A car is what we call the integration of comfortable boxes on wheels with roadways, fuels, and traffic laws

Fixing the environment is not just an technological problem, though everyone would prefer it is. It is also a political, psychological, sociological, economic system, and spiritual problem. But let’s keep it simple. How we think about the planet is killing us. We think we are separate. Humans here, nature over there. This goes back to … Read more

Writing with generative AI is like…

Bugs, dogs, dinosaurs, neighborhoods, cities, countries, civilizations, planets, and, now, human creativity: They live, they die — fast, slow, brutally or gently. Generative AIs like ChatGPT, Bard, Claude, and Jasper are bringing plenty of violence and speed to the demise of writing. Or perhaps just a way of writing. Words, sentences, paragraphs, stories — making … Read more

Article in Nieman Lab: What a 2004 experiment in hyperlocal news can tell us about community voices today

In 2004, a team of Medill School of Journalism grad students thought they could use the internet to fix what was wrong with it. But with increasing social isolation, rising partisanship, and newspapers’ ongoing woes, it seems that the problems have gotten worse, not better. Perhaps that’s why Google launched an experiment in local, user-generated storytelling: Bulletin.

America, don’t put out the damn paper

The cost of stopping goes up as the American machine churns more and more rapidly. But what happens when an entire nation starts living paycheck to paycheck? When hundreds of millions of people think, “If I stop, I die.”