#ryanhyatt

CEO: Scrolling social media site increases I.Q.

Idris Frank’s logo for his new app, which he promises will revolutionize social media. SANTA CLARITA — A father who has struggled with his teenage daughter’s addiction to social media has created a web site to compete with YouTube and TikTok and that he claims will increase the intelligence of viewers. Idris Frank, a 46-year-old software developer and chief executive officer of utok!, announced…

Music maker becomes social shaker

Review: Song of Kitaba Mark Everglade, 252 pages Revolutions are messy. They are not, as often depicted in fiction, neatly conceived tales with pre-ordained plots that follow an assured path to victory. In real life, revolutions are conceived in struggle, their course erratic, with failure often the closest ally and end result. My favorite aspect of Song of Kitaba, marketed as a ‘hopepunk’…

Persona Cracked: Joseph Hurtgen

Joseph Hurtgen with son, Ira. Persona Cracked is a series that explores the intersection of artists, their work, and social media. My next guest, Joseph Hurtgen, holds a PhD in English Literature and is the author of several books, including Tower Defender, The Archive Incarnate, Sherman: a Novel, and tae kwon GO. He writes science fiction analysis on his blog, Rapid Transmission and is a writer…

Persona Cracked: Liz Fyne

Persona Cracked is a series that explores the intersection of artists, their work, and social media. My third guest, Liz Fyne, has degrees in biology and neuroscience. She worked for 14 years doing biomedical research before she transitioned to fiction writing. You describe yourself on social media as a ‘recovering scientist,’ but is it better to be a ‘starving artist?’ What prompted your plunge…

The Parlor Tricks of Civilization as Relayed by a Mad Clerk in a Soda Shop

Listen up, ya hopefuls, have I a mouthful to chew. Find yourselves mistaken, once? Twice? Well, consider this, too … If your tongue is black for candy, if it lashes out for reasons hunger can’t explain, pay attention greedily my words the spoon-fed truth: To satisfy your curiosity of the parlor-dark display… First, for the ladies, we have a bowl of sugared hearts, cuz what we…

‘Pow!’ soda disrupts consumers’ reality

Interview with Lee Matthew Goldberg, author of Orange City Growing up, I enjoyed orange soda and feared spiders, and both feature prominently in Lee Matthew Goldberg’s first science-fiction novel, Orange City, which offers a second chance for felons and outcasts selected to move there. Everyone gets a job and a home, but they are bound to the city forever. They can never leave. Citizens are…

There’s no business like show business

Book Review: Out of Frame

Jack Lothian, S.J. Sims, Rhiannon Robertson, Sarah Witt Oneiric Roper, John Morgan Risner, 179 pages

Living in Los Angeles, I witness no shortage of artists, filmmakers, musicians, writers, and other creative types whose eccentric tendencies and out-of-the-box thinking prompted them as young adults to uproot from their hometowns and congregate here in mass to…