Welcome to the brand new Alt Wire blog. Never heard of Alt Wire? We launched this guest contributor series in early 2009 and loved the project so much we wanted it to be its own blog. You will love Alt Wire, we promise.
Here's how it works: we recruit our favorite magazine editors, bloggers, journalists, writers, and artists to assemble a list of at least five things that inspire them in the wide world of the webernet.
Subscribe to the Alt Wire RSS feed for spoon-fed inspiration. Or follow us on Twitter.
To get you started, here are 10 choice links culled from previous Alt Wire posts:
Fatemeh Fakhraie
(editor, Muslimah Media Watch): "The Muslim Sex Shop website takes a 'halal' approach to sex in the life of a Muslim, discussing issues frankly but humorously in the form of poetry, guest fiction, and cheeky merchandise."
Davy Rothbart
(editor, Found): "Creep, Kansas City is one of the most raw, sad and beautiful videos I can imagine, and I don't think a filmmaker could craft something quite this rich and pure. This girl has a ton of other similar, strangely affecting videos. This video, to me, represents the magic of the found bits available on YouTube "
Jason Marsh
(editor, Greater Good): "Researchers at Project Implicit have created a series of fascinating tests that help you detect your unconscious biases (along the lines of race, religion, sexual orientation, and much more). They’ve found, for example, that most Americans have an automatic, unconscious bias for white faces over black ones. Do you?"
Phil Yu
(blogger, Angry Asian Man): "Jen Wang and Diana Nguyen are the smart and sassy ladies behind Disgrasian, an ingenious, hilarious spin on the Asian American issues blog. Taking on politics, pop culture and current events with thoughtful wit and a healthy dose of snark, they often say the things I can never quite muster up the courage to say myself. And they're damn funny."
Jessica Valenti
(blogger,
Feministing
): "Whipping Girl is one of the most important feminist books to come out in years. The author, Julia Serano, is just brilliant and writes about gender, trans women and femininity in a way that not only educates, but inspires. I wish everyone would read this."
Will Braun
(editor, Geez): "California artist Mark Bryan sees tanks in the shape of churches and steeples built of missiles."
Rinku Sen
(editor, ColorLines): "I always need the 'black bourgeoisie perspective on politics' of Jack and Jill Politics."
Dan Sinker
(journalism professor and founding-editor of Punk Planet): "While newspapers in the U.S. struggle to find footing in the great digital reboot, it's exciting to see groups like Ushahidi emerge where nothing existed before using suddenly ubiquitious technologies. Originally started to report on rioting following elections in Kenya in 2008, Ushahidi is now a system for distributing reporting using cellphones with basic SMS text functionality."
Matt Novak
(blogger, Paleo-Future): "After discovering the Prelinger Archives in college I spent about 3 sleepless months downloading and watching an amazing collection of old industrial and ephemeral films. You've been warned."
William Patrick Tandy
(beloved Baltimore zine maker): "The Johnny Eck Museum celebrates Baltimore native son Johnny Eck, who made a name for himself early in life through appearances on the sideshow circuit and, most notably, in director Tod Browning’s 1931 classic Freaks. In later years, Eck became a renowned painter of window screens, a common practice in his East Baltimore neighborhood since the early 1900s."