Helen Duncan

When a Witchcraft Law Jailed an English Medium During WWII

It's no secret to readers of this blog that witchery–in the secular form that phenomenon has now taken–remains a scourge of civilization. What you may not know is that His Majesty's government took action to protect military secrets from a suspected witch during WWII. Eventually, Parliament had to step in…
November 21, 20245 Comments
Double Agent Poso

Poso Notices Generation Y

This past year especially, the media blitz trying to psyop people into conflating Generation Y and Millennials seems to have gone into overdrive. But reality always wins. Now, the inherent absurdity of predictive models that lump in kids born oline with those who didn't have cell phones until college is…
November 20, 202411 Comments
Third Place Mall

After the Mall: Can We Build a New Third Place?

It's hard for Zoomers to believe, but the mall was once not only the preferred place to shop, its importance went beyond a mere retail hub. The mall served as a gathering spot where people connected, interacted, and shared their lives beyond their homes and workplaces. Malls, which began in…
November 19, 202412 Comments
Adolescent Entertainment

How ACT Helped Kill Adolescent Entertainment

What are kids watching these days? Gen Y's nostalgic myopia for Saturday morning cartoons and PG-13 horror flicks can leave them blinkered when it comes to how their now-adolescent children are entertaining themselves. This piece, wherein Variety indulges in handwringing over teens rejecting smut in movies and TV shows, seems…
November 18, 202425 Comments
How JRPGs Made Anime Mainstream in the West

How JRPGs Made Anime Mainstream in the West

Japanese roleplaying games and anime share a symbiotic relationship. And that symbiosis transformed global entertainment. While anime gave Japanese media the potential to capture international audiences, JRPGs provided the crucial delivery system for popularizing anime aesthetics and storytelling conventions in the West. Together, they established a cross-cultural phenomenon that continues…
November 15, 20249 Comments
Anime Manga Style by Year

The Rise and Fall of the Western Anime Scene

If you are reading this, it's a near certainty you've encountered Japanese animation, or anime. It's also a good bet that your introduction to the mediuam came through the Pokémon craze of the 90s, Toonami's afternoon lineup, or a Studio Ghibli film. It's hard to conceive of now, but anime…
November 14, 20248 Comments
Signs of the Times, The Fourth Turning

How the Fourth Turning Explains the Mainstream Entertainment Collapse

In the past few years, the mainstream entertainment industry has been gripped by an epidemic of costly flops. These failures have spread across video games, movies, comic books, and more. Titles expected to be blockbuster hits—like Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, Skull and Bones, and Suicide Squad: Kill…
November 13, 202411 Comments
Trump - Student Debt

Trump’s Higher Ed Plan: A Template to Relieve Student Debt?

The student debt crisis is a ticking economic time bomb that threatens everyone from young borrowers unable to start families to older Americans facing financial hardship well into retirement. Regular readers know I've outlined a two-step plan to defuse the student usury crisis through government debt cancellation and seizing university endowments…
November 12, 202412 Comments
Kid Reading

Are Kids Really Reading Less, or Are We Just Measuring Wrong?

Hot on the heels of sensationalist fake news claiming that men hate reading, a recent piece in the Guardian breathlessly reports that reading is about as popular with children as spinach and homework. But are kids really reading less, or are they just measuring wrong? Like the "Men hate reading"…
November 8, 202410 Comments