The Canary Chirps
Image credit: Merry Alpern
The latest edition of my new privacy newsletter, The Canary in the Data Mine, features scopophilia, baby spying, and surveillance couture. Read it here. Subscribe here.
An excerpt:
One of my favorite instances of artistic surveillance is photographer Merry Alpern’s Dirty Windows. In the winter of ‘93, Alpern visited a friend and discovered a window in the friend’s apartment faced the window of a bathroom in a strip club in the opposite building. Alpern became obsessed with the narratives playing out across the way and returned many times to record a series of gritty black-and-white images starring sex, drugs, and bathroom activities.
Email | About | My Book | Twitter | Instagram | Blog | Newsletter
All Her Dying Lovers
Loved this short from The New York Times Op-Docs: “All Her Dying Lovers.” It combines animation and assemblage audio to recount the enigmatic tale of a woman who sought revenge. A fascinating parsing of truth, memory, and myth.
Email | About | My Book | Twitter | Instagram | Blog | Newsletter
Footsi
Behold: “Footsi.” It’s an amazing black and white video by artist Pat Oleszko. It stars a pair of mini-Mary Janes-clad fingers exploring the world. [via NYT]
Email | About | My Book | Twitter | Instagram | Blog | Newsletter
The Hyatt Girls
If you don’t subscribe to Nick Cave’s The Red Hand Files newsletter, you should. It’s a quirky and curious mix of sage advice, odd confessions, and creative inspiration. Today’s is “So Who Are the Hyatt Girls?”
Email | About | My Book | Twitter | Instagram | Blog | Newsletter
How to Write a Memoir
Here’s my advice on writing a memoir:
Write about something more than just yourself. Navel gazing is boring.
Expand the genre. Incorporate narrative nonfiction, investigative journalism, images, drawings, experimental prose, data analyses, etc.
Divide it into pieces. Every brick wall was laid brick by brick.
Ignore gender stereotypes. Eat Pray Love is pablum. Angela’s Ashes is steak.
Good may be the enemy of great, but who wants to settle for good?
Email | About | My Book | Twitter | Instagram | Blog | Newsletter
Ignore the Man in the White House
I was somewhat surprised this tweet was as popular as it was—liked by a couple hundred and tweeted by a few dozen. It’s the basic best practices strategy in dealing with bullies: ignore them into nonexistence. I really admired Biden’s Delaware speech and realized afterwards that it was charmingly and largely absent the looming lummox that is Trump. This is how you disempower people who have no real power. You render them invisible. Trump has been annihilated.
Email | About | My Book | Twitter | Instagram | Blog | Newsletter
Selfie of the Week
Fraud-in-Chief
What I'm Watching
Vote! (Blue)
Halloween in My Neighborhood
A Trump Rally
In October 2016, I attended a Trump rally in Naples, Florida. I was and am not a Trump fan, I vote Democrat all the way, but I was curious to see what was so compelling about this cartoonish figure. I figured this was my last opportunity to see him in this way. There was no chance he’d win the presidential election the following month. As I recall, the rally was held in a field. As I walked toward the gathering crowd, an older white man looked at me and said: “Isn’t this great?” Out front, a Black man was selling Trump-themed T-shirts. Eventually, the president-who-surely-wouldn’t-be made a dramatic arrival in a helicopter. Most of the attendees, largely white, hooted in excitement. Finally, Trump made his way to the stage. He was taller than I expected, and while I find his politics utterly repellent, I could see there was something compelling about him. His strongman delivery offered comfort to people who perceived themselves as weak and under threat and wanted to protect their way of life, a way of life based on the exploitation of others and the devaluation of people of color. They didn’t think of themselves as white supremacists, but they were. Trump appealed to their closeted desires: for a man in a blue suit wearing an invisible Klu Klux Klan robe to restore their place in the world, one in which anyone who wasn’t white had no right to exist, to be heard, to vote. At a certain point, the attendees started chanting: “Lock her up!” The only thing more apparent than their racism was their misogyny. Eventually, I left. It was a weird window into an awful world, but surely it wouldn’t lead to a presidency. Yet, here we are. Four years later, the country has been turned topsy-turvy, by a sociopath. Here’s hoping for an empath as our next president.
Email | About | My Book | Twitter | Instagram | Blog | Newsletter
The Swing
Last weekend, this photo appeared on my Facebook Memories. Five years earlier, on October 25, 2015, I’d taken the photo at the Carey Institute for Global Good. I had arrived that day because I’d been chosen to become a member of the first cohort to attend what’s now known as the Logan Nonfiction Program. The promise of the program is simple: Give creatives the time and space to create, and they will do great things. There, I met my peers, some of whom remain my friends to this day. For the first time, I immersed myself in the project that is the book I’m writing. I spent a month in Rensselaerville, New York, watching the leaves turn, drinking gin, eating salads for breakfast, hiking in the woods, inspecting a pentagon-shaped writing shed where Andy Rooney had worked, and taking myself seriously as a creator. That experience really changed my life. And I’m so thankful for it. It took a long time, but it took me to where I am today. If you’re interested in being a part of the program, you should apply when they reopen.
Email | About | My Book | Twitter | Instagram | Blog | Newsletter
I've Been Counted
Both California and Los Angeles County have been very aggressive about reminding people to vote. Early on, I signed up for BallotTrax, which enabled me to track my ballot. About a week after I got my ballot in the mail, I filled it out, consulting the endorsements from The Los Angeles Times. Then I drove down the street and dropped it in an official ballot box. Last week, I checked the status of my ballot. I was a little concerned there might be an issue, perhaps if my signatures didn’t match. But my ballot was approved and counted. I’m 100% Joe Biden / Kamala Harris and hope that they’ll prevail in November and lead the charge to turn around this country.
Email | About | My Book | Twitter | Instagram | Blog | Newsletter
The Canary in the Data Mine
Image via Sensity
I’ve launched a privacy newsletter that spies on the people who are spying on you: The Canary in the Data Mine. It’s about privacy, surveillance, and cybersecurity. The first installment considers, among other things, why Jeffrey Toobin was jerking off during a work meeting. Read it here. Subscribe here.
An excerpt:
“I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention The New Yorker scribe Jeffrey Toobin’s Zoom incident, in which the journalist was caught jerking his meat during a virtual work meeting. Generally, I follow the Bible on such matters—see John 8:7: ‘He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone’—but Toobin’s tubin’ merits a closer look.”
Email | About | My Book | Twitter | Instagram | Blog | Newsletter
Naked in NYC
Last weekend, my NYC-based photographer friend Nikola Tamindzic was part of an art show supporting NYC artists and featuring work they’d created during the pandemic. One of the prints he was selling was a photo he took of me, remotely, during the early days of the pandemic. What a delight to be included.
Email | About | My Book | Twitter | Instagram | Blog | Newsletter
The Lab Rats
A scene from “Wormwood”
In my latest newsletter, “We’re All Lab Rats Now,” I share some of the research I’ve been doing for the book I’m writing. As I write in my newsletter, my book is called Data Baby: How a Psychological Experiment Turned Me into a Human Lab Rat; it’ll be published by Hachette Books; and it’s about psychology, privacy, and whether or not you can predict who a child will grow up to be. Read my latest newsletter here. Subscribe here.
An excerpt:
“I mean, you didn’t think me living in Burbank was just some sort of coincidence, did you? (See: Truman Burbank from ‘The Truman Show.’)”
I’m a writer. Subscribe to my newsletter. Follow me on Twitter | Instagram.
The Oblongs
For an upcoming series on HILOBROW, I’ll be writing about “The Oblongs.” I’ll post a link to the essay when it’s live on the site. In the meantime, here’s my last one.
I’m a writer. Subscribe to my newsletter.
What I'm Watching
I’m watching “Berkeley in the Sixties.” Watch it on Fandor on Amazon Prime.
I’m a writer. Subscribe to my newsletter.