Can Beauty Bring Us Together?
First, a confession: with the exception, at the age of 18, of a brief flirtation with Barry Goldwater’s presidential candidacy, my politics have leaned decidedly...
When In Gotham . . .
“How does one critique globalism without succumbing to would-be nationalist despots like Bolsonaro or Trump?”
This was the earnest and sensible question a friend put...
What Kind of Democracy Do Localists Want?
Last week the United States went through another one of our regular, mostly ritualized exercises in mass democracy. What did (or should) localists think...
We Need a lot More than Romance
When I came across John Hockenberry’s essay, “Exile,” in the October edition of Harper’s Magazine, I had never heard of him. I still know little...
To Make Housing Affordable, Act Locally
Even if you spend only a fraction of your day monitoring the news, you’ve probably caught wind of the nation’s affordable housing crisis. Disproportionately...
Liberated for What
This piece is adapted slightly from a speech given at Spring Arbor University in Michigan at September's FPR Conference.
The sexual revolution as we...
Notes on Nike
An honest question: why was Zoolander III: Kendall Jenner and Pepsi Notice Some Serious Issues laughed into shameful corners of the internet immediately while...
A Primer on Digital Thinking Part 2: Eliminating the Human Element
In Part 1, I outlined the basic difference between counting and measuring and gave some examples of how data is not always objectively derived....
The Facebookification of Local Politics: Extending the Wall of the Bathroom...
In 2014, Cambridge Analytica used an app called thisisyourdigitallife to surreptitiously obtain data from 50 million Facebook accounts. They then used all of this information...
A Primer on Digital Thinking: Part 1 Counting and Measuring
The basic distinction between digital and analog is that digital means you count something and analog means you measure something. We can easily count...