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Category: Journalism

Coming Soon: Soup For Our Families zine

Posted in Creative Commons, Food, Other Writing, and Zines

Let me start by saying thank you  for supporting me. The last couple of months have been challenging, and the next few probably won’t be a whole lot easier. I’m looking for work, dealing with the slow collapse of the hemp industry, and coping with some significant health problems in my family.

So that’s why I’m assembling a cookbook zine. It’s called Soup For Our Families: An Antifascist Cookbook, and I’ll be collecting recipes over the next month. That’s right, actual food recipes — and not just soup, I’m collecting food and drink from every category from apps to desserts. I want to showcase the wide range of who we are, using food as a window. The only rule is the recipes should come from antifascist/antiracist people or groups.

Delta 8 FAQ: What You Should Know Before Trying Delta 8

Posted in Creative Commons, and Journalism

There’s a lot of buzz around Delta 8 right now, but I’m concerned people aren’t educating themselves about this new cannabinoid before using it.

Almost weekly, someone asks me about Delta 8 products. What are they, should I try them?

I appreciate that people look to me for guidance, so I thought I’d put together a few tidbits about Delta 8.

If you’re not aware, Delta 8, short for Delta-8-THC, is a close relative of Delta-9-THC. That’s main compound in psychoactive cannabis (“marijuana”). As you might guess, the two compounds are very chemically similar with somewhat similar effects. They both make you high but in slightly different ways. I’ll get into that below.

‘It Came From Something Awful’ Suffers From Factual Errors

Posted in Creative Commons, Journalism, and Occupy Wall Street

I don’t write about books often, and usually I stick to good ones, but I feel this needs to be said: “It Came From Something Awful” is a book that, at minimum, needed more fact-checking before publication.

Though the book came out in 2019, author Dale Beran is back in the spotlight because of the January 6, 2021 storming of the U.S. Capitol. Beran is seen as one of the experts on 4chan, and 4chan is seen as a key origin point of What Just Happened ™.

When I dug into the book, I found out this argument represents the first third of it at most, and my problems with the latter chapters make me call the whole thing into question.

Podcast: Talking with Visu.News about ‘Officer-Involved’ Shootings

Posted in Audio, and Journalism

I appeared on the Visu.News podcast to discuss my recent article on the language media uses when discussing the police. The hosts, Aaron Cynic and Zach Roberts, had just watched the recently released bodycam footage of the police murder of Adam Toledo. They were understandably shaken, and it gave our discussion an increased urgency.

Officer-Involved Shootings: How Was The Officer Involved?

Posted in Creative Commons, and Journalism

I found a really stark example this week of how the mainstream media continues to misreport about police killings, or as they too-often call them, “officer-involved shootings.”

I’m not the first one to point out that this is a problem. Experts on journalism discourages the use of vague language like “officer-involved shootings.” So why does the media persist in it?

Again, this happens all the time. I’m only calling out ABC here because it’s so blatant: two contrasting examples from the same 24-hour period. Here’s the first tweet:

Mutual Aid In The Media After The Texas Freeze (Podcast Appearance)

Posted in Audio, Austin, Journalism, and Media

I appeared on a second episode of the It’s Going Down podcast about the Texas Freeze.

The first part of this discussion, published last month, focused on the disaster itself. In the second part the panelists (including myself) discuss how the media, populace and local governments reacted to the mutual aid efforts: