Unfinished Business,
a weblog
This is a place where I can think out loud, work through ideas, and talk about stuff that doesn't fit cleanly into the type of freelance writing I do. Some ideas will be fully formed, others, as the title implies, will be unfinished.
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.
Published on July 11, 2025
A meditation on death, grief, and the card game Magic: The Gathering.
Published on July 3, 2025
Things End: Punk Planet, Year 13
For more than a year, I've been writing essays about Punk Planet, the influential, incredible, miracle of a magazine I worked on for 13 years. For more than a year I've been dreading writing this ending, because the reality is this: Sometimes things end and you never, totally get over it.
Published on May 30, 2025
We're living through the Who Cares Era, where completely disposable things are shoddily produced for people to mostly ignore, while the government stomps its uncaring boot on our necks.
Published on May 23, 2025
Things Fall Apart: Punk Planet, Year 12
Memory is a real son of a bitch. I thought I remembered the last painful years of Punk Planet vividly. Looking across the wreckage of Year 12, our next-to-last year, it turns out there was a lot I didn't remember.
Published on April 30, 2025
On Independent Bookstore Day, a look at how a bookstore changed my life and why indie bookstores are so vital right now.
Published on April 26, 2025
Taking Things Apart (in three parts)
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.
Published on April 11, 2025
Old Growth: Punk Planet, Year 11
It's sort of impossible to believe just how many things we did in the 11th year of Punk Planet. Issues! Books! A whole new magazine! A look back at a year of explosive growth.
Published on March 28, 2025
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Want to read a few popular pieces? Here are a some of my most-read posts:
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The Who Cares Era
We're living through the Who Cares Era, where completely disposable things are shoddily produced for people to mostly ignore, while the government stomps its uncaring boot on our necks.
Published on May 23, 2025
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What Felt Impossible Became Possible
A post about how the KKK in the 1920s felt unstoppable, about the people that fought against them anyway, and about how fascism always fails.
Published on Feb 23, 2025
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What I Need You To Understand, Notes from Chicago in Late October
ICE has been cracking down on Chicago, and I wrote a little bit about what you need to understand about what it's like here in late October. Plus, I compiled some resources for alerts and whistles.
Published on Oct 24, 2025
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Whistle Up
In Chicago, whistles proved to be a super effective alert system when ICE is near. With these goons spreading out across the country, I wanted to put together a resource guide for buying, printing, and distributing whistles. I wrote as full a brain dump as I could muster. Whistle up.
Published on Nov 21, 2025
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The Amazing Art of the Video Game Marquee
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.
Published on Aug 1, 2025