neck, still nursing its grievancefrom a tumble in the waves,reminds me that a middle-aged manpays a price for youth’s joys.Hugo… Continue reading Azimuth 268º
Dear Massad Boulos, As you know, Lebanon elected a new President earlier this year after a two-year interregnum that saw the country sink even deeper into failed statehood. No sign so far that it will be surfacing any time soon under the new Aoun. Echoing the national despair, one MP cast a throwaway vote for… Continue reading MLGA
I never took an interest in London. Soaked in drizzle and beer for openers, boiled beef as an entrée, and constipation for dessert. Why bother? London, I figured, is what happens when an empire is forced into retirement and has to downsize - a damp city of souvenirs, visible only in the dim light reflected… Continue reading A New Deal with London
With the guardrails down and the bus dangerously tilting into the ravine on the turns, the talking heads upfront joined together to repeat the refrain "Shalom, he should just go home" on the daily news as the First Amendment was turned into an irrelevant detail. This post was supposed to be a follow-up to My… Continue reading Please stop.
Niall Ferguson cautioned that empires unravel from within when the institutions meant to sustain them weaken under the strain of their own inefficacy, eroding public trust as they cease to fulfill their intended purpose. The American empire has not yet disintegrated, but its foundations have been critically undermined. Once destabilization reaches a tipping point, the… Continue reading The Guardrails Are Gone: How Institutional Power’s Decline Will Be the Death of US All
I don't mean your clothes succumbing to centripetal forces during the spin cycle. I am referring to the mass churning of content that has reached a nauseating crescendo - everywhere and all the time. Your inbox, the local deli, department store, tvOS - stuff is just being ejaculated onto us in a streaming orgy of… Continue reading Rubbish in Rapid Rotation
Felix Saxa sat down with Renard Baudrillard to discuss his project "Digital Fossil." The following is a transcript of their discussion. Felix : Welcome, dear listeners, to another edition of our podcast "Shooting the Sh*t and Eating Some Food." Today, I have the pleasure of speaking with Renard Baudrillard, an artist who rejects that label… Continue reading An Interview with Renard Baudrillard on The Digital Fossil
In late 2009 I took a job on a military camp in the Horn of Africa. The initial experience was humbling; cot for a bed, no personal internet access, communal showers and toilets, hot sun on fair skin. The work was good, and fulfilling. The host nation was and remains one of the poorest on… Continue reading Out of America
A Poem by River Dempsey Most Eloquently Composed Upon the Occasion of Hector Dupaix's Ill-Tongued Reproach of Those Esteemed Individuals Who, in Their Exercise of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, Have Chosen to Identify in the Likeness of Hoses; Addressing Such Maligning as an Offense to Reason and Nature, and Rendering in Verse… Continue reading The Hose
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