Vice is Hip
Inherent Vice evokes the possibility of a different California, one in which the hippies beat the cops
Naming Nameless
Gabriella Coleman’s history of the Anonymous collective is as much about her complicity in the group’s attention-seeking tactics as it is about the group itself.
Needles and the Damage Done
While the Bay Area flourishes, small towns in the interior are stripped for parts.
Haven in a Homeless World
In Downtown Los Angeles, the homeless rub elbows with finance capital, but the developers want new neighbors.
The Souls of Ivy Folk
The new film Dear White People runs up against the well-noted limitations of “The Talented Tenth” vanguard.
The Ladies Vanish
The most magical innovation of the app economy is making the female workers it depends on mostly invisible.
Walking in L.A.
Freeways are a metonym for Los Angeles anomie and sprawl. Thom Andersen’s 2010 film Get Out of the Car shows how the city transcends them
Thirst Trap
The Silicon Valley initiative to split California into six pieces was a stunt, but the water issues it drew from are real
Not All Nerds
By imagining nerds as a race of their own, Silicon Valley tries to disguise its white supremacy
A Country Disappeared
As Mexicans reach a breaking point in their tolerance for the drug war, the Mexican government reaps the legacy of presidencies lost to guns and drugs.
In Praise of Fake Reviews
Yelp's self-interest, rather than any objective set of criteria, is what determines a "real" review.
How to Build a Dick
At the level of identity, genitals are made neither in the womb, nor in surgery, but in the mind
Commuter Riots
The Kansas City Royals' Kauffman Stadium is in a suburban sports complex that is perfectly modernist, which is to say, perfectly designed to quash riots.
Ghostbusters
Barbara Johnson showed that while deconstruction had ignored feminism, it was nonetheless inherently a form of feminist critique
A Cut Below
Tracts conceived by crusaders seeking to eradicate the foreskin were published by pornographers seeking to avoid censors
Fully Operational
A building erects the present in the midst of a nostalgic dream