Global Crisis

I have written 283 blog posts this year (so far!). Last December, I went on an official 6-week hiatus in order to finish my book, then came back on 2/12 in order to talk about the consequences of debating truth-claims about abuse in public.

In 2013, my highest monthly viewership was about 17,000. In 2014, I had 4000 in February, 40000 in March, 17000 in April, between 25000-30000 every month since. The Daniel Handler story drew an extra 20000+ views to the blog in the first few days after I posted it (this post has 23000 views now). I say views instead of readers because at least some of y'all read me regularly, for which I am both humbled and grateful. It's the regular readers that push me to keep writing and to try and get better.

Here are some posts from 2014 that I especially like and that you might have missed.

Guest Posts - I had three guest posts this year. I have no guest post policy and turn down about 99% of requests for guest posts (most of which are commercial in nature). But every so often, something special comes along:

• Nancy McCrea Iannone: Keep Abortion Politics out of the Pro-Information Movement (I wrote a followup blog here - On being pro-choice, pro-information, and anti-eugenics).
• Ellen Arnold: The Human Scale: What we miss when we compare disasters like Ebola and the Black Death
• Amy McNally: What do you do when someone tells you they are thinking about suicide?

• Hidden Disabilities - Or; You have no idea what you are seeing. I respond to some critical reader mail on my Kanye West piece and talk about accessible parking and why it seems to always be first on people's mind.
• The "Pencil Test" for people in wheelchairs - Florida cop throws a person in a wheelchair to the ground to see if they can get up, testing if they are really disabled.
• Trigger Warnings and This American Life - In which David Sedaris uses the "r-word" repeatedly to get a few cruel laughs.
• Cute is not enough - World Down Syndrome Day, 3/21/14. Why and how I'm playing "the long game."
• After Elliot Rodgers went on his killing spree, I responded to the debates about race, mental health, misogyny, and other categories by suggesting interectionality as the pathway through these debates: I call it "fighting the shrug."
• A piece in which I argue that "the last acceptable prejudice" is not a helpful way to elevate your cause above others, whatever that cause may be.

On Writing: