Google is displaying inaccurate information about George R. R. Martin's latest book. But why?
Why Doesn’t Google Know About The Hobbit 2: The Desolation of Smaug?
An investigation into a major hole in Google's knowledge I discovered something strange yesterday. It began when, in an effort to make a stupid joke on Twitter, I tried to figure out the names of the Hobbit movies. What baffled me was that this quickly turned out to be a harder task than anticipated when …
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Why Your Westworld Fan Theory is Not a Fan Theory
Madness descended upon the internet earlier this week when the Westworld showrunners stormed into a the /r/westworld subreddit for what proved to be one of the larger online pranks in recent history. The gist of the prank was simple: the Westworld team announced that they would be spoiling the entirety of the show for the …
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The Homage is Not Enough: on the Limits of Nostalgia-First Narratives
In the summer of 2016 everyone started telling me that I had to watch a show called Stranger Things. I was reluctant. The reluctance came from the way it was sold: the entire series was one large nostalgia fest for ‘80s Spielberg, Stephen King novels, and Dungeons and Dragons. It’s not that I don’t like …
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Why Game of Thrones Fan Should Hop on the Minnesota Vikings Bandwagon
We are nearly two weeks away from the Super Bowl. The Big Game. The Final Battle of the latest NFL season. And while being a fan of the NFL can be trying (see this article from two years ago for more on the topic), this has been a good year to be a good Vikings …
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Some takes on 2017, before it ends
The end of 2017 is nigh. And with it, the top ten lists, the retrospectives, the predictions. Rather than the Top Books Published in 2017 or the Best Films of the Year or anything like this, here's my list of opinions, ideas, and arguments that I have not already written about in 2017 and would …
Why Die Hard 2 is a Better Christmas Movie Than Die Hard
It's the season of Die Hard. The season of "Die Hard is the best Christmas movie." Or, at the very least, "did you know Die Hard is a Christmas movie." Die Hard is, inarguably, a Christmas Movie. This is an accepted reality in our zeitgeist. Many have argued for it, with the majority of the arguments …
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9 Reasons to Start Reading Moby-Dick on its 166th Birthday
It's no secret that I'm a pretty big Moby-Dick fan. Or, if it was a secret to you, then this might be the first thing you've read by me. Which is cool, if that's the case (thanks!). Anyway, in honor of Moby-Dick's 166th birthday, here are nine reasons that you finally need to read it. …
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Surely Some Revelation Is At Hand: Classic Poetry and Donald Trump
I cannot recall where the prompt originated, but in either late 2016 or early 2017 I rewrote several classic poems to be about Donald Trump. I rediscovered them recently and could not think of a reason not to share them. I don't know that much more context is needed here. I would recommend reading the …
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Why That Game of Thrones Fan Theory Is Not a Game of Thrones Fan Theory
The internet loves a good fan theory. The trouble is, the phrase "fan theory" has started to go the way of words like content or hipster or artisan or any of the other words whose definitions are so vague, so all encompassing, that they have very little meaning at this point. "Fan theory" is currently …
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