AX Mina is an artist and culture writer exploring contemporary spirituality, technology and other sundry topics. She co-produces Five and Nine, a podcast about magic, work, and economic justice, and serves on the board of the Rabkin Foundation.
Opinion
OAKLAND, Calif. — Amidst news of its filing for bankruptcy, Detroit is becoming ingrained in the popular imagination as a city fallen from grace. That it's also a rapidly emerging art and technology hub is lesser known.
Opinion
OAKLAND, Calif. — Part of what makes propaganda effective is the way it uses words that collectively sound like they mean something but ultimately signal very little.
Opinion
We dare you not to be fascinated by the wacky and amazing animated GIFs of Kevin Weird.
Opinion
OAKLAND, Calif. — Many common phobias make intuitive sense. Fear of snakes, fear of spiders, fear of heights — it's easy to understand that these crippling phobias emerge from natural cautions we've inherited from millions of years of evolution.
Opinion
OAKLAND, California — Ukiyo-e Heroes, a new series by American artists Jed Henry and Dave Bull, continues the ukiyo-e form with video game characters.
News
OAKLAND, Calif. — For the past ten years, LA's murals have been an endangered species.
Opinion
OAKLAND, Calif. — Take a stroll downtown or to your nearest shopping center, and you'll see firsthand that big bookstores are on the decline. But that doesn't mean books — and the spaces in which we consume them — have less importance.
Opinion
OAKLAND, Calif. — Fall in the United States marks the annual rite of purchasing school supplies; Americans spent over $70 billion in 2012, if you count college students. The National Retail Federation notes that families spend nearly $650 on average.
Art
OAKLAND, California — Nobody knows where Genghis Khan's body is, but there's plenty of evidence of his DNA. A staggering report noted that some 16 million people can thank the Khan for their heritage. That's roughly 1 in 200 men in the world.
Opinion
Chew on this … the Nigerian film industry, aka "Nollywood," overtook Hollywood in 2009 in terms of the number of films produced, and it is outdone only by Bollywood.
Opinion
You likely won't hear about it on the festival circuit, but one of the most exclusive international venues can be found in Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea.
Opinion
LOS ANGELES — That Chinese cities are incredibly polluted is a fact that any visitor to the country must accept. From dead pigs in the water to brown in the skies, pollution is both backdrop and foreground to contemporary Chinese life.