I Write Articles
Here is a selection of my published articles with a brief explanation.
This is a piece I wrote in 2015 for The Irish Times about healthcare in California. Although I wrote it as a humour piece, everything in there actually happened.
This is a piece I wrote in 2017 for Areo Magazine about our disordered relationship with animals. The original article was much longer and was actually about how humans love each other. The stuff about animals was just the preamble to that. But I couldn't make the main body of the thing work, so I pulled out the first bit, expanded it, and cold-pitched it like that.
This is another piece I wrote in 2017 for Areo Magazine about how our brains do not meet us halfway when we are developing opinions. I tried to keep it as simple and straight-forward as possible, but we are constantly in the process of deluding ourselves. The real danger is when you first become study how insidious our mental processes are, you become aware of all the mistakes other people make, but not your own. Further study in philosophy and psychology can help a lot with this, but some people never get out of that phase. This article got a great response. Someone even translated it into Spanish.
This is a piece I wrote for thejournal.ie in 2017 about how much I hate Christmas. I was commissioned to write an article about "Christmas from an atheist perspective". I assume they were looking for lots of god-hating stuff and about how Christmas was originally pagan and so on. In a conscious effort to frustrate expectations, I instead mentioned nothing at all about gods or atheism and proceeded to trash all the aspects of Christmas that any normal person would love, i.e., nice food, meeting faraway family, getting presents, etc. I just trashed everything and tried to put together a "reasonable" opinion to justify it. I thought it was funny, but man the comments section did not agree.
This is an article I wrote for Arc Digital in 2018 about how the technological singularity will never happen. I originally cold-pitched this to a different publication, but they said they showed it to their technology expert who returned it with such a poorly-researched and ill-thought-out set of criticisms, the only conclusion I could come to was that they need a new technology expert. It became one of my most popular articles. At the time, no one was talking in these terms, but as time goes on, more and more AI people are coming around to the opinions expressed here.
This is another article I wrote for Arc Digital in 2018 about how right-wing conservatives weaponise civility to silence and demonise their critics. Upworthy hacked and re-packaged it with the headline "Nice people make the best Nazis", which is close enough to a thesis statement.
This is an article I wrote for Areo Magazine in 2019 about the naturalisation of Shamima Begum. I've always been fascinated by how we insist on putting people and things into arbitrary categories, even if we believe there is something objective about the boundaries we have chosen. Nationality is one of those categories.
This is an article I wrote for Arc Digital in 2020 about the defacement of several statues during the Black Lives Matter protests in England.
This is an article I wrote for Private Eye in 2020 about the precarious political situation in Kosovo, a new country in the Balkans between Serbia and Albania and the site of some of the worst atrocities in Europe since World War II. Politics in the Balkans is famously complicated, but the best way to understand anything complicated is to look at a small part and see how it works. That's what this article was supposed to be.
This is an article I wrote for Areo Magazine in 2021 about ideas that can kill you just by thinking about them. A lot of my articles could be put in the category of "thoughtful whimsy" and this is one of those.
This is a piece I wrote for The Phoenix magazine in 2021 about the collapse of global organised atheism. Ever since Atheist Alliance International attacked me personally in one of their delightful blog posts, I've been keeping track of their corruption, mismanagement, incompetence and the ham-fisted attempts they've made to hide the evidence and lie about it.
This is an article I wrote for Areo Magazine in 2022 about the transphobic jokes of Ricky Gervais, and transphobic jokes in general. It's a subtle, nuanced argument and a lot of people disagreed with my conclusions, which is fine because they are wrong.
I will keep writing.
This is a piece I wrote in 2015 for The Irish Times about healthcare in California. Although I wrote it as a humour piece, everything in there actually happened.
This is a piece I wrote in 2017 for Areo Magazine about our disordered relationship with animals. The original article was much longer and was actually about how humans love each other. The stuff about animals was just the preamble to that. But I couldn't make the main body of the thing work, so I pulled out the first bit, expanded it, and cold-pitched it like that.
This is another piece I wrote in 2017 for Areo Magazine about how our brains do not meet us halfway when we are developing opinions. I tried to keep it as simple and straight-forward as possible, but we are constantly in the process of deluding ourselves. The real danger is when you first become study how insidious our mental processes are, you become aware of all the mistakes other people make, but not your own. Further study in philosophy and psychology can help a lot with this, but some people never get out of that phase. This article got a great response. Someone even translated it into Spanish.
This is a piece I wrote for thejournal.ie in 2017 about how much I hate Christmas. I was commissioned to write an article about "Christmas from an atheist perspective". I assume they were looking for lots of god-hating stuff and about how Christmas was originally pagan and so on. In a conscious effort to frustrate expectations, I instead mentioned nothing at all about gods or atheism and proceeded to trash all the aspects of Christmas that any normal person would love, i.e., nice food, meeting faraway family, getting presents, etc. I just trashed everything and tried to put together a "reasonable" opinion to justify it. I thought it was funny, but man the comments section did not agree.
This is an article I wrote for Arc Digital in 2018 about how the technological singularity will never happen. I originally cold-pitched this to a different publication, but they said they showed it to their technology expert who returned it with such a poorly-researched and ill-thought-out set of criticisms, the only conclusion I could come to was that they need a new technology expert. It became one of my most popular articles. At the time, no one was talking in these terms, but as time goes on, more and more AI people are coming around to the opinions expressed here.
This is another article I wrote for Arc Digital in 2018 about how right-wing conservatives weaponise civility to silence and demonise their critics. Upworthy hacked and re-packaged it with the headline "Nice people make the best Nazis", which is close enough to a thesis statement.
This is an article I wrote for Areo Magazine in 2019 about the naturalisation of Shamima Begum. I've always been fascinated by how we insist on putting people and things into arbitrary categories, even if we believe there is something objective about the boundaries we have chosen. Nationality is one of those categories.
This is an article I wrote for Arc Digital in 2020 about the defacement of several statues during the Black Lives Matter protests in England.
This is an article I wrote for Private Eye in 2020 about the precarious political situation in Kosovo, a new country in the Balkans between Serbia and Albania and the site of some of the worst atrocities in Europe since World War II. Politics in the Balkans is famously complicated, but the best way to understand anything complicated is to look at a small part and see how it works. That's what this article was supposed to be.
This is an article I wrote for Areo Magazine in 2021 about ideas that can kill you just by thinking about them. A lot of my articles could be put in the category of "thoughtful whimsy" and this is one of those.
This is a piece I wrote for The Phoenix magazine in 2021 about the collapse of global organised atheism. Ever since Atheist Alliance International attacked me personally in one of their delightful blog posts, I've been keeping track of their corruption, mismanagement, incompetence and the ham-fisted attempts they've made to hide the evidence and lie about it.
This is an article I wrote for Areo Magazine in 2022 about the transphobic jokes of Ricky Gervais, and transphobic jokes in general. It's a subtle, nuanced argument and a lot of people disagreed with my conclusions, which is fine because they are wrong.
I will keep writing.