“

So where does taste live? Guernica’s contributors find it emerges in the in-between—along the spectrum of emotion and intellect, that nebulous space between love and what we think we love, primal pleasure and learned appreciation, gut revulsion and reasoned dismissal. Consciously or not (and now more than ever) taste is a performance, a projection of our selves into the world—or a set of actions, symbols, and vocabularies by which we assess others. Whether on Pinterest or at a farmers’ market, through celebrity-endorsed sneakers or lit-mag tote bags, taste is reified by the image it makes.

But more urgently, taste is a potent organizing principal, our insidious means to decide who we’re with and who we’re against, who belongs and who doesn’t—and further, to cloak political and structural boundaries under the softening light of subjectivity. Taste, as many of the pieces in this issue insist, does not live autonomously, superficially, within each of us. Instead, it emanates outward—a tool of the powerful, wielded to regulate our differences.

”

Guernica, “The Boundaries of Taste” 

June 26, 2015

In my senior year of high school, I participated in a Moot Court (thank you, “Gov Team” teacher) on the very same question that has now been answered. I’m happy to say that I’ve since grown to see the question of marriage equality not simply as an academic question – it is a question whose answer has profound impact on those I hold dear, a question whose answer now allows us to sing with a bit more gusto (and a bit less hypocrisy), come this July 4th, that we are the “Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.”

(yes, cross-posted from my Facebook)

Ask Culture and Guess Culture

Source

“One of my wife’s distant friends has attempted to invite herself to stay with us, again,” writes the exasperated owner of a prime 2 bedroom apartment in New York City in this Ask MetaFilter question. “She did this last March, and we used the excuse of me starting a new job and needing to do x,…

This explains so much about many awkward and confusing (at least for me) interactions: 

In some families, you grow up with the expectation that it’s OK to ask for anything at all, but you gotta realize you might get no for an answer. This is Ask Culture. 

In Guess Culture, you avoid putting a request into words unless you’re pretty sure the answer will be yes. Guess Culture depends on a tight net of shared expectations. A key skill is putting out delicate feelers. If you do this with enough subtlety, you won’t even have to make the request directly; you’ll get an offer. Even then, the offer may be genuine or pro forma; it takes yet more skill and delicacy to discern whether you should accept.

All kinds of problems spring up around the edges. If you’re a Guess Culture person — and you obviously are — then unwelcome requests from Ask Culture people seem presumptuous and out of line, and you’re likely to feel angry, uncomfortable, and manipulated.

If you’re an Ask Culture person, Guess Culture behavior can seem incomprehensible, inconsistent, and rife with passive aggression.

I was definitely brought up in an Ask Culture family. 

More on this in The Atlantic. 

Tagged by meesely. I haven’t saved music to my phone in a long while (and haven’t needed to since acquiring Spotify Premium), but I think that what follows is a fairly good representation of my preferences over the past few years (although it’s not a good representation of the past few months, perhaps). (I’ll admit to leaving out the U2 songs that appeared, because I’ve never listened to those songs. Ever.)

You can tell a lot about someone by the music they listen to. Hit shuffle on your iPod/iPhone/iTunes/media player and write down the first 10 songs. Then pass this on to 10 people.

Mariee, “Icarus Eye”
Sarah McLachlan, “Building a Mystery”
Broken Social Scene, “Passport Radio”
Department of Eagles, “Gravity’s Greatest Victory/Rex Snorted Coke”
Thisness, “02″ (from a lengthy recording of KALX show three V.I.) 
St. Vincent, “Champagne Year”
The Civil Wars, “Girl with the Red Balloon”
Metric, “Help I’m Alive” 
Cat Power, “Paths of Victory”
Adele, “One and Only”

Tagging … anyone who would enjoy doing this. 

“The other thing is that these girls, they are fifteen and sixteen, and the veil has become a symbol of rebellion here in France, which is really ironical. These girls are born here, three generations are here, yet everybody calls her an “Arab.” I mean, if there is a good football player, then they are French! But as soon as they are poor, they are Arabs. Nobody forgets about the fact that they are Arabs. So, it’s all of these things. Nobody wanted to point to the real problems and the real problem was that. So of course I was completely against that. As a matter of fact, France came with this idea that France is secular, and for a secular society, and for secularism, the veil is not possible. But what about when the Pope died, and everyone was mourning? And everyone was saying, “The Pope, what a nice man, what a wonderful man” but for Christ’s sake, this Pope, he has gone to Africa, and he has said to people not to use contraception, and fifty percent of Africa, they have AIDS. This guy, he is a killer, and he is an asshole. They say: he has made the revolution. What kind of revolution has he made that I don’t know about? And then they say he’s a man of peace. Come on, he can sit in his church and he’s not going to say to people, go out and kill yourself. I mean, he is just doing his duty. So when they talk about secularism, then they should look at themselves.”

Marjane Satrapi, from an interview with Asia Society 

What I did upon finishing Persepolis: 

(1) Look up the Wikipedia page for Persepolis.

(2) Look up the Wikipedia page for Marjane Satrapi. 

(3) Google “marjane satrapi interview.”

I wish more people would read this, and think about it every time the claim that France is “anti-religion” and “secular” is raised. No, I’m sorry, that “anti-religion” sentiment – generally directed toward France’s Muslim population – carries a strong element of racist “xenophobia.” (I have xenophobia in quotes, because this sentiment is often directed towards those born and raised in France.)