There’s a new thingy in my life. Rather than some new dreamy-eyed dalliance with Android, this is me trying to save a boatload of money by moving from AT&T to T-Mobile. Doing so, though, meant jumping through T-Mobile’s hoops to get out of my AT&T contract and get a device I could afford. Thus, the Nexus 5 you see here has moved in. The phone is fine, some things about it are great, like the display, but I already miss... Read more
It’s been a busy week for me on the Internet. Let’s quickly review: I have new digs at Huffington Post as a blogger, for which I am compensated $0.00 annually, minus taxes. I have Emily Hauser to thank for getting me in the door. Right now it’s all adapted or recycled material from this blog, but I’ll put new stuff there eventually. I know you don’t care. A tweet I wrote that I thought was somewhat clever went viral and has now been... Read more
I am sour. Expanding on yesterday’s post on the pressure we feel to have careers that realize the “follow your passion” and “do what you love” ideals, here’s Miya Tokumitsu: By keeping us focused on ourselves and our individual happiness, [“do what you love”] distracts us from the working conditions of others while validating our own choices and relieving us from obligations to all who labor, whether or not they love it. It is the secret handshake of the privileged and a worldview... Read more
Do what you love! Sacrifice all! Wait, no. First, Emily Hauser: The whole notion of following one’s passion is so steeped historic, economic, and social privilege that it fairly reeks. … when we tell people to follow their passion, and hold fabulously successful role models up to them, we’re not only misleading them, we’re actually being kind of mean… Now, Patrick Rothfuss: If you have a hobby, and you do it, and you love it, then you win! And then your... Read more
Dave Pell, the day the original iPad was released in 2010: I looked over at my wife as she downloaded another fifty bucks worth of apps, her face aglow in the iPad. “Are you crying?” I asked. “No,” she answered. “I just haven’t blinked since we opened the box.” Then she sighed. “I hate to say it, but I wish they came out with this before we had kids.” God, I know. Read more
So the first thing that’s notable about the new iPad “Verse” ad is not just that it’s a reinforcement of the Steve Jobs line about Apple being about the intersection of technology and the humanities, but that it outright claims the territory in its entirety. The iPad, this ad tells us, is the Humanities Device. Other tablets and mobile devices will have all manner of specifications and gimmicks – be it native stylus integration, feature parity with a traditional laptop,... Read more
Is it cool if I try and work something out with you here? Okay, cool. Thanks. I mentioned a few days ago on Twitter that I was considering giving up this blog entirely, and only writing for pay from here on out. The utter lack of attention and/or engagement that this blog gets, in contrast to the effort and love I put into it, has gone from being something I shrug off to something that causes anxiety and (increased) self-doubt.... Read more
Oh, hey. Over the holiday, Hemant Mehta finally went on his honeymoon, and once again called upon me to run the Friendly Atheist site. So once again, I wrote a whole lot of articles and posts. Some of them I’m really quite proud of. Others, you know, sometimes you just gotta feed the beast. To see what I’ve been doing over at Friendly Atheist, click this here hyperlink. You’ll be launched through the internets to my posts. You know what?... Read more
So my wife’s dad (who is a really good guy all-around — just today he paid for two strangers’ layaway at Walmart without their even knowing because he’s just that kind of guy) bought my 4-year-old boy this giant-ass wall sticker-poster-thing of a T-rex and some other dinosaurs from a company called Fatheads. It’s freaking enormous, over 100″ across. And he’s in Alabama, so it’s not like he’s putting it up. It’d been sitting rolled up in its box for... Read more
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