Eleanor Stern

Featured in: Favicon

jpost.com

substack.com Favicon

timesofisrael.com Favicon

sun-sentinel.com Favicon

jta.org

forward.com Favicon

israelnationalnews.com Favicon

jweekly.com Favicon

thenewinquiry.com Favicon

64parishes.org + 5 more

Articles

Tiktok LLM

Jun 24, 2024 | thenewinquiry.com | Eleanor Stern

Agrinning young couple points upward toward a caption reading “our simple seggs aftercare routine.” They playact the steps: shower, snuggle, bed. Scroll: next video, a woman in sunglasses tells us, “once again in Central Florida, Yahtzees are out in numbers protesting.” Behind her, green-screened, a photo of men in red shirts and black masks, holding flags emblazoned with swastikas.
On Wearing Headphones

May 2, 2024 | wickedtongue.substack.com | Eleanor Stern

I took my dog to the park today. I was wearing headphones. My dog caught sight of another dog and they started running around together. The other dog’s owner, a man probably in his 30’s, was wearing headphones too. We smiled and nodded at each other and then sort of drifted around the park at a slight distance, following the dogs, listening to our separate noises.
The Dying Pelican

Feb 29, 2024 | 64parishes.org | Eleanor Stern |Chris Turner-Neal

In an 1880 editorial for the New Orleans City Item, Lafcadio Hearn, chronicler of late nineteenth-century New Orleans life, imagined the internal monologue of a pelican who had once lived at Jackson Square: “I was a Symbol. I am still a Symbol in my ghostliness. I betoken the old-fashioned life of the Pelican State that is passing away. I represent the quaintness that is dying out, and the antiquated thing that shall soon become as ghostly as myself.
"It don't," "Fuck", The Tiffany Problem, and the Period Drama

Dec 13, 2023 | wickedtongue.substack.com | Eleanor Stern

I absolutely adore a period piece: the more balls and gowns and wistful strains of violin music the better. And we period-drama lovers are living in heady times, because, as of the past few years, there’s a new version of the genre. I’m thinking of things like The Great, and the new Persuasion adaptation with Dakota Johnson, and Dickinson, and a new Edith Wharton adaptation called The Buccaneers, and Bridgerton.
On Pro-Palestine Jews

Oct 31, 2023 | wickedtongue.substack.com | Eleanor Stern

In certain segments of the Jewish institutional world, each pro-Palestine Jew is considered a failure of Jewish education. If that were true, it would mean that Jewish education is churning out failures right and left, because there are quite a lot of us. Luckily for Jewish educational institutions, I don’t think that’s the case. I am not pro-Palestine in spite of my Jewish education. I am pro-Palestine because of it.
On AI Art and the Shape of the Brain

Oct 12, 2023 | wickedtongue.substack.com | Eleanor Stern

“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.”-James Baldwin Wicked Tongue is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
Biomedical Explanations and the Fear of Fiction

Sep 19, 2023 | wickedtongue.substack.com | Eleanor Stern

My friend Mitali, of this substack, often says that I hate “biomedical explanations.” The term is something of a misnomer—for one thing, I obviously believe that the biomedical sciences are an essential lens through which to understand the world but also, more pertinently, because the phenomena that fall under the label of “biomedical explanations” aren’t always linked to biology or medicine at all.
Folk Etymologies

Jun 22, 2023 | thenewinquiry.com | Eleanor Stern

A sensitive speaker of English could consider removing the phrase “rule of thumb” from their vocabulary. The term has its roots in domestic violence: a British law stipulated that a man could beat his wife provided he used a switch no wider than his own thumb. This was the history referenced by The Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative in a list intended for use in Stanford University’s IT department, which made the rounds online just before Christmas last year.