The difference between America and Europe isn’t just the size of portions and people: We relate to food differently.
I got my first cookery book as a Christmas present when I was around 6, old enough to read and understand simple instructions like how to make bread. Flour, water, yeast, a small amount of sugar to activate it, a pinch of salt, and — if my memory serves me right — a dash of olive oil.
The recipe was foolproof, as befits recipes in a book aimed at children; it had fun, quirky illustrations, too. Although my mother bought it for me, there never was any expectation I would follow in my grandfather’s or uncle’s footsteps and become a…
How the age of taking advantage nixed editorial accountability
As Chilean artist Alfredo Jaar warns in his 2015 work of the same name, “be afraid of the enormity of the possible.” He isn’t talking about the outsize success we might have if we trusted ourselves more but of the outrageous, improper, vicious, or immoral acts we might perpetrate in the name of money.
And here we are: The present is funded by fear.
Social media platforms have encouraged, enabled, and empowered the zeitgeist, so did users. So did journalism, so did writers. There. …
When “we, the people” became “me, the people”
Scammers ‘make bank’; desperate folks attempt to make ends meet.
Lexicon and register matter. Bragging about money is in, whether you have it or not, as long as no one questions your allegations. “The beauty of me is that I’m very rich,” one Donald J. Trump said two years ago.
Under predatory capitalism, there’s no success without sacrifice, you always lose something in the process, be it ethics, self-respect, or hope.
How can we respect anyone else if we don’t first extend this common courtesy to ourselves? When ‘making bank’ involves spin, alternative facts, and antagonizing, there is no basic…
When your hopes are someone else’s paycheck
There are many conversations the internet is refusing to have with honesty, this is one of them. Since those are desperate times for many of us, we probably should. Right now, your livelihood may be a distant memory or even a receding one. But you’re the self-reliant, creative, enterprising type so you’ve taken it upon yourself to build a new life from scratch writing online and you’re very, very excited about it.
Cool. Hang on to this. Hard.
Enthusiasm is fuel. It can see you through everything.
Protecting, nurturing, and growing it will be your biggest challenge, especially if your…
How much runway does democracy still have?
Will we ever relate to one another again through the words we write online? Or are we too far gone? In a culture where everything human is monetized and sensationalism rules, you either become inured to desperation or it overwhelms you to the point of numbness.
Hope is in short supply, self-generated, unfounded, delusional. You don’t know and you don’t care as long as it shows up.
The zeitgeist has distorted humanness so much as to render it inexplicable.
Hope is extra now.
It pays more to hasten our own demise by fanning the flames of fear.
Fear is a…
What no one will admit to, least of all platforms
How would you react if instead of hiding behind another invocation of victimhood, another medical diagnosis, another celebrity downfall the internet writer ‘fessed up to their all-consuming desire for easy money?
Ooh, Marilyn Manson is trending so let’s ride the coat tails of another monster to pay the rent. Or Johnny Depp. Or Ellen. Or anyone in the public eye behaving badly because ring-a-ding-ding, kerching!
Would hate reads, those pseudo think pieces appallingly written that yank your eyeballs out of their sockets in an orgy of voyeuristic schadenfreude and make you feel sullied suddenly lose their appeal?
Are we toying with mass extinction?
Public turns pubic and gets awkward, confusing, and crass. If you write about your vagina on the internet, are you considered pubic media or public media? In the age of political correctness, what amuses one person is guaranteed to offend another.
Here’s a quick fix: Above all else, aim to offend everyone equally.
Create art that meets the moment instead of ephemeral words thrown into the garbage disposal for brain farts that is the internet of greed and grift, a gore fest of mangled grabby fingers, drool, and spite where bloated prose bubbles up and erupts and oozes, clogging up…
Amid desperation, profiteering intensifies
Predatory capitalism is neither ethical nor humane.
However, egregious acts of truth telling won’t get you far in a culture that can neither identify nor understand what passes for transgression because many people are incapable of critical thinking.
Whether this offends you or not, Trump is the most honest representation America has ever had to date, embodying money-grubbing, profiteering, and self-aggrandizing bullshit down to a T. But the era of disinhibited greed he ushered in will continue to imperil democracy long after Inauguration Day.
Right now, it’s intensifying. The coronavirus, homelessness, and hunger are spreading at an alarming rate in…
Humility, imagination, and ingenuity are honest by default
Mirror, mirror on the Facebook wall, who’s the piggiest of them all?
Since 2016, there’s been no shortage of grifters monetizing this very long moment by worshipping at the altar of make-believe, growing their self at the expense of everyone else’s, most particularly those who look up to them and see an example, an inspiration, and a savior.
It became all about showing the world, an internet, and the ego what hubris could do. And here we are, in an era where ideas are at least secondhand, thoughts are ghostwritten, and human attention span is more evanescent than ever. …
The world will not end even if Trump is re-elected
Words on the internet scare me.
The zeitgeist of self-delusion is snorting its own hype and almost everyone has achieved fluency in fear, unwittingly or not. While I readily admit mine comes from a place that may not be entirely rational, my current geographical coordinates tell you all you need to know. Four years ago, I had no idea I’d end up back in Europe. After less than a month of Trump, I wrote about the parallels between depression and fascism. …
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