Occasional thoughts and stories from a pathological oversharer whose life is defined by screensickness. This will include but is not limited to:
Funny kid stories and parenting tips and questions! Because I’m a grand millennial mom to two hilarious emerging humans.
Journalism about technology and what it is doing to us! Because I’m a journalist with 20 begrudging years of experience writing about technology.
Analysis about media and politics! Because I work as a researcher at an institute that studies media, politics and public policy, and because I spent the past two years deeeeeeep down the far-right internet rabbithole and have got to let the thoughts out before they kill me.
Art! Because I am a newbie painter, who has turned to visual art to try to stave off the feelings of horror and despair that, you know, lurk.
Absurdism! Because Albert Camus is my philosophical hero and lol nothing matters but that’s no reason not to try and make life worth living.
Half-baked philosophical ideas! Because I was an English major who dropped the Philosophy major during undergrad because I was scared to take logic classes and didn’t want to stop smoking pot long enough to actually understand Heidegger.
Intimate stories about minor celebrities! Because I am the daughter of the guy from Jaws and sometimes remember doing weird things, like once standing at a hotel sink when I was 5 years old, pouring bleach inside a conch shell with Steven Spielberg and Harrison Ford. I was wearing arm floaties and standing on a step stool as they gleefully brainstormed how to murder the sea creature in the shell. I believe we were on a vacation in Hawaii. Unclear.
Poems! Because I write poems.
Thoughts about science! Because my husband of 20 years is a biotechnologists and, through osmosis, I have absorbed some scientific knowledge and opinions and because science is part of how humans make meaning in the world and that’s the thing I’m most obsessed with!
Memes! Because I wrote the book Meme Wars: The Untold Story of the Online Battles Upending Democracy in America, along with the brilliant Joan Donovan and Brian Friedberg, and the first draft was twice as long and I need somewhere to share it!
Errors! Because I am human, and I will get shit wrong. Sometimes I won’t know I got shit wrong, but when I do, I’ll try my best to be transparent about it and offer a mea culpa.
Flashes of insight and mediocrity! I am not as funny as my brother Ben, author of Calm Down, nor as famous as my father Richard, nor as loving and optimistic as my mother Jeramie, nor as patient and empathic as my brother Harry, nor as strategic and as my husband Seth. I’m just a woman whose way of surviving this world is to share ideas and make shit. I promise to try my best to share things that are interesting and useful and thought provoking and fair and entertaining, and I apologize in advance that I’ll often fail.
Overshares! Because I am screensick and have long ago lost the thread on what is appropriate for others to know about me, and never had much capacity for embarrassment. Sorry sorry sorry.
