Your shoes are dirtier than a toilet seat. That fact alone isn't really the point. What's interesting is what we do once we know it — and what that reveals about how we move through the world more broadly.

I want to define a version of the mirror precisely, because I'll use it throughout this piece: a system in which identical expressive acts are evaluated differently depending on political alignment, whether through public rhetoric or through how a law actually gets enforced.

Intellectual property regimes were justified as instruments for promoting public welfare. Increasingly, however, legal doctrine and business practice have treated the protection of rights holders as an end in itself rather than as a means to that public purpose.

In 2019, I appeared on a Washington Post Live panel discussing rap lyrics, The Slants' Supreme Court case, and the First Amendment. Looking back, I realize I answered an important question incorrectly — not because what I said was false, but because it wasn't complete.

When a trademark complaint hits a global marketplace like Etsy, the consequences can extend far beyond a single listing. A recent dispute over the word “bruh” illustrates how trademark registrations, platform takedowns, seller status, lost sales, and limited appeal mechanisms can collide and raise bigger questions about trademark enforcement and the gap between a complaint and an actual legal determination.

On an average day, somewhere between 100,000 and 135,000 flights take off and land around the world. Imagine, for a moment, that air travel operated at 99 percent safety. It is a number that sounds, on its face, pretty good.

People started telling me I had the right temperament for office. I started to believe some of it myself. But I never ran.

She spent a career being underestimated because of how she looked and talked, so she made that miscalculation the whole point. She never asked anyone's permission to be taken seriously. She just kept being undeniable until the labels other people put on her stopped fitting.

My bandmate Joe and I are writing a musical, and neither of us has any real experience in theater beyond sitting in the audience. Underneath the music and the food and the story, there's a question we keep circling.

A Christian metal band called Demon Hunter is suing Netflix over KPop Demon Hunters, the most-watched original title in the company's history. My first reaction was that this looks opportunistic. My second reaction was that they might have a real claim.

The Ninth Circuit just reversed Jack Daniel's tarnishment win over a poop-pun dog toy. The outcome is reasonable. But the doctrine that nearly killed the toy — and the constitutional question nobody asked — are worth chewing on.

Most arguments about reclaimed language eventually collapse into the same frustrated question: why can they say it if I can't? The question assumes reclaimed words all work the same way. They don't.

Today the Fourth Circuit ruled in favor of a Virginia driver displaying a license plate reading "FTP&ATF,” an acronym for "Fuck the Police and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives." To get there, Judge Pamela Harris cited Matal v. Tam — my case — as the controlling analogy.

Several years ago, five student organizations co-sponsored my visit — including the Federalist Society and the American Constitution Society. They ordered pizza together. Nobody seemed to find this remarkable.

Arts funding is often treated as charity. In practice, it functions as civic infrastructure. That distinction sounds semantic until you look at what it actually determines.

In 2017, I gave a TED talk called "Yes, Read the Comments Section." The argument was simple: disengaging from people you disagree with is its own kind of failure. I believed that then. I still (mostly) believe it now.

Taylor Swift filed trademarks for her own voice. Matthew McConaughey did too — both moves aimed at getting ahead of AI deepfakes. It's a clever legal strategy, and untested in court. But the more interesting question isn't whether it works. It's what happens to everyone who doesn't have the resources to try it.

It is a spectacular failure. It is also, if you've spent any time working in communications or watching how organizations engage with the communities they claim to serve, a deeply familiar one.

The first sign is usually the schedule. Before the event, someone pulls me aside to explain that they had to be careful about how I was described.