The Horror of Eternal Isolation: Apeirophobia in Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s ‘Pulse’ (2001)

Pulse (Kairo) is a 2001 Japanese techno-horror film directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa. After having watched Kurosawa’s 1997 psychological thriller Cure (Kyua), widely regarded as a masterpiece, I was keen to check out more of his work. (Cure was inspired by David Fincher’s crime film Se7en; it likewise follows a series of gruesome murders and detectives…

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AI Should Be a Writing Tool, Not a Ghostwriter

In a few previous blog posts (see here, here, and here), I discussed the pitfalls of AI-generated written content. I’ve taken a pretty anti-AI stance in that respect. When I see this kind of content online, I don’t want to read it (I imagine many people also spot it as AI-generated and, once realising it…

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How Young is Too Young to Use Psychedelics?

For those who want to join a psychedelic clinical trial, psychedelic therapy session, or psychedelic retreat, you have to be a legal adult. For many clinicians, therapists, and retreat organisers, this means you have to be at least 18, although a small number of retreats restrict their services only to those 25 years and older.…

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Hamptonese: The Asemic Writing of James Hampton

James Hampton (1909–1964) was an American outsider artist. He worked as a janitor, and in his spare time, in secrecy, he built a large assemblage of religious art, made from scavenged materials: cardboard, plastic, glue, pins, tape, old furniture, jelly jars, aluminum and gold foil, shards of mirror, desk blotters held together with tacks, and…

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How Do Psychedelics Affect Musical Ability?

Listening to certain music while on psychedelics can be a highly memorable and therapeutic experience. Since the 1950s, the presence of a carefully curated playlist has been treated as an essential part of psychedelic-assisted therapy; so much so that psychedelic researchers have referred to music as ‘the hidden therapist’. (However, more recently, researchers have also…

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