I read A Confederacy of Dunces years ago and thought it was hilarious. Now I think it’s prophetic. Back then, Ignatius J. Reilly felt like an exaggerated character. He is a pompous, self-righteous, overeducated man ranting about society’s collapse while blaming his digestive system for everything. Today he […]
There is a small monkey in Japan who briefly broke the internet because he coped with loneliness the way many of us secretly do: he found something soft and held on tight. Punch, a young monkey at Ichikawa Zoo, was spotted clinging to a plush toy for comfort […]
There are people who cry at weddings. People who cry at movies. People who cry at tax season. I cry at dog stories. A heroic dog.A rescued dog.A dog reunited with its human.A dog wearing a tiny raincoat. I am emotionally available for all of it. So when […]
What advice would you give to your teenage self? If I could sit across from my teenage self (probably on a twin bed with mismatched sheets, dramatic sighs, and a notebook full of Very Important Feelings) I wouldn’t tell her to change who she was. I liked her.She […]
Somewhere along the evolutionary timeline, humans went from inventing tools to naming them. Not in a practical way. Not in a “this is my truck, Bessie” kind of way. No. We are now giving delivery robots faces, personalities, and apparently emotional backstories. Little sidewalk robots are trundling around […]
Scientists recently thawed bacteria trapped in ice for something like thirteen thousand years inside Scărișoara Cave in Romania, which is already the kind of sentence that makes me feel like humanity is poking at something that should have stayed in a locked narrative box labeled Do Not Disturb. […]
There are people who think dogs are chaotic creatures. Loud, needy, impulsive. Agents of fur and entropy. Those people have clearly never noticed how dogs build rituals. Not routines. Rituals. Sacred, non-negotiable emotional appointments with their human. Mine have three. My middle dog who is my resident curmudgeon, […]
Lately the news has felt like a slow drumbeat of mortality. You see familiar faces. People you grew up watching, people who seemed woven into the background of your life and suddenly their names are trending next to words like illness, cancer, ALS, loss. You see names like […]
There is a very specific kind of boredom that only arrives after 11 p.m. It’s not the energetic boredom of a Sunday afternoon where you might reorganize a drawer or text someone you shouldn’t. No. This is the dimly lit, slightly sticky boredom of someone who has already […]
I finished watching Apple Cider Vinegar, another one of those “based on a true story” streaming series that leaves you staring at the screen afterward, not because you’re moved but because you’re unsettled. Not haunted. Not inspired.Unsettled. Because at its core, the show isn’t really about wellness influencers […]