Category: news

Another shooting happened this week in America.  . . . of course, telling when I wrote this doesn’t matter, because such violence happens here almost weekly. But for the sake of example, I’m referring to the case of Robert Aaron Long, a White Evangelical terrorist who deliberately targeted Asian people at two different massage parlors… Continue reading turning transparent in the sun

After a couple of years of hard work on the part of its editor and authors, Belt Publishing today opened pre-sales for its new Chicago Neighborhood Guidebook, due to hit shelves this fall. Based on the success of its “idiosyncratic” guidebook series for Cleveland and Detroit, the Chicago Neighborhood Guidebook aims to explore community history… Continue reading new essay forthcoming in “the chicago neighborhood guidebook” from belt publishing

I’ve published a new essay for the Center for Digital Ethics & Policy on the ethics of digital face-swapping, or the technology used to supplant different faces on different bodies and put them in digital spaces where they don’t belong. As suggested by the pied ethical reportage of digital face-swapping, deepfakes lack the charm of… Continue reading the ethics of digital face-swapping

Last week I spoke about marketing trends in the manufacturing industry with Hubstaff, a time-tracking and productivity platform (and digital innovator that has emerged from the nascent Rust Belt innovation space). Manufacturing is a complicated industry in the U.S., with its human capital increasingly threatened by automation. That’s why it’s important for manufacturers to tell… Continue reading how to market in the manufacturing industry

The good folks at MEL Magazine reached out to me at the beginning of this year to follow up some other conversations I’ve had with them the past few years about saving money and spending less. According to the writer, I’m a bona fide “super saver.” When asked about how my habits and health started… Continue reading everything your new year’s resolutions will do to your brain and body: spending less and saving more

I’ve got a new article posted at the Center for Digital Ethics & Policy: “Facebook is a media company, but what’s a media company?” When Facebook says that it’s a tech company and not a media company, a silent shudder echoes across the internet. It’s like the reaction that, say, Morton Salt would get if… Continue reading New article for the Center for Digital Ethics & Policy

When I completed grad school in 2015, I was awarded a Media Studies Award from Oxford Bibliographies (Oxford University Press) for my work in cult cinema. After nearly three years (because academic publishing moves at a glacial pace), Oxford finally posted my bibliography for cult cinema. Here’s the intro: Though relatively young in the world… Continue reading Cult Cinema Bibliography

I have a new column for Quiet Lunch, “Outside Art.” My first entry is on Chicago’s Intuit Museum of Outsider Art. Compared to the usual culture-media pipeline, I’m not writing this series from New York City or L.A., but from my home city of Chicago. With this series on outside art, I’ll continue exploring the… Continue reading New Column for Quiet Lunch