Fear culture is alive and well

It's been a little over three years since I completed my master's in Media Studies. Just about four years since the source material for my thesis manifested itself on the nightly news. And it's just about five days since the IS attacks on the city of Paris.

This far along I really shouldn't be surprised that the news media has actually gotten worse with its fear-mongering and posturing. Couple that with the rise of fanatic amateur "journalism" and I think we have something to actually fear: an amplified, ignorant citizen base.

Friday night as the Paris attacks were unfolding I quickly flipped on Sky News because the app exists on my Apple TV. I couldn't watch for more than five minutes. Even in the early first hour of the horrors that broke out across the capitol of France this particular news outlet was spinning a tale of fear and potential

(more…)

Restaurants as good neighbors

I love good food. One of my absolute favorite parts about living in Austin is the amazing food scene and I feel privileged to have been involved in parts of making local restaurants look good. One of the important parts of the launch of a new establishment is performing a [ … ]

(more…)

Music as Art vs Commodity Culture

Why Taylor Swift's reasoning is flawed even if the end result is good We're all aware of Taylor Swift's decision to remove her 1989 album from Spotify's streaming music catalog. There are many reasons that as a student of media and media markets, and as a musician myself, that I [ … ]

(more…)

Three Decades Later...

Hi. I am 30 years old today. I made it through my twenties unscathed and pretty happy. We held an epic Yacht Rock party with 55 of our friends out on The Commodore, a riverboat that cruises down Lake Austin and the lower Colorado River (no, not that Colorado River. [ … ]

(more…)

Thoughts on WordPress Themes

Last week I wrote a piece on the Bravery blog about why we don't mod premium themes for WordPress. The majority of the professional web development work that I do is on WordPress and has been for the past four or so years. Before that I did WordPress primarily as [ … ]

(more…)