What’s the Deal With All These Chinese Drones? I’ve been watching the rise of China’s DJI consumer drone company for over a decade, ever since DJI launched the cheap drone epoch we’re living in today with the release of the original Phantom back in 2013. The Phantom was revolutionary, the first drone that pretty much […]
Category: writing
Consumer Drones Are Propaganda Tools, Not Killing Machines
I wrote for Foreign Policy about how consumer drones are much better at terrifying people than they are at killing them – and why it is important that we recognize this.Read it here. “The camera shook with the sound of an explosion and Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro looked up, confused. Guards swiftly surrounded him with […]
Why You Should Go to Sicily
I drove around Sicily back in October. I had a business trip in Rome, and I had this general impression that I should go somewhere. Somewhere warm, because I live in Boston and Boston winters are a cruel meteorological joke, and October is when I start wondering if this winter will be the one that […]
The Weather Channel’s Soothing Music: Millennial Rebellion
I find the Weather Channel soothing, on a primordial level. It turns out that I’m not alone in this among my generational cohort, among those nasty millenials. So. I went to search for some pleasingly jazzy Weather Channel music and quickly found an entire online subculture of people in their twenties and thirties who remember […]
It’s a Weird World After All – China’s Foreigner Theme Park
It’s a Weird World After All – Roads and Kingdoms “The white form of Christ the Redeemer, standing considerably shorter than his Brazilian counterpart, spun in slow motion atop a yellow pedestal on an orange, artificial mountain. Candy-colored gondolas bobbed gently above the Christ’s outstretched, beseeching arms. A waterslide, painted blue and rimmed with green, […]
Charlie Hebdo, Twitter, and The Battle of Who Could Care Most
“You don’t care about the Boko Haram attacks in Nigeria, but you do care about Charlie Hebdo,” some pissed-off Twitter user says. “All this anger over attacks in Paris, but none over children freezing to death in Syria!” another rages. It’s a familiar pattern, one that bubbles to the surface whenever a terrible event hits […]
Why I Hate Backpackers: An Illustrated Guide
I am regularly asked by acquaintances and friends why I hate backpackers. They are used to seeing my anti-backpacker screeds on Twitter or when they meet me at the bar, ready with my latest story about those horrible people who wear elephant-patterned pants and talk incessantly about spirituality. They conclude the obvious: I loathe backpackers […]
Some Thoughts on Orwell’s Essays (And Doom)
I’m reading Orwell’s Essays, pretty much on a total impulse: there they were in swiftly bootlegged format (the Penguin edition) on the shelves of a bookshop in a Cambodian river town. And I needed something to read. I harbor the intelligent child’s usual vague fondness for Orwell (or Eric Blair, of course), crafted from close […]