Many people will be familiar with Anna Sorokin, also known as Anna Delvey, who was one of the most high-profile of the wave of hipster grifters during the 2010s. Today, she's beginning to pivot into some kind of reality TV/competition game show...

I find myself often having to explain to people how our reaction to certain events or actions depends a lot on the existing context where we were relating to someone, and while it's imperfect, there's an analogy I often use to do that job. Imagine a...

It's happened again! I'm an answer in today's Daily Crossword Puzzle over at Vulture, called The Single Puzzle This is thanks (once more) to Malaika Handa, seen previously in one of my earlier crossword appearances. Yes, this somehow happens fairly...

Somehow, improbably, I am again referenced in a crossword puzzle, this time it was the Sunday Boston Globe from back on April 17th. This time, I have Joon Pahk to thank! Who knew there were so many small fringe benefits to having a four-letter name...

Listen, I'm not the one making this assertion. It's Vulture's daily 10x10 crossword puzzle for May 17th, entitled "The Sexual Tension Puzzle", in which I am, apparently, a clue. (Sorry to spoil the answer to 25 Across!) Don't believe me?...

Sometimes I get an idea in my head and I just can’t let it go. For a few months, I’ve heard this nagging sound in the back of my mind, asking me to revisit Amadeus, one of my favorite films ever. Because who among us hasn’t heard Jeremih intone,...

I was incredibly honored to asked by the team at Cultivated Wit to be a judge for the latest Comedy Hack Day. (Thus becoming the first-ever returning judge!) I got to join Michael Ian Black, Aparna Nancherla, and Christina Warren as a judge of an...

Hot on the heels of Vanity Fair referencing my dad-ness on Twitter comes this Daily Dot piece examining Dad Twitter. I loved this part: If that sounds too cheesy, it’s on purpose. Displaying sincerity can feel like a radical act. To say you...

What a delight to be interviewed by Bijan Stephens for Vanity Fair, especially as so much of the focus was on me as a dad and a person, rather than just the usual tech stuff. In person, he projects an air of warm authority—more benevolent history...

Graham Crackers were created to stifle the libido. Marshmallows are a sickly-sweet, cloying blob that, when properly heated, becomes a sort of confectionery napalm, a substance suitable at first for administering serious burns and then cooling into...

All printers are 3D printers. Every device is wearable. All technology is mobile technology. And of course, this remains true: We're 30+ years into the PC revolution, and 3 things still never work: Voice chat, projectors & printers.—...

I forgot to mention it back in January when it happened, but I got to write my first piece for Businessweek, and there’s good news: It’s completely made up! I collaborated with my friends Paul Ford and Rusty Foster to imagine what the Consumer...

There’s been a delightful debate the last few days about how to accommodate the increasing number of people who want the experience of watching movies in public theaters to fit in with the way they live the rest of their lives: Connected to others,...

Anil: Just getting ready to liveblog this event. My first Apple liveblog ever. Pretty excited.10/23/2012 4:56:26 PM Anil: Tim Cook begins by saying that Apple sold out of iPhone 5. But we all know the truth, which is that Apple sold...

Oh, there’s been lots of chatter on the Internet this week! Where all did our conversations show up? Well, I’ll tell you. Pegged to the release of Jessica Valenti’s new book Why Have Kids, I (somewhat inexplicably!) participated in an NY Daily News...

Oh, hello there! I didn’t see you come in. Well, as long as you’re here, let’s look at some links around the web that I’ve found to be related to what we’ve been talking about here. My August column for Wired, talking about Microsoft’s return to its...

“If you can make it here…“, Jamie Beck, 2011 It’s been 84 years since talkies began their march towards dominance over silent film. But while 1.3 billion people in the U.S. bought a ticket for a motion picture with sound last year, I’d estimate that...

While I’ve always liked doing a lot of my notes and writing with pen and ink, I’ve never been particularly well-versed in the latest innovations and trends in the handwriting world. But! I know this is exactly the sort of endeavor that attracts...

From the list of “things I thought I’d never see”, Karl Pearson-Cater (he and I were colleagues about a decade ago) posted a great job listing at MinnPost, which lists the following requirement: You know the difference between an “em-dash” and an...

Starting last week, New York Magazine asked me to participate in a roundtable conversation with NYMag’s book critic Sam Anderson, Improv Everywhere‘s Charlie Todd, the New York Times‘ Virginia Heffernan and David Rees, creator of Get Your War On. In...

I regularly use about a dozen different social web services, with dozens more that I have accounts on. Historically, I’ve used one of a very small number of photos of myself as my avatar or user icon on these websites. The other evening, I spent...

I forgot to mention one point when I was blathering about lists earlier this week: The easiest way to get on them is by asserting, truthfully or not, that you don’t want to be on them. Behold, my incredible mancrushworthiness, from an entire list of...

I’ve been a fan of The KLF since I was a teenager, and just last week was reminded of one of their most amazing stunts. This is just the first of a five-part video showing the entire “Burn a Million Quid” documentary, and I think you don’t get to see...

Dedicated readers will recall me obsessing over and over-analyzingAuto-Tune in pop music earlier this year. It is, then, my pleasure to report that, thanks to the inestimable Sasha Frere-Jones, Auto-Tune analysis has gone legit. Behold, no less an...

As I had guessed, I’ve already had someone threaten to unsubscribe from my blog due to the publication of this week’s Snoop Dogg research. But I’ve had twice as many people say that they loved it, so I won’t let this blatant bullying censor this...

Beginning with our exploration of Snoop Dogg’s “Sensual Seduction”, we wandered into the history of vocoders, talkboxes, and the most nefarious of voice manipulation technologies, Auto-Tune. But it’s hard to express just how delightful horrible it...

Now that his single Sensual Seduction (a.k.a. Sexual Eruption) is in the Top 10, it’s official: Snoop Dogg can see the future. First, let’s pause to watch the best video in the history of anything, ever. (The song is about four minutes long, so...

From lolcats to goatse to the Zidane headbutt, I’ve been at least tenuously linked to some of the web’s most notable and notorious memes. Naturally, when I heard about ROFLCon, a conference being organized at Harvard to celebrate online memes and...

Tom Patterson, of the U.S. National Park Service, wrote a great paper five years ago on improved realism in NPS maps. There’s some very insightful analysis that was useful even to a layman like me. He covers a variety of techniques that increase...

From the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language has a delightful family tree of Indo-European languages, though I was kinda miffed at the omission of my parents’ native...

Maybe I’m just a pushover, but I felt like there was something very charming and sweet about this video of a school project that I found on YouTube. It’s a restaging of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar that takes place on the bridge of the Enterprise...

One of my favorite posts that I’ve ever written was Excel Pile, about people’s propensity for using Office tools like Microsoft Excel to track mundane parts of their lives, or even as tools of artistic expression. From that post three years...

Okay, sorry about all that silliness yesterday, we now return to serious, useful, and relevant content. Exhibit A: This incredible work of art, courtesy of a young man in New Zealand who apparently has waaay too much free time on his hands. To give...