• Describing the Past to See the Present

    In this clip from the documentary on Walter Benjamin’s death, various historians consider why this effort to understand that his death may not have been a suicide is important. Regarding Walter Benjamin: “One of his important contributions was his interest in describing the past as a means of understanding the current situation he was living… Continue Reading

  • Who Killed Walter Benjamin?

    The trailer above for the documentary on Walter Benjamin’s death in Spain. Reported as a suicide, but many facts result in a necessary reexamination of that assumption, 60 years after his death.

  • Walter Benjamin Echo

    I am gathering fragments on Walter Bemjamin, as I work on a project. I am aware of Benjamin, as most who ever took philosophy courses in art and technology. But there is actually much more important work and relationships in his short life. Again, these are fragments… His best friend was Gershom Scholem, who met… Continue Reading

  • Innovative Russian Programmer’s Choice of Exile

    Article in NYT on entrepreneur and programmer Pavel Durov with wicked sense of both humor and irony. He created a highly successful FB-type app, but eventually sold it, because of pressure by Putin’s government to invade user privacy. He has since gone on to create Telegram, a messaging app that is completely free. This includes… Continue Reading

  • The 25th Hour

    Incredible film (2002), by Spike Lee, starring Edward Norton.  The language in the film and each scene, is like a complete story of it’s own. I have never seen a film with such a beautiful flow of language as in this work; layered within the larger narrative in a larger truth.

  • Mongolian Voice

    The clip above is from the Mongolian film, Khadak. A portrait of the overlay of a numeric grid (economy) onto a nomadic people. But in Khadak, the grid is broken. The protagonist and the woman above lead the transition, undermining the coal industry and all it has taken from them, returning their community to what… Continue Reading

  • Trust is True

    “You gain the strength, experience, and confidence by every experience where you really stop to look fear in the face… You must do the thing you think you cannot do” Someone asked me the other day about my history. It was funny, because the only thing I remembered at that moment, (that I truly felt… Continue Reading

  • Everything

    Music: Pink Floyd, Learning to Fly Link to song in Apple Music Lyrics: Into the distance a ribbon of black Stretched to the point of no turning back A flight of fancy on a windswept field Standing alone my senses reeled A fatal attraction holding me fast how Can I escape this irresistible grasp? Can’t… Continue Reading