The Emissary launches (for real)
Our friend Akshar Patel, JUMP: Going Full-Time on The Emissary: It’s been a long time coming. When I finished university in 2014, I didn’t know what I really wanted to do. From the beginning, I never really enjoyed the usual office 9 to 5 life. Eventually, though, I became domesticated. It was a steadily growing … Continue reading The Emissary launches (for real)
Up with Substack! Down with Substack!
The Substack has been up for a week, and it’s been fun so far. Lots of people have ideas about what to do, and how to do, “paid newsletters.” I’ve […]
The AJPlus exception! Fascism for thee, but not me
I am not a media person, so I do not understand the deal with AJPlus and its “woke” journalists. AJPlus is owned by the Al Jazeera Media Group, which is a catspaw of the government of Qatar. Qatar is a Salafi petrostate run for the benefit of the Thani family and is run like a …
Continue reading “The AJPlus exception! Fascism for thee, but not me”
The Problem With The Juggernaut Is Its South Asianness
For whatever reason, Facebook recently thought I might be interested in the subscription South Asian themed webzine and newsletter The Juggernaut. I don’t mind paying for media. I pay for The New York Times, Bloomberg, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal. But why should you pay for The Juggernaut? Here’s a snippet from …
Continue reading “The Problem With The Juggernaut Is Its South Asianness”
Why general audience news will only get more ideologically polarized: propaganda pays the bills
During a casual conversation with a friend about the state of the “news media” and its openness ideological diversity I expressed my rather cynical view that the future of the mass-market journalism is toward one of polarization. The reason for this isn’t really due to the nature of journalism in any specific way, but the […]
Facebook AMA with Spencer Wells & myself
Spencer and I are doing a Facebook live AMA at 2 PM EDT/1 PM CDT/12 PM MDT/11 AM PDT on the 1st of February (tomorrow as of when I’m writing this). People will ask us questions, and the questions will be relayed to us, and we’ll answer live on video. In other ‘media’ news our podcast […]
Romanticizing the regressive
A few months ago I happened to watch the film Meet the Patels. Though you do meet all the “Patels”, the film centers around the love life, or lack thereof, of the actor Ravi PatelM. Filmed by his sister, the documentary predates Patel’s current modest fame by many years (he has a small recurring role … Continue reading “Romanticizing the regressive”
The nature of the media beast
Interesting discussion on the nature of media today, and the tendency toward driving traffic via the information equivalent of Twinkies. Below are my top 10 posts since moving to Discover Magazine measured by visits. The numbers to the right is the ra…
The New York Times “pay wall”
So what do readers of this blog think? Pay or no pay? It’s useful, and The New York Times is pretty massive in scope, if sometimes lacking in breadth. I love their data-oriented stuff, but I ignore their columnists and a lot of their “analy…
Print vs. web in science
I have some Google Alerts set up relating to human evolution and such, and a few days ago I noticed a spike in articles about the evolution of clothing and lice. Like this: We were all naked until 170,000 years ago. Since I blogged this in September, The naked years, I was confused. Here’s the […]