After the Rhythm Nation With Janet Jackson's (woefully belated) acceptance into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, it's well past time for a broader reckoning with her place in popular culture, and especially the way she's challenged narratives in pop music. To me,
Every Single Video Prince Ever Made Prince was an astoundingly prolific artist, releasing nearly 40 albums under his own name(s), and thousands of songs for himself and others. His concerts were legendary, spellbinding from arenas to intimate clubs, flooring audiences around the world. But videos?
We’re (still) not being alarmist enough about climate change What if we had another 9/11, and nothing happened? Living in New York City, the one fantasy sport that everybody plays is real estate; we all like to imagine what it would be like to be able to afford
The price of relevance is fluency “You can’t say anything anymore! You can’t even make jokes!” There’s a constant complaint from people in positions of power, mostly men, who keep making the ridiculous assertion that they’re not able to speak in public.
Seventeen is (Almost) Just Another Day For the first decade after the attacks, I basically didn’t go anywhere near that part of downtown. A business meeting would take me a few blocks away, and I’d feel that tightness in my chest, that presence, and
iphone A Much Faster Way to Charge your iPhone Forgive me, for I am about to commit gadget blogging. I've been using an iPhone X since they came out, and almost from the start my battery has charged between two and three time the default speed of most people's
Unfollowing Everybody At this point, there's nothing novel about noticing that social media is often toxic and stressful. But even aside from those concerns, our social networks are not things we generally think of as requiring maintenance or upkeep, even though we
cartoons The Cartoon Kit Anything worth doing is worth doing meta. And Tom and Jerry is no exception. I've been trying to learn a bit more about the various eras of the Tom and Jerry cartoon, from the mega-racist Hanna-Barbera originals to the extremely
music It's like Shazam — for your face! Today's most fun new Glitch app is Record Player, which lets you upload a photo, then uses Google Cloud's Vision API to recognize the image and play it on Spotify. It works really well, but the real fun starts when
tech 12 Things Everyone Should Understand About Tech Tech is more important than ever, deeply affecting culture, politics and society. Given all the time we spend with our gadgets and apps, it’s essential to understand the principles that determine how tech affects our lives. Understanding technology today
tech The Missing Building Blocks of the Web At a time when millions are losing trust in the the web’s biggest sites, it’s worth revisiting the idea that the web was supposed to be made out of countless little sites. Here’s a look at the
Digital Culture, Pop Culture, and New York On Being An American I was born and raised outside of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. A few weeks ago, an editor of The Patriot-News, the local paper, asked me for my thoughts regarding the anniversary of the attacks. To put things in context, I was always
music Have the Hip Hop BBQ I keep having to explain a principle I arrived at a few years ago when I realized the modern conservative movement is grounded almost entirely in a contrived sense of grievance, predicated on a false victimhood of its supporters. (That’
tech Masters in Business A few months ago, I got the wonderful opportunity to talk to Barry Ritholtz, who’s best known as a Bloomberg View columnist and for his excellent “Masters in Business” podcast, but whom I’ve known online for many years.
film Every Last Jedi This is a spoiler-filled first set of reactions to Star Wars: The Last Jedi. The ultimate courage of what Rian Johnson has done here, is that he fully embraced what it is to be a director who obviously grew up
web Underscores, Optimization & Arms Races A dozen years ago, the web started to reshape itself around major companies like Google. We can understand the genesis of today’s algorithmic arms race against the tech titans just by looking at a single character. This is all
Star Wars Minute! In advance of the upcoming release of The Last Jedi, excitement is building for all things Star Wars, so I’m thrilled to share that I got to be a guest on the inestimable Star Wars Minute podcast. The show
4th Day of November... I struggled for a long time when the nice folks at the Heat Rocks podcast asked me which Prince album I’d want to talk about on their show. Oliver Wang and Morgan Rhodes run an amazing podcast, where every
Best Of Speaking at the Obama Foundation Summit I’ve been fortunate enough to get to speak at a lot of events over the years, in front of an amazing variety of audiences around the world. But I can honestly say I’ve never been more impressed by
nyc Sixteen is Letting Go Again A couple of times a week, I end up walking by the World Trade Center, either the new train station at the site, or one of the new malls that’s sprung up flanking the memorial. It’s a normal
tech The Printer We Need Printers: They don’t work. Here’s my wishlist for one that might. I am really enjoying my work at Fog Creek Software, so I don’t have time to start a company right now, but I do have an
tech Apple is about to do something their programmers definitely don't want. Apple spent $5 billion on a beautiful new office, Apple Park. So it’s amazing they’re about to make an extremely costly, avoidable mistake: putting their coders in an open-plan layout. I work at Fog Creek Software, where our
The bar is so damn low. It’s always great to reconnect with old friends, and that especially holds true for old Internet friends. That must be why it was such a delight to spend some time chatting with Ana Marie Cox, as a guest on
tech The Importance Of Interaction Developer relations and tech evangelism is one of those fields that just doesn’t get enough respect. Having done the work for years myself, I think it’s a wildly under-examined field and very few businesses do enough to properly
