Jazz funerals offer an intriguing look into another way of commemorating death and acknowledging community grief.
We could learn a lot from jazz funerals
Category: commentary
Seriously don’t hassle people about their relationships and kids
When, if, and how people plan to build families is not your business, so stop asking.
Are there too many climbers on Everest?
The latest Everest climbing season included another round of terrible accidents. Should we be getting more aggressive about restricting access, given the extreme danger even for extremely fit and experienced mountaineers?
Belittling public grief for celebrities is meanspirited and wrongheaded
Those who enjoy mocking people for grieving celebrities are small minded and mean spirited, but they’re also straight up wrong. There’s more than one kind of attachment to the dead.
On VAXXED, and how not every opinion needs to be aired
Multiple controversies over VAXXED at film festivals ignore a larger point: Such festivals have the right to curate content, and they can decide not to air controversial and potentially dangerous views.
On policing reading choices
Books are amazing, and so are the people who read them — no matter who they are, and no matter what they’re reading. I confess that not every book is to my taste, but that’s all right, because they have plenty of readers who love them just fine. And I don’t believe that my dislike […]
PETA can you please just stop
PETA has to be one of the most high-profile animal rights organisations in the US, which is quite a pity, because it’s also one of the most actively irritating and offensive. The work of groups like the Humane Society of the United States, the Fund for Animals, and American Humane gets pushed aside by whatever […]
Are you done smugly mocking rural communities yet?
When members of a sketchy militia took over the Malheur Wildlife Refuge in January, I braced myself for one of the inevitable outcomes: People on social media smugly talking about rural hicks and their inability to grasp the nuance of fine social issues. These kinds of things — takeovers of federal land in the name […]
From fake corporate responsibility to fake philanthropy
Mark Zuckerberg inspired collective media fawning last year when he announced that he was ‘giving away’ 99 percent of his fortune to charitable enterprises. Oh, the humanity! A man with massive profits and capital from a savvy, sharp entry into the tech economy was willing to give it all away for the good of the […]
On the valuation of art
A 2015 survey found 70 percent of artists in San Francisco reporting housing displacement, for a variety of reasons, supporting the hypothesis that an important demographic shift is happening in the Bay Area. Of the remaining 30 percent, many cited displacement as a concern, even if they weren’t dealing with it directly. Artists and many […]