Tag: pandemic

I had the idea to start a podcast about the Beach Boys’ lately acclaimed orchestral-pop record Pet Sounds during the bleak winter of 2021, as the first COVID lockdown was approaching. I had just watched the 2014 biopic Love and Mercy, which, as part of its mythologizing of the album’s or...

Sony, the gaming industry giant, has triumphed over supply chain hurdles and pandemic-related challenges, as it proudly announces that the PlayStation 5 (PS5) supply is now ‘well-stocked.’ This significant achievement comes as welcome news for gaming enthusiasts worldwide who have eagerl...

“No one will stop me from going to Crete during the Easter holidays,” the sister of the Greek prime minister, MP and former minister Dora Bakojanis said in an interview with television station SKAI. When asked by a reporter if this was the case for all citizens, she added: ‘God ...

Thanks predominantly to its geography and the human race’s inclination towards xenophobia, Greece has become heralded as the shield of Europe. A thankless task in a racist war where nobody wants to take the blame for the human rights atrocities being committed, but everyone wants a&n...

Berlin is a city brimming with the power of resilience. The last century has seen two world wars, two totalitarian regimes, mass migrations of people, and most recently the Coronavirus. Yet Berliners keep dancing: if their strength and wit remains the city’s lifeblood, the thumping bass of the...

While I feel like there are countless stories of people picking up new hobbies or revisiting old ones during the pandemic, I thought I would add a post about one of my hobbies that I picked back up again. During the pandemic, I picked running back up again. If not for the pandemic, I definitely woul...

There is a plethora of things that I miss about pre-COVID life in Mexico City, after a total of six years in this sprawling, confounding metropolis. However, what stands out above all are the wild, endless nights spent partying with throngs of people, whether at a humble apartment or sprawling night...

In March 2020, my son was born three weeks early in a Brooklyn hospital just as news reporters started to flood New Rochelle and the CDC debated the merits of masking. We didn’t know it at the time, but those extra three weeks meant that we could enjoy his birth unmasked, as a family, in a sta...

Currently, in the middle of the corona pandemic crisis, it might not be the right time to travel unfortunately. Last year I was on a little eurotrip and one of the places I visited was Prague in the Czech Republic. If you’re sitting at home watching Triple X and dreaming about where to go next...

OnMarch 11, 2020, the world came to an abrupt halt. Sporting events were canceled, schools were closed, and office buildings were empty. Americans stampeded the toilet paper aisle with all the ferocity of Black Friday. Across the globe, people cherished a two-week break before cabin fever set in. ...

Depending on who you read and how many military members they interviewed, sexual assault statistics range from an intolerable 8% to an incomprehensible 25% of military women. It happens to substantially fewer men, but the number is still tragic and disgusting. We’re talking tens of thousands a...

This difficult year is over: 2020 — good vision, perhaps foresight, undoubtedly some hindsight. In this essay we frame the year 2020 around society’s failed response to a triple pandemic. A failure of social structures so catastrophic that it has been metaphorically depicted as revelator...

Disclaimer: All the necessary citations, websites, and pages have been mentioned and hyperlinked, please visit them just by clicking on them. Starting with a movie reference, ‘Boy’ was released in 2010, by Taika Waititi, who won an Oscar for best-adapted Screenplay...

For the last few months, Americans have been asked to come together as a community to take care of each other by wearing masks, keeping our distance, and making sacrifices. These everyday inconveniences have saved countless lives, and could have saved more if we had started earlier. But as...

During most growing seasons certain species of plants (See the NYS DEC’s list of “prohibited plants”) are removed regularly to ensure the park and its surrounding greenspaces mimic the European pastoral landscape originally conceived of by Frederick Olmsted and Calvert Va...