Currently Reading
I’ve started reading fiction again. I’m not entirely sure when I entirely stopped. I never stopped reading (unlike some people), but at some point I convinced myself that I was too busy with research to bother with novels, and that when I wanted to scratch that itch I could invest a long Saturday in watching some epic, corpus callosum-expanding non-linear epic movie, or at least some twisty, buzzy prestige TV mini-series.
Fast forward a few years, and every 2.5 hour “epic” movie could have been a taut 90 minute thriller, every premium streaming TV series could have been a movie (epic or otherwise), and Hollywood’s alliance with dipshit private equity and fascistic Silicon Valley has me boycotting streaming subscriptions in favor of scouring garage sales and used book stores for “new” sources of entertainment. Continue reading “Currently Reading”
Richman’s ‘Meh’ Idea
My eight-year-old daughter wants to enter a thirty year-old trivia contest-cum-lottery she found in the back of the 100th volume of The Baby-Sitters Club. I’m going to help her, because I’m curious about how long a New York book publisher, or its star author, might maintain a P.O. Box in Jefferson, MO to handle fan mail about a book series about an improbably successful small business enterprise run by a cluster of 11-13-year-olds in a made-up Connecticut suburb. Continue reading “Richman’s ‘Meh’ Idea”
[VIDEO] On “The Rick Smith Show” Discussing Mamdani, Strikes
Op-Ed: Mamdani Is Right To Side With The Nurses
Mayor John Lindsay famously faced a massive citywide strike of bus and subway workers as his first challenge in office. The Transport Workers Union Local 100 contract expired at the stroke of midnight on Jan. 1, 1966, just as Lindsay was sworn in. The strike was finally settled 11 days later, with union leaders jailed at Lindsay’s insistence for leading an “illegal” work stoppage.
Legendary TWU president Mike Quill suffered an ultimately fatal heart attack in prison, after wishing the judge who did Lindsay’s bidding “drop dead in his black robes.”
This is what some in the press have suggested towards Mayor Mamdani, who has joined with the 15,000 nurses striking against three big hospitals. Continue reading “Op-Ed: Mamdani Is Right To Side With The Nurses”