Dan Sinker's Blog

Punk Planet Year Nine, issues 50-55. 2024 marked 30 years since the start of Punk Planet, the magazine I ran for 13 years.

A packet of tomato seeds.

I have a ritual I do most every time I'm in Los Angeles.

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).

2024 was a blur.

Ever since this summer, I've been haunted by David Pajo's performance of The Pretenders' "2000 Miles" at the gathering to remember Steve Albini.

Punk Planet Year Eight, issues 44-49. 2024 marked 30 years since the start of Punk Planet, the magazine I ran for 13 years.

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.

Punk Planet Year Seven, issues 38-43. 2024 marked 30 years since the start of Punk Planet, the magazine I ran for 13 years.

Today is my birthday, a big one, and the world is shit.

I'm still pretty numb from the election, but I have been finding a lot of solace in "Fantasy Baseball at the End of the World" by John K Samson, written during the first Trump presidency and, I think, capturing that moment (and, now, this moment) as perfe…

Punk Planet Year Six, issues 32-37. 2024 marked 30 years since the start of Punk Planet, the magazine I ran for 13 years.

This week, after Donald Trump appeared on wrestling legend The Undertaker's podcast and Trump transition team co-chair Linda McMahon was sued for allowing sexual abuse to happen during her tenure as CEO of WWE, I thought back to a project I undertook but…

I've watched this absolutely delightful talk from Panic's Cabel Sasser a half-dozen times since it was released last week.

Punk Planet issues 25-31. 2024 marked 30 years since the start of Punk Planet, the magazine I ran for 13 years.

Everything is kinda shitty and stressful right now, so here's a little look at something that's neither.

"So that story sounds like bullshit."

Punk Planet issues 19-24. 2024 marked 30 years since the start of Punk Planet, the magazine I ran for 13 years.

Punk Planet issues 13-18. 2024 marked 30 years since the start of Punk Planet, the magazine I ran for 13 years.

Today is the birthday of Steve Albini, legendary recording engineer, musician, and human.

Punk Planet issues 7-12. 2024 marked 30 years since the start of Punk Planet, the magazine I ran for 13 years.

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.

Punk Planet issues 1-6 (except issue 3 which I don't have a copy of and seems to not exist anywhere). 2024 marked 30 years since the start of Punk Planet, the magazine I ran for 13 years.

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.

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.

I was fresh out of college and needed a job.

I love a lot of things about Chicago, but the number one thing is that it works.

Typically, I write a year-end recap of work I've done and culture I've enjoyed in the past year.

2023 was a lot of hard things, but losing Sinead O'Connor and Pee-Wee Herman within a few days of each other this July felt especially cruel.

If I should fall from grace with God Where no doctor can relieve me If I'm buried 'neath the sod But the angels won't receive me Let me go, boys Let me go, boys Let me go down in the mud Where the rivers all run dry I thought Shane MacGowan was unkillable.

When I was young, middle-school age probably, I read an article about the artist/musician/weirdo Laurie Anderson.

A year ago Elon Musk took over Twitter.

Well it's been a while.

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.

"I want to write a novel but instead of a book, it takes place across the internet."

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 ci…

When 2023 began, I made a promise to myself: This was going to be a year of trying.

It's March 11, 1918.

To skateboard is to see the world as a challenge, a series of obstacles to overcome, a new terrain to master.

I woke up at 6:30 yesterday to watch soccer—football, sorry—a fact that seems absolutely insane to write.

At least I'm fucking trying, what the fuck have you done?

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.

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.

It's the last day of 2022.

I have friends with hobbies.

"I wanna hear your voice, coming out of my radio.

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.

As I wrote the other day, I've mostly left Twitter at this point.

As I write this, journalists are being banned from Twitter for reasons both petty and arbitrary and almost too annoying to even explain.

In honor of Argentina’s advancement to the finals of the World Cup, I thought I’d dip into my drafts folder and share this memory: I used to travel to Buenos Aires for a journalism conference once a year. 14 hours south from Chicago by plane.