HYPOCRITE IDLER 1Q2026

By: Joshua Glenn
March 27, 2026

To idle is to work on meaningful and varied projects — and to take it easy. The title of the series refers to this self-proclaimed idler’s inability to take it easy.

HILOBROW is a noncommercial blog. None of the below should be construed as an advertisement for one of my various, more or less profitable projects. This series is merely intended to keep HILOBROW’s readers updated on the editor’s doings and undoings.

I am grateful to the talented and generous folks with whom I’ve collaborated during 1Q2026.

MORE HYPOCRISY: 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | 1Q2026.

Also see: HILOBROW 1Q2026

SEMIOTIC ANALYSIS

I’m cofounder of the semiotics-fueled consultancy SEMIOVOX. Our methodology provides insight and inspiration — to brand and organization strategy, marketing, design, innovation, and consumer insights teams, as well as to their agency partners — regarding the unspoken local/global “codes” that help shape perceptions of and guide behavior within product categories and/or sociocultural territories.

During 1Q2026, our projects included (but were not limited to) the following.

CRAFTED BEVERAGE CODES (GLOBAL). On behalf of a multinational beverage company, during 4Q2025 we kicked off a project analyzing Crafted Beverage codes in seven markets worldwide. We’ve enjoyed collaborating on this project with Becks Collins (England), Sarah Johnson of Athena Brand Wisdom (Canada), Labbrand (China), Aya Kanda of Salt (Japan), Mariane Cara of Comunicara (Brazil), and Marion Polauck (Germany). We’ve continued working on this major audit through 1Q2026. Product innovation, brand positioning, marketing optimization, retail design.

Pepsi India has revived its 1998 “This Heart Wants More” campaign. Not the client.

COLA CODES. On behalf of a multinational beverage company, during 1Q2026 we kicked off a project analyzing codes of the Cola space in three markets. We’ve enjoyed collaborating on this project with Becks Collins (England) and Chirag Mediratta of Fresh Think (India). Brand positioning, marketing optimization.

During 1Q2026, Ramona Lyons and I continued to develop a semiotics-driven story telling card game, to be débuted and play-tested by our colleagues at Semiofest Warsaw in May. We will direct an 80-minute “ludic workshop.” To that end, we have begun play-testing the game in Oakland and Kingston, and refining its mechanics as we go.

TEACHING & SPEAKING

During RISD’s J-term, I continued to serve as an informal thesis advisor to two Masters of Industrial Design students whose thesis projects are related to my own interests. It’s fun and intellectually rewarding to stay connected with the MID program, even though I have moved too far away from Providence to continue as an adjunct there.

In February, I signed on officially as an External Thesis Advisor for one of my advisees — a sample of whose work is shown here.

PROJECT:OBJECT KINGSTON

The team who brought you GIVE IT UP, this past summer, has several smaller, experimental object-oriented story telling events in the works for 2026. GIFT IT UP was the first of these.

In early January we gathered for an evening of story telling around… gifts that we didn’t want to keep. Might we persuade others, via story telling, to take those gifts off our hands? Or at the very least, might we use story telling as a way to bid a proper farewell to these objects?

Our team is grateful to GIFT IT UP participants Robyn Hager, Julian Richards, Chris O’Neal, Melanie Cozzolini, and others. It was fun!

During 1Q2026, we’ve continued to meet and plan future projects….

RADIUM AGE PROTO-SF

I’m editor of the MIT Press’s RADIUM AGE proto-sf reissue series. During 1Q2026 we published the following titles:

E. and H. Heron’s Flaxman Low: Occult Detective (March 10), edited and introduced by Alexander B. Joy. “Flaxman Low is the Sherlock Holmes of the ghost world.” — The London Quarterly Review (1900)
Irene Clyde’s Beatrice the Sixteenth (March 31), introduced by Lucy Sante. “A gynarchic state, Armeria, where women marry each other and buy the babies on whom the future of Armeria depends… Readable and suggestive.” — The Occult Review (1909)

PS: After Spring 2026, the RADIUM AGE series will publish one title per season (Spring / Fall), for a total (as of 2027, that is) of two titles per year.

For recent press about the series, see this post’s GOOD VIBRATIONS section.

RADIUM AGE SERIES UPDATES: 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | 1Q2026. FULL SERIES INFO.

Joseph Stella’s “By-products Plants” (1923–1926)

Here at HILOBROW, I’ve continued to share my Radium Age-related research. For example, via the series RADIUM AGE POETRY, I’ve reissued overlooked proto-sf-adjacent poems from the years 1900–1935.

Here’s a selection of the 1Q2026 RADIUM AGE POETRY lineup:

To see the full RADIUM AGE POETRY lineup, organized thematically, visit this page.

During 1Q2026 I’ve continued to build out the RADIUM AGE POETRY index linked to above, as well as the RADIUM AGE ART index.

Also… During 1Q2926 I began sorting — into the same categories one can find in these other indices — the Radium Age proto-sf novels and stories that, back in 2022, I listed and described via the series RADIUM AGE TIMELINE. There will be no separate index; I’m reconfiguring the timeline series’ original posts.

While we can find fine art and poetry from 1900–1935 expressing ideas and issues identical with or similar to those with which proto-sf authors of the period were fascinated, there are some notable (to borrow a coding term) “diffs.” For example, the following proto-sf themes don’t appear in the poetry or art that I’ve been studying:

“Impossible/Different” sf tropes

time travel / viewing
lost races
dinosaurs still live
hollow earth
thought control / psi powers

“Hard” sf tropes

the colonization [as opposed to merely visiting] of other planets
amazing inventions

Satirical extrapolations

Commentaries on today’s politics, set in the future

What might we discover about the emergence of the science fiction genre as we know it, circa 1900–1935, via a close analysis of these and other “diffs” revealed through this process? MacArthur Fellowship selection committee, please take note. Here are the RADIUM AGE TIMELINE installments that I’ve retrofitted during 1Q2026:

1900 | 1901 | 1902 | 1903 | 1904 | 1905 | 1906 | 1907 | 1908 | 1909 | 1910 | 1911 | 1912 | 1913

HILOBROW

HILOBROW is published by King Mixer LLC; I’m the editor. To see everything that we’ve published during 1Q2026, please check out the post HILOBROW 1Q2026. Here, I’ll just mention two series that I edited.

Al Aumuller/New York World-Telegram and the Sun (8 March 1943). This image is available from the United States Library of Congress’s Prints and Photographs division under the digital ID cph.3c30859.

HILOBROW published CAHUN YOUR ENTHUSIASM, a series of enthusiastic posts, contributed by 25 HILOBROW friends and regulars, on our favorite… anti-fascist artworks! Here’s a sampling of the CAHUN series lineup:

As the CAHUN series editor, I am very grateful to the series’ contributors, many of whom donated their honoraria to Veterans Fighting Fascism.

Inspired by the success of the MEDIA DIET series at our sister site SEMIOVOX, in March we launched a series exploring the media “input” of a group of people — HILOBROW’s friends and contributors — whose “output” we admire. Here’s a sampling of the 1Q2026 MEDIA DIET lineup:

ADRIENNE CREW on: the Thoth Tarot, Captain YAR, Ducktavious, Murderbot | MARK KINGWELL on: Sports clips, Weather, Indie Pop Rocks | ADAM McGOVERN on: Shazam discoveries, “The Firebird,” concentricity | LYNN PERIL on: weird old books, ’60s garage rock, live music | LUCY SANTE on: NYRB, early-’60s NYC jazz, Shadow Ticket| MIKE WATT on: Shannon Kim, Pynchon, The Kagero Diary.

Here’s the index page for this series.

To see my solo HILOBROW series and posts from 1Q2026, please check out the WRITING (HILOBROW) section of this post; to see what’s coming up soon, please see the post 2Q2026 SNEAK PEEK.

SEMIOVOX.COM

SEMIOVOX, my branding consultancy’s eponymous website, is published by SEMIOVOX LLC; I’m the editor. For a full update on what we’ve published this year, please see the post SEMIOVOX 1Q2026. Here, I’ll just mention a few highlights.

MAKING SENSE is a long-running series of Q&As dedicated to revealing what makes semioticians tick. Here’s a selection of the 1Q2026 series lineup:

For the new series TATTOO YOU, I’ve asked 25 of our semio colleagues from around the world to explicate the symbolism of… one of their own tattoos. Here’s a selection of the 1Q2026 series lineup:

SEMIOFEST SESSIONS

I’m founder and co-coordinator (with Ade Vaca, as of late 2025) for SEMIOFEST SESSIONS, a series of online get-togethers — intended not only to share best practices among, but to nurture collegiality and friendship within the global semio community.

For a full update on the 1Q2026 Semiofest Sessions, please see the post SEMIOVOX 1Q2026. Here are a few examples:

JANUARY: GUILTY PLEASURES. Others may be embarrassed about their predilection for “bad” pop music, television, movies, literature, and so forth. But for commercial semioticians who know that insights and inspiration are to be found everywhere, particularly in “bad” cultural expressions, there’s (almost) no such thing as a guilty pleasure. Gabriela Pedranti has invited Brian Khumalo and Sonia Skins to discuss the public/private nature of Instagram; Taiwanese fandom and playful rituals around the Chinese TV series Hòugōng Zhēn Huán Zhuàn; and more!

FEBRUARY: MYTHICAL SEMIOTICS. As a practicing commercial semiotician, do you:

Nostalgically marvel at the power myth holds over those cultures that have not been fully desacralized?
Critically denounce those that try to present present-day myths as natural and eternal?
Pragmatically weaponize myth expertise in the service of branding?
All of the above?

None of the above?

For this session, Alfredo Troncoso invited three commercial semioticians to discuss their encounters with the perplexing allure of the mythical in their respective fields of interest — namely, luxury, psychoanalysis, and advertising.

MARCH: SEMIOTICS IN LATIN AMERICA. The dense ecosystems of meaning in the most unequal region of the world can be challenging to navigate, let alone analyze. Mariane Cara invited semioticians from all over Latin America to discuss the unique uses of emotion, color and dissonance in Latin America for the 45th Semiofest Session: Doing Semiotics in Latin America.

WRITING (HILOBROW)

During 1Q2026, I wrote the following HILOBROW series and posts.

For the CAHUN YOUR ENTHUSIASM series, I contributed a series introduction. Excerpt:

By highlighting the inherent violence and genocidal aims of historical and modern fascist movements, anti-fascist propaganda efforts must expose their true nature, call out their lies and manipulations, and rally public opinion against them. But anti-fascist propaganda doesn’t have to be — shouldn’t be — ham-handed. As this series will demonstrate, anti-fascist art is persuasive not despite but because it is beautiful, funny, smart, and eccentric.
For the CAHUN YOUR ENTHUSIASM series, I also contributed an installment about THE LADY VANISHES. Excerpt:

The only true sanity, per Adorno, is a “critical pessimism” that refuses to find comfort in the status quo. So will Iris choose a life of “unhealthy” resistance… or will she adapt?

ALSO: I’ve continued to add installments in the solo series SCREENSHOTS, PHOTO DUMP, and NOT TODAY, EBAY.

WRITING (ELSEWHERE)

During 1Q2026, I wrote the following SEMIOVOX series and posts.

Installments in the SEMIOPUNK series (cross-posted, in altered form, from HILOBROW) included, during 1Q2026: A CANTICLE FOR LEIBOWITZ | THE EINSTEIN INTERSECTION | THE SOFT MACHINE. Excerpt from the first installlment:

Puzzling over cultural fragments that we cannot immediately comprehend, yet diligently — even faithfully — sticking with the long, arduous process of decoding and reassembling, in hopes of eventual “illumination”… OK, yes — one can draw certain parallels between the semiotician’s and the monk’s work. Like Francis, we do what we do because we love to contribute, in some small way, to human knowledge.

For the TATTOO YOU series, I contributed an installment titled FALLING ANGEL. Excerpt:

I toted my copy of Physical Graffiti — which I’d often listen to, in its entirety, before getting out of bed on a hungover Sunday — to my ex-girlfriend Alice’s house in the South End, so she could trace the Swan Song label’s logo for me. On this album, you will find a brilliant cover of “In My Time of Dying,” a gospel blues featuring the lyrics “Meet me, Jesus, meet me… / Meet me in the middle of the air. / If my wings should fail me, Lord… / Please meet me with another pair.”

GOOD VIBRATIONS

Getting the word out, during 1Q2026…

RADIUM AGE SERIES

For a full update on recent Radium Age series publicity, please see the post RADIUM AGE 1Q2026. Here are a few examples.

Interview with Alexander B. Joy here. Excerpt: “Flaxman Low’s exploits are best contextualized in terms of early psychological science. In effect, they’re speculative fiction stories about the mind and brain. They explore the space that opens when we recognize that our mental states to map to material entities (like the brain and its chemistry) instead of immaterial souls.”
Podcast interview with Alexander B. Joy here. Excerpt: “[Flaxman Low] acts as a scientific investigator of sorts. He’ll investigate and sometimes eradicate these seemingly supernatural and mystical phenomena. But of course it’s only after he establishes a scientific basis for their occurrence.”
Reactor: “Over a century ago, writer Irene Clyde was pushing back against perceptions of gender in the U.K. Now, Clyde’s novel Beatrice the Sixteenth, set in a utopian alternate world with no concept of gender, is getting a stylish new edition, complete with an introduction by the great Lucy Sante.”
Foreword, on Beatrice the Sixteenth: “The introduction by Lucy Sante places the book in context of its Edwardian author, who would now be considered a transwoman, and her advocacy for the ‘abolition of gender binaries’ and ‘celebration of female-female intimacy.’ The book explores a society that upholds women-dominated communities as utopian, eschewing binaries, and having no men.”

From Andrew Liptak’s Transfer Orbit newsletter on the Flaxman Low collection: “Low is an Oxford-trained psychologist who takes on everything from ghosts to mummies to vampires to a mushroom mannequin, and it sounds like a ton of fun.”
Also! At the website File 770, sff reviewer Cat Eldridge included me in a list of sff notables born October 6. Flann O’Brien, David Brin, Lorna Toolis, Donna White, Ellen Kushner… what an honor to be included in such company.

***

On to 2Q2026…

MORE HYPOCRISY: 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | 1Q2026.

HYPOCRITE IDLER 1Q2026

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