Hello, all. As of February, 2012, I have joined ANIMAL New York as Managing Editor. ANIMAL is an arts and activism, uh, project? that currently revolves around a journalistic web site, as well as gallery shows, human-scale civic improvement projects, and all sorts of other attempts to improve New York for New Yorkers. Curiously, ANIMAL is now a subsidiary wing of Mother New York, an ad agency. It is, to my knowledge, the first time that an agency has attempted to nurture an actual, factual news publication; the Venn diagram made by design, advertising, media, news, technology, futurism, culture, street art, and just generally sweet people at ANIMAL and Mother was far too compelling for me to resist.

I would be very pleased if you took a look: http://animalnewyork.com

My cover story for WIRED magazine about Foxconn, the spate of suicides last year, and what it means for the consumer of the goods these workers make is now online. (The URL still reflects the work-in-progress name of the piece, which is about as accurate as they come: “Joel In China”. It’s hard not to [...]

To be honest, at this point I just want to walk away from all this for a while. But I feel like after sending up flares last week to ask for help, the least I can do is tell everyone what I know now. Thank you for all your kind words, advice, and support. I [...]

I wrote this yesterday in an email to a friend. Woke to the news that my stepfather has decided he is no longer gay due to a serendipitous encounter with an old pastor at Panera Bread and has returned to my mother’s house with the intent to take out all their available cash and invest [...]

A new industry analysis piece on Gizmodo, Forget Apple TV. AirPlay Is Apple’s Sneak Attack On Television: The wild card, as usual, is Apple’s willingness to play nice with non-Apple standards. Since Apple has to approve the licensing for every AirPlay certified device—just like the lucrative “Made for iPod” scheme of years past—they could, in [...]

Anne Lukeman took Wally Wood’s 22 Panels That Always Work and turned it into a teaching tool for filmmakers. It lends itself especially well to noir.

John McAfee might be his own worst enemy—at least when it comes to the press. When I arrived in Belize, Quorumex staffers were still reeling from what they felt was a hit piece of McAfee in Fast Company, which painted McAfee as an arrogant huckster on the run from lawsuits in the United States, including [...]

Another piece on Gizmodo, which is getting less traffic than a reposted XKCD comic. “Disabled Explorers In the World’s Most Badass Short Bus” [Gizmodo]

My latest piece on Gizmodo, which is one of my favorites: “Lots of times the families will go down to Kinko’s,” the funeral director tells me. “They can do a memorial folder thing down there.” Do you help them get photos off Flickr, off Facebook? “We don’t really help with that.” * * * The [...]

The first time I ever came in anyone’s mouth, it was into the mouth of my stepfather. He had slipped into my room while I slept, crawled under my covers from below, and gone down on me. I woke only as I began to ejaculate, pleasure masking confusion. Then, shame. I pushed him off of [...]