Catching my eye in the last few days:   – As I wrote in Grist: mixing financial incentives with the sharing economy affects both intentions and outcomes.   – The library is one of the most obvious and entrenched manifestations of the sharing economy.  As the nature of books changes, libraries are discovering other thingsRead moreRead more

“But seriously what if Spin Doctors’ "Two Princes” is really a treatise on the dual leadership of the principality of Andorra?“   …Quoting one’s own Twitter feed on one’s own blog might be the very pinnacle of web-enabled narcissism.  But while it took a good deal of effort to craft a comprehensible 140-character pun encompassingRead moreRead more

I recently wrote a couple pieces about sharing for Grist, and it’s been well-timed.  As I mentioned here previously, I am – for the first time – living alone, and I have found it difficult beyond imagining; the existential distress at such isolation (I am carless, Internet-less, and far) is more than I ever anticipated. Read moreRead more

White supremacy is a tricky concept to talk about, because for most people it calls to mind very specific images: plantations, burning crosses, lynchings, the Klan.  But white supremacy isn’t just about violent oppression.  It’s a strategy so enmeshed in American history and policy and culture that we often don’t recognize the mechanisms which ensureRead moreRead more

I am not a radical. But more than anything the Iraq War taught me the folly of mocking radicalism. It seemed, back then, that every “sensible” and “serious” person you knew – left or right – was for the war. And they were all wrong. Never forget that they were all wrong. And never forgetRead moreRead more

Lots of interesting things have been making their way through my browser lately:   – Retirement as Ratzinger’s most progressive legacy.   – Reconceptualizing the way we think and talk about sex… with a metaphor which actually implies – nay, requires! – the agency and consent of all participants.   – As a comedian, IRead moreRead more

Type “Main Street Disneyland” into a web browser and the Google results are quick and stunning – four and a half million instant electronic reports.  "Hollywood" is often used as a dismissive catchall of the improbably fantastic, but it is – Disney: The American Mecca – that is the more persistently insidious purveyor of culturalRead moreRead more

The music critic for “The New Yorker” – one of my favorite magazines – hates, with a disdainful and fiery passion, the Foo Fighters.  Who are not one of my favorite bands, but my all-time favorite band.  It’s rather obnoxious, not only to put up with Sasha Frere-Jones’s occasional “witty” condescensions regarding the Davey GrohltonRead moreRead more

Marco Rubio is being upheld – water-bottle-gaffes aside – as the new face of the Republican party, taking the baton from Bobby Jindal as the right-wing’s token person of color.  Per this Colorlines headline, his task is improbable: to make the endemic racism of today’s GOP palatable to Latinos.  But while this formulation might sitRead moreRead more

Four and a half years after the second “X-Files” feature film was released – nine years after the series ended its nine-season run as the show that, alongside “The Simpsons,” put FOX on the map as a network – fans are calling for a third film, and there are indications that the studio is listening.Read moreRead more