Feb 14, 2016 | Internet Culture, Love and Dating, Science and Technology
Published: The Good Men Project (February 13, 2016) First, I just want to add that I'm a big fan of Film Brain, the British movie critic whose web series "Bad Movie Beatdown" manages to intelligently deconstruct some of the worst motion pictures ever made. Since our Twitter conversation inspired this piece, I figured it would only be appropriate to preface this article with a gratitude plug. Now...
Feb 1, 2016 | Elections, Elections - Presidential (2016), Internet Culture, mic, Science and Technology
Published: The Daily Dot (February 1, 2016) Regardless of which candidates triumph in the Iowa caucuses today, there is one winner whose victory no one will be able to dispute—digital technology. To understand how the Internet has fundamentally transformed the Iowa caucuses, it is first necessary to explain the mechanics that determine how this unique political ritual functions. Although...
Jan 21, 2016 | Class Issues, Economic Policy, mic, Science and Technology
Published: The Daily Dot (January 21, 2016) Calling the recent boom in digital technology, artificial intelligence, robotics, and biotechnology the “fourth industrial revolution,” the World Economic Forum, determined that by 2020—just a few years from now—as many as 7.1 million jobs may be lost in the world’s richest countries through redundancy and automation. In particular, the forum, which is...
Dec 26, 2015 | Climate Change and Other Environmental Issues, mic, Science and Technology
Published: The Good Men Project (December 26, 2015) I've lived in Pennsylvania for 18 years and, despite the state's frosty winter reputation, this is the first time I've ever witnessed a snowless December. My personal observations aside, this has been a big month for global warming. On December 12, nearly two hundred countries signed an agreement in Paris that will help bring global warming...
Oct 26, 2015 | Arts and Entertainment, mic, Science and Technology
Published: Salon (October 26, 2015) As the new biopic “Steve Jobs” continues to receive rave reviews, it seems appropriate to stop and take a look at its predecessor — the “Citizen Kane” of made-for-TV movies, “Pirates of Silicon Valley.” I’m not simply comparing this film to “Citizen Kane” as a way of drawing attention to its quality. Much like Orson Welles’ 1941 magnum opus based loosely on...
Oct 19, 2015 | Arts and Entertainment, mic, Science and Technology
Published: Salon (October 19, 2015) Let’s get the obvious out of the way: Wednesday is October 21, 2015 – the date visited by Marty McFly in the time-traveling DeLorean 26 years ago in “Back to the Future: Part II” – and we do not have hoverboards. I repeat, hoverboards do not exist — these toys don’t count. In fact, not much of the technology that appears most ubiquitously in the 1989...
Oct 13, 2015 | Class Issues, Economic Policy, Elections - Presidential (2016), mic, Science and Technology
Published: The Daily Dot (October 13, 2015) On last Sunday’s Meet the Press, Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) found himself in a familiar position—namely, defending his $1 trillion economic plan. Sanders’ program, known in the Senate as the Rebuild America Act, consists of two major parts: A system of Medicare for all and investments in fixing our “crumbling...
Oct 6, 2015 | mic, Plutocracy, Science and Technology
Published: The Daily Dot (October 6, 2015) Since early 2012, the mobile company Uber—a ridesharing app that helps consumers request cabs and other transportation services with their smartphones—has employed a form of price gouging known as “surge pricing.” The controversial and often costly practice uses an algorithm to increase the price of service during peak hours—when there’s high demand and...
Oct 4, 2015 | Gender and Sexism, Science and Technology
Published: The Good Men Project (October 4, 2015) In a recent editorial for Breitbart, Milo Yiannopoulos is pushing for the argument that “the smartest people in the world are all men.” To support this claim, Yiannopoulos is relying on that old staple for pseudoscientific arguments – IQ tests. “There’s little doubt that men occupy more of the higher end of the IQ scale,” Yiannopoulos observes....
Aug 31, 2015 | Mental Illness, Original Source Salon.com, Science and Technology