Rick Powell

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verisimilar

/ˌvɛrəˈsɪmələr/

The adjective verisimilar describes something that appears to be true or real but may not be. If you want to impress your friends, remark on the verisimilar portrait of lost love in that foreign film you all went to see.

Verisimilar comes from Latin. You’ll notice the word similar at the end, which means “like.” Veri- co... See more

Hate is the back of the mirror, without which you would just have a piece of glass. “It can be positive,” Neil Tennant of the Pet Shop Boys wrote in a terrific 1992 polemic on the virtues of hate. “It throws into relief all the things you know you like. It tells you, by elimination, what you’re about… To hate a lot of things is tantamount to really

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Hamish McKenzie: On social media, posers are often given the most status points, and so we’re left with a misleading idea of authority; it seems the people who are loudest in their claims to be experts — the ones we hear from most on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube — are the ones to be most wary of. When self-proclaimed experts are ultimately reveal... See more

How can a work rediscover its solidity, its fruitfulness, its fragility, its own density or possible opacity, in short, its problematic virtues?

FEW THINGS ARE more mysterious than someone else’s favorite film. To hear it named is to be puzzled. You appreciate its merits but not how it can be preferable to all others. Perhaps your favorite film isn’t the one that you like best but the one that likes you best. It confirms you on first encounter, and goes on to shape you in some irreversible

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what if public libraries were open late every night and we could engage in public life there instead of having to choose between drinking at the bar and domestic isolation