Hey gang. A couple readers have asked me recently what’s going on with me generally. So here’s a little self-indulgent update. I’m on the academic job market right now. I am a fourth year PhD student, and I have another year of guaranteed funding after this year, but I have three chapters of my dissertation […]

So I want to say that I’m sorry for being such a crabby patty lately. I’m not reversing course on any opinions I’ve shared, but I have been shorter with people than I intend, and I apologize for that. As far as excuses goes, I’m just busy and stressed. At the moment, I’m dissertating, on […]

No offense to my loyal readers, but I’m going to be turning comments off by default for the time being. Just frustrated by the quality of comments lately. I’ll turn them back on at some point I’m sure.

My brother and his wife have moved to Guam for at least a couple years, and they asked me to look after their two cats until the either decide to stay permanently or come home. So when you add their cats, Trapito and Mia, to my cat Suavecito (who is one of their kittens) and […]

As I pointed out the other day, many people have reacted to the “alt-lit” rape scandal by blurring the lines between their natural disgust at those accusations and their aesthetic and stylistic annoyance with the alt-lit culture. That’s gross and misguided. Being annoyed by someone else’s style and culture should not be confused with feeling […]

  Been waiting for this one for a long time. Review as soon as I’m done.

Many of my political disagreements with the broad online left can be boiled down to a rejection of the politics of cultural affinity. I think that elites have come to so closely associate their politics with their cultural branding that those domains are now totally indistinguishable. They don’t know how to think politically in a […]

So I’ve gotten more aggressive in moderating and deleting comments here. A few times this has been because of people posting massive blocks of text that have essentially nothing to do with the content of the post I put up. (It’s free to start your own blog, fellas.) But mostly this stems from people telling […]

My dad went to Antioch College (RIP?) for his undergrad. When he got there, he had two roommates. All three of them were named Fred(e)ri(c)k, which he always chalked up to a joke by some administrator at the famously liberal, weirdo school. He would later go on to work at Wesleyan, which is where I […]

The New York Times asked me to write a little for them about geek culture and grievance. You can check it out here.