Hello friends,
I hope you are having a wonderful end to 2023! As Twitter/X continues its decline into an unusable nightmare, I thought I’d switch over to this newsletter for a recap of my writing this past year. I had three essays come out this summer and fall:
“How Microsoft Excel Tries to Rebrand Work as Excitement” — WIRED (June 20)
For WIRED’s new Software Review series, I wrote about Microsoft Excel and a brief history of spreadsheet software. Apparently, I upset some of the competitive Excel community, which was not my intention. Please forgive me!
“Moneyball Made Sports Worse” — Jacobin (August 15)
For Jacobin, I wrote about the 20th anniversary of Moneyball. Lately, I’ve noticed that sports coverage has become largely insufferable because the experience has been reduced to a series of ads for gambling spreads and parlays. It’s hard not to see the moneyball-ification of sports as a direct contributor.
“How Declining Sperm Counts Have Seeded a Crisis of American Individualism” — Current Affairs (September/October Print Issue)
My close friend Arjun S. Byju and I co-wrote a piece for Current Affairs on the right’s panic surrounding declining sperm counts and how it relates to ideas of masculinity. It was a lot of fun to co-write this piece!
Coming soon…
I have a handful of essays in various stages of edits that should be out early next year, including a long essay on Holocaust films, as well as a shorter one on CompStat, the police software & management tool — I’ll share them as they’re published.
More to follow in 2024!
— BCGL