Elan Kiderman

Dirt is a daily email about entertainment. Elan Kiderman Ullendorff on @80snewsscreens. When Jean Bauldrillard said in Simulacra and Simulation that "it is dangerous to unmask images, since they dissimulate the fact that there is nothing behind them," he wasn't even privy to our current context, in which platforms serve as superspreaders of the never-ending stream of images generated by people ("creators") and algorithms ("generators").

You are reading Straight to Spam, a newsletter designed to be delivered directly to your spam folder “Galaxy J8 has joined your Personal Meeting Room. Thank you for choosing Zoom,” read the email in my inbox. A familiar script; maybe you’ve received some like it. But this one was peculiar, because the Zoom room in question existed solely as a classroom, and I’m not teaching this semester, particularly not at 8:34 on a Monday evening.

Some may say that cheesecake is food of the gods—those people include the ancient Greek Olympians, who feasted on a flour cake filled with cheese and honey after their pentathlon competitions. The ancient Greeks were already aware of the connections between physical aptitude and lifestyle choices—and the athletes engaged in a variety of restrictive diets believed to enhance their performances, such as xerophagia, a diet consisting of dry foods.