A Conflict of Interest Disclosure Regarding My Picks for SXSW

Last day to Vote is August 21. That is what a call to action looks like.

OK, so it’s no morally-questionable lobster festival up in Maine, but as a staunch hysterical realist in journalistic orientation, I feel it’s my duty to present the following deeply conflicted recommendations for SXSW. The producers of this event have decided to use the same mechanism for panel selection that led to decisions like the disastrous Athenian invasion of Syracuse in the Peloponnesian War, and the election of representative Marjorie Taylor Green to the House of Representatives. Given the risks of unfettered democracy without an opinionated and self-confident plutocracy to guide the unwashed masses in their decision making, consider me your plutocrat for the day! I present the following recommendations for SXSW and strongly advocate voting so that the conference sucks less. If you do a strong enough job voting, I get to go and report on it. So there are multiple reasons to take action here.

I hereby present my recommendations, in the format of disclosing my conflicts of …