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Now a newsletterer?

After twenty years of blogging, I have followed my fellow netizens to Substack, where I am publishing a weekly newsletter. You can subscribe via the form to the left and please drop me a note with a link to your newsletter.

Taking Notes

Thinking out loud in my corner of the internets.

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I’ve been writing here for over a decade now. In hindsight, only a handful of those posts are still worth reading.

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Latest Essays

Counting the Dead and then Making Coffee

Frontera List is not the most merry of mailing lists. It is administered by New Mexico State University reference librarian Molly Molloy, and aims to facilitate discussion around the violence in Ciudad Juarez that goes beyond the usual daily death count. Still, the...

The Market and Politics of Good Ideas at Private Foundations

I left Global Voices in May of last year and ever since have been cautiously dipping my toes in the world of philanthropy. For the past seven months I have been working as a full-time consultant for the Information and Latin America programs of Open Society...

Revolutions and What Follows: Egypt, Ukraine, and Cuba

I am thrilled for Egypt, and more specifically my Egyptian friends. I have been following political developments in the country ever since Mostafa began covering Egypt on Global Voices back in October of 2005. (If you were watching CNN's coverage of the protests last...

[Translation] Mexican Interview with Cuban Dissident 4 Hours After Liberation

I'm blown away by the pace of journalism these days - but also, more importantly, the quality. In Mexico I used to surf a lot of news sites to try to get a grasp of what was going on in the country: El Universal, La Jornada, Milenio, Proceso, Nexos, The News and...

[Recommended Listening] Communications Policy and Fractured Culture

This 1921 fight between Jack Dempsey and Georges Carpentier is just one of tens of thousands of boxing matches that you can easily find today on YouTube. It was dubbed the "Fight of the Century" and was the first boxing match to gross over a million dollars. Tim Wu's...

On America Having No Culture

Back in 2005 - when this blog was still a wee pup - I made a mistake common to young American liberals that have recently set out to explore the rest of the world: I claimed that America has no culture. I distinctly remember comments from Derek and Erick admonishing...