During this long, hot, difficult summer I took a trip to a huge video game arcade and ended up completely in love with the art of the game marquee.| Dan Sinker's Blog
1| dansinker.com
I took my dad's modest stamp collection to Chicago's last stamp dealer. The money wasn't good, but it was a perfect end.| Dan Sinker's Blog
Sometimes you need to step out for a second, to take yourself out of the here and now and go somewhere else. With everything so waves hands in all directions right now, here are three places I'm going, if only for a moment.| dansinker.com
It's easy at first, I play my cards just right. A fleet of cat soldiers, lined up eight deep, attacking with impunity. Each hit against my opponent raises my life counter, tick tick tick tick. I amass a lead that feels impossible for anyone to overcome until, of course, my opponent plays a series of cards in such quick succession that I have no idea what's happened to me. They flash the "good game" emote before I even realize it's over. I watch my life count down precipitously until it's all ...| dansinker.com
Punk Planet Year Thirteen, issues 74-80.| dansinker.com
Earlier this week, it was discovered that the Chicago Sun-Times and the Philadelphia Inquirer had both published an externally-produced "special supplement" that contained facts, experts, and book titles entirely made up by an AI chatbot. There's been a lot written about this (former Chicago Reader editor Martha Bayne's is the best), and I don't need to rehash it all. But the thing that is most disheartening to me is how at every step along the way, nobody cared.| dansinker.com
Punk Planet Year Twelve, issues 68-73.| dansinker.com
I was only 17 when I moved into an apartment with two friends in Chicago's Wicker Park neighborhood. This was in the '90s, the neighborhood was full of artists and musicians and weirdos. It was still rough back then, but it was full of the kind of energy that was infectious when you're 17 and on your own for the first time.| dansinker.com
I wrote about how you can learn by taking things apart, about how geeky electronics were transformed by the global supply chain, and about how nothing happening in in the administration right now is about fixing broken things.| Dan Sinker's Blog
Punk Planet Year Eleven, issues 62-67.| dansinker.com
Focus feels impossible right now. There is so much happening—so much awful news breaking at an unrelenting pace, so many warning signs and red flags being hoisted—that it feels like you can't look away. At least, it feels like that to me. Which means that you're looking at a cascade of horrors instead of the things you're actually supposed to be doing.| dansinker.com
Everything is so shitty right now. Let's talk about the unexpected connection between Punk Planet and the Gilmore Girls.| Dan Sinker's Blog
I've spent many hours since the election reading about the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s. It started the day after election day when I had hours to kill in the lobby of a Hampton Inn, waiting for a room to open up. I loaded a library archive page up on my phone, and read newspapers from a hundred years ago about the KKK and how powerful they were in the '20s.| dansinker.com
I wrote about how, at a moment where so much insane shit is happening, writing it down is a radical act.| Dan Sinker's Blog
Seeing Chicago stand up against ICE this week reminded me of why I love this city so much, and gave me a focal point for a reflection on the 50th issue of Punk Planet, which was dedicated to the city.| Dan Sinker's Blog
A packet of tomato seeds. A booklet extolling the virtues of hand cream. An instruction manual for a camera. A guide for housewives on "the dangers that threaten every household," with an ad for Lysol on the back.| dansinker.com
The first time I went to LA I thought I'd hate it. Instead, I fell in love. In this week of devastating fires, I wrote about that beautiful city, its sunsets, its people, and its dreams.| Dan Sinker's Blog
Today Mark Zuckerberg announced that Meta is bending the knee to the incoming Trump administration, doing away with their third-party fact checking program which kept watch over misinformation on their platforms (to dubious success, admittedly). He claimed this announcement was about free expression, but make no mistake: this is about capitulating in advance to the demands of Trump and the far right, who have fought for years against any attempt to label their lies as misinformation.| dansinker.com
Looking back on 2024 is like peering through a deep fog. Thankfully there were some things this year that cut through the fog for me.| Dan Sinker's Blog
This Christmas Eve I thought I'd share this beautiful and haunting performance of "2000 Miles" by David Pajo, from this summer's Steve Albini memorial gathering. I've not stopped thinking about it.| Dan Sinker's Blog
Punk Planet Year Eight, issues 44-49.| dansinker.com
It's the time of year that you're looking for gifts for others (and maybe yourself) and I thought I'd pull together a list of all the things that I've got for sale through my own site or other places. It's many things! In fact, I kept remembering more even as I pulled this together, and probably forgot some even.| dansinker.com
I went to write an essay looking back at the the seventh year of Punk Planet, but one of the issues we published that year felt too relevant to RIGHT NOW to keep the essay's focus on the past.| Dan Sinker's Blog
Today is my birthday and the world is shit. I'm not really up for celebrating, but instead would like to tell you about the Gaza Skate Team and make a simple birthday request.| Dan Sinker's Blog
I'm still pretty numb from the election, but I have been finding a lot of solace in this song by John K Samson.| Dan Sinker's Blog
In Punk Planet's sixth year, we brought on a new design team and the look of the magazine really got incredible. I've assembled a gallery of some of the best spreads from that year.| Dan Sinker's Blog
Four years ago I was unsuccessful in selling American Heel, a podcast about Trump and pro wrestling. Because of *waves hands in all directions* I recently revisited the two rough cuts I made and they're definitely still relevant. So I'm putting them out, rough edges and all.| Dan Sinker's Blog
I can't stop watching Cabel Sasser's talk from the XOXO conference this year.| Dan Sinker's Blog
In the latest installment of my series reflecting on Punk Planet's legacy, I focus on the magazine's fifth year, when it shifted significantly toward political issues, particularly anti-war coverage, culminating in the "Murder of Iraq" cover story.| Dan Sinker's Blog
Everything is kinda shitty and stressful right now, so I wrote about something that's neither: the remarkable new game UFO 50.| Dan Sinker's Blog
The thing I love most about doing journalism is you never quite know where you're going to end up once you start digging. That's been especially true with my work on Rebel Spirit, which sits alongside the best reporting I've ever done. Today our second episode is out, and it's all about digging to expose a 70-year-old lie.| Dan Sinker's Blog
Punk Planet issues 19-24.| dansinker.com
The third in my monthly essay series about the 13 year run of Punk Planet. This time around, Year Three and the first cover story we ever ran, about the Democratic and Republican National Conventions in 1996, wholly relevant once again.| Dan Sinker's Blog
Today is the birthday of Steve Albini, legendary recording engineer, musician, and human. He's someone who transformed the underground music scene not just in Chicago, where he operated his studio Electrical Audio, but worldwide. But more than that he was a person who never stopped learning and growing. He was generous with his time even while maintaining an unparalleled work ethic. I am lucky to have called him a friend, even as I remained in awe of all that he built. Steve died in May of th...| dansinker.com
If the first year of Punk Planet was about figuring out the function of the magazine—finding writers, learning how to build a page in Quark X-Press, how to communicate with printers, how to find distribution and ship magazines, how to sell ads, and the billion other things that needed to happen—then the second year was about form.| dansinker.com
A few weeks before the pandemic hit, my pal Akilah Hughes and I sat in, of all places, the Cars-themed section of Disneyland and talked about, of all things, our careers.| dansinker.com
Punk Planet issues 1-6 (except issue 3 which I don't have a copy of and seems to not exist anywhere).| dansinker.com
This week I gave a talk called "Building a Town that Doesn't Exist" as part of the 11ty International Symposium on Making the Web Real Good. It's about the incredible amount of love and care and effort that I've put into Question Mark, Ohio over the last year. Question Mark is wrapping up in the next week or so and I think this talk is a fitting tribute to it and to the beauty of the world wide web that enabled it. I've adapted the talk for this blog post.| dansinker.com
Tonight I sent a note to the indictment.fyi mailing list that I was not going to be continuing to send updates on the ongoing criminal trials of Donald Trump. For those of you that have followed my work for a while, you know that I don't end things easily. I tend to just pile on the work like some kind of ever-escalating tower always on the verge of toppling over. My podcast Says Who is a great example: It was supposed to last for eight episodes. Maureen and I just released our 328th. But, wi...| dansinker.com
Fresh out of college and in need of a job I landed in the production department of the Chicago Reader. Now, 30 years later, I'm back to help rebuild its legacy on the web.| Dan Sinker's Blog
I've loved the typeface Cooper Black long before I knew what it was. Big, bold, and forever it's over 100 years old and still makes me so happy every time I see it. I made a simple patch to celebrate Cooper Black, the greatest of typefaces.| Dan Sinker's Blog
2023 was a lot of hard things, but losing Sinead O'Connor and Pee-Wee Herman within a few days of each other felt especially cruel. At the tail end of a difficult year I wrote a small offering to the mystic and man-child that meant so much to those of us that grew up different.| Dan Sinker's Blog
If I should fall from grace with God| dansinker.com
When I was younger I tried to build artist/musician/weirdo Laurie Anderson's tape-bow violin from a single sentence description. While I never got it to work quite right, it taught me everything I know about asking "why."| Dan Sinker's Blog
I wrote some thoughts on the lonely year that has transpired since Elon Musk took over Twitter.| Dan Sinker's Blog
It's been a minute since I last updated my blog. But that hasn't been because I haven't been doing stuff. In fact, quite the opposite.| Dan Sinker's Blog
"I want to write a novel but instead of a book, it takes place across the internet."| dansinker.com
Earlier this year I wrote about how 2023, for me, is about trying. And then I made a patch to remind myself of that. And people wanted one, so now I've made them and you can get one.| Dan Sinker's Blog
I wrote about getting wrapped up in British football, about the poison in the brain of every 90s punk kid, and about embracing change.| Dan Sinker's Blog
Today my pal Maureen Johnson releases her latest novel and I reflect on what it means to want the very best for the people you care about.| Dan Sinker's Blog
A story of an endless walk in Buenos Aires and the dreamlike place (and food) that it lead to. Shared today in honor of Argentina's advancement to the World Cup finals.| Dan Sinker's Blog
I'm not sure when I stopped blogging the same way that I'm not sure when I started. The same way that everything feels sort of blurry if it dates back far enough. But I had my fair share of Blogspots, that much I remember. There was one where I just wrote about the changes happening in journalism in the mid-2000s. There was one where I wrote very personal letters to the president, back when that president was a Bush. There was even one that me and a bunch of friends wrote about Battlestar Gal...| dansinker.com
Typically, I write a year-end recap of work I've done and culture I've enjoyed in the past year. But year was awful, and so I thought I'd take a different approach.| dansinker.com
When Punk Planet moved from its first small office to the cavernous warehouse space that would be the magazine's home 'til the end, there was a lot to do. There was building desks and walls and an enormous loft to store backissues on. There was hooking up utilities and wiring a network for our computers. And there was finding a dumpster.| dansinker.com
March is all over but the crying, like the song says, and for me March has had plenty of tears: a death in the family, a child with pneumonia, a few writing gigs that went south, a negotiation for a cool new project that blew up in my face like a trick cigar. March 2023 is not a month I care to repeat any time soon.| dansinker.com
It's March 11, 1918. Eva Carrière sits in a corner of a darkened room, mostly obscured by thick black curtains on three sides. The front is curtained too, but she can open and close those. Windows have been covered. A red light allows those assembled to see at all. Though, up until now, there's been little to see. Eva has been in a trance for hours. And then, suddenly, there's a flash of light, blinding nearly everyone, and Eva starts moaning loudly. And then the show begins.| dansinker.com
To skateboard is to see the world as a challenge, a series of obstacles to overcome, a new terrain to master. You read curbs as a dare. A staircase? A hill? Let's go. You fall and you get up and you fall again, an endless loop of pain and frustration until, finally, elation. You miss and you miss and you miss until at long last you hit the landing and that feeling—that feeling of beating the odds—will have you chasing it all over again no matter how many times you go down in the process.| dansinker.com
At least I'm fucking trying, what the fuck have you done? –Minor Threat, "In My Eyes"| dansinker.com
I was talking with someone yesterday about a project I've been sketching out about the sad songs we listen to and the stories we have about them, and she asked me what my saddest song was. Without hesitation I responded: "Farewell Transmission by Songs:Ohia."| dansinker.com
In January of 2020, before the whole world stopped—before even the idea that the whole world could stop—I was going to get my shit together. I was working out of a local library because my whole family was at home for winter break and I needed some space to get my head in order after a few hard years. 2020 was going to be my year, I was sure of it.| dansinker.com
A Little Devil in America By Hanif Abdurraqib| dansinker.com
I have friends with hobbies. Friends who do pottery, who take pictures, who go hiking, who make scarves or tables or beaded doodads. I've always kind of wanted a hobby, but they've never stuck. Instead, I work.| dansinker.com
There's a windchill of -40 degrees here in Chicago right now, part of a massive freeze that has set in across most of the United States. The cold forced my youngest child back into Zoom school for the day and overhearing his teacher beg for them to mute themselves while he laughs and jokes with friends has been a flashback to the time in the pandemic when everyone was doing everything at home. It's been weird and slightly traumatizing, but also sort of pleasant, and mostly has me thinking abo...| dansinker.com
As I wrote the other day, I've mostly left Twitter at this point. Maybe for good, certainly until it becomes a less awful place run by less awful people. I departed for Mastodon, which felt weird and lonely for a while but after giving it some time (and a few huge influxes of Musk-driven Twitter exiles) it has become a pretty good alternative for the conversational aspects of Twitter. But it hasn't replaced one of the major reasons that Twitter clicked for me: as the primary place to find out...| dansinker.com
As I write this, journalists are being banned from Twitter for reasons both petty and arbitrary and almost too annoying to even explain. The short of it is that there's an account that tracks and posts the movements of Elon Musk's private jet using publicly-available data. After vowing that he was such a free-speech absolutist back in November that he'd never ban the jet account (which at one point he tried to buy from the literal college kid who runs it), he banned it last night, then un-ban...| dansinker.com