Nerd vs Hipster

Did Nerds Destroy Hipsters?

Where did all the hipsters go? You may have noticed, as author JD Cowan did, that the hipsters who once infested the cultural landscape seem to have vanished overnight. So did writer Sam Kriss, who has an interesting theory as to where all the mustache wax-sporting, Pabst Blue Ribbon-drinking oddballs…
June 24, 202423 Comments
Phantom Whispers

Phantom Whispers: Volume 1

Want to have fun reading again? Here's a way to get hours of fun from a fantastic stable of newpub authors for less than a standard month of Netflix, minus the commercials: Spaceships, tanks fighting pig men, shapeshifting forest monsters, inter-dimensional cartoon characters, and psychic ghosts abound. Heed the whisper…
June 21, 20243 Comments
Presidential Alien Debate

Presidential Alien Debate?

Some people want the major parties' presidential candidates to debate aliens now. It's par for the course here on Planet Clown. The next president of the United States should be asked if he will release UFO-related documents, the New Paradigm Institute says. A once-taboo subject that essentially forced whistleblowers like…
June 20, 202411 Comments
Time Machine

We All Have Our Time Machines

Getting my new dark fantasy novel The Burned Book ready for launch is demanding more of my time of late. So here's a blast from the past that didn't get enough love the first time around. Did you know that you own a time machine? As a matter of fact,…
June 19, 20248 Comments
Traitor to Tradition

The Boomers: Traitors to Tradition

Every generation since the dawn of man has passed hard-won knowledge down to their posterity. That may seem like stating the obvious—and in any other age it would be—but something unprecedented happened to the West in the 1960s. Wht happened was the parents of gens X and Y decided not…
June 18, 202412 Comments
Cancel Adobe

“Cancel Adobe”: Backlash Prompts Corp to Update TOS Again

Adobe is suffering considerable external and internal backlash over their convoluted terms of service update. The one whose plain reading says they get to take ownership of your IP without compensation. Who could have predicted this turn of events? Last week, Photoshop and Substance 3D developer Adobe stole the headlines…
June 17, 202410 Comments
Vampire of the Amaszon

The Vampire of the Amazon

When most people think of vampires, they imagine insular Eastern European villages huddled in remote valleys at the wooded feet of craggy peaks. Or beautiful monsters haunting the inner rooms of gaslit salons. What almost nobody thinks of is the Amazon. Yet in the late 19th century, this Old World…
June 14, 2024
Conservative Art Starving

Spencer Klavan vs Conservative Art™

Why does every piece of "Conservative art" inevitably turn out to be cringe-inducing pabulum or hamfisted kitsch? Spencer Klavan, son of best selling author Andrew Klavan, takes a crack at the answer and suggests some solutions. For as long as I’ve been alive and longer, the Right has had a…
June 13, 202425 Comments
Anime ONA

Original Net Animation: The Future of Anime?

Today's post is a guest essay by author JD Cowan: Anime in the ’90s was being squeezed out during Japan’s economic bubble popping, but it was still being produced in the highest quality possible. Despite the downturn, anime was still growing domestically and abroad. And it was still aiming high.…
June 12, 202413 Comments
End of Gainax

Anime Ground Zero and The End of Gainax

Despite the overwhelming evidence collected on this blog that anime, like all forms of pop culture entertainment, suffered a fatal blow in the late 1990s, some still cling to that dead art form, hoping for a miracle. Well, if a miracle were to resurrect the Japanese animation industry, the logical…
June 11, 202421 Comments