Activity

What I’m trying to show by way of this conjecture is that, while modern communications technologies tend to make the space of even friendly disagreement feel more narrow and thus also more uncomfortable, hanging out is actually about the opposite. Hanging out, which involves killing time in the pre…

At the market, the girl picked out the wine: it was sunset-colored, more orange than red or pink. Émile had never heard of the type and, afterward, he could never manage to conjure up its name again. At her parents’ house, they opened the wine and had it alongside a first course of braised leeks in…

Such restricted movement between work and home is a problem, Oldenburg claims, because “social well-being and psychological health depend upon community. It is no coincidence that the ‘helping professions’ became a major industry in the United States as suburban planning helped destroy local public…

This is why reality television is often so unsatisfying. We know it is, so we try to fix the problem of our unsatisfaction by consuming more of it. Shields says that this results from two simultaneous conditions of being: as a culture, we are, he claims, both “desperate for authenticity and in love…

These questions help to focus attention on the narrator’s brother’s ambitions. Sonny explains that playing jazz is “the only thing” he wants to do[9]—the only thing that excites and compels him enough to keep him away from more destructive forces, namely heroin. His brother is opposed to the idea b…