Vanity Foul
After a hundred years of performing the so-called “hand job” of journalism, the puff piece is giving way to a more enlightened form called the power piece. The successful power piece acknowledges the white cis male status quo and can help reshape the world its subjects and readers inhabit. When it fails, it perpetuates the same old same old it claims to subvert, puffing up activism instead of celebrity.
I Dream of Content-Trash
Now we can outsource imagination.
The Tragedy of the Commons
It’s hard living with other people. It’s also hard to live with a co-living startup that erodes cities’ social fabric while marketing itself as a communal experience.
On Poisoned Ground
The city of East Chicago built an elementary school and public housing on a known polluted industrial site. The self-serving web of business interests and politicians who green-lighted these projects in this segregated community embody the term “environmental racism.”
The Afterlife of Newsies
The Newspaper Boy Strike of 1899 was unlikely fodder for a Disney movie, but the 1989 film taught a generation about the true meaning of a fun job, great friends, and the necessity of organized labor.
The Loneliness of the Long Distance Rocker
The lead singer of the Old 97’s discusses the way digitization has disrupted the collaborative nature of a musical community whose members treat each other with respect, even when they’re making money.
American Pimps
Many NFL players are recognizing that their sports careers are lies, because the owners don’t care about players’ health or longevity, or validate their identity as black men in America. Seeing American professional football through the lens of the pimp game makes clear the power, exploitation, collusion and immorality at the heart of a business that treats players like property and gaslights the viewer.
The Problem with Muzak
By reducing songs to “skip rates” and curated playlists, Spotify turns music to wallpaper and poses a threat to music itself.
The President of Blank Sucking Nullity
“It is not quite fair to say that Donald Trump lacks core beliefs, but to the extent that we can take apart these beliefs they amount to Give Donald Trump Your Money and Donald Trump Should Really Be on Television More.”
Death Trips
Is dying alone the worst possible thing that can happen? With the onset of death doulas, you need not impose on friends and relatives in your inevitable decline or suffer the shame of kodokushi, the Japanese term for ‘“lonely death,” meaning the quiet but messy end of a solitary life.’