The slow failure of our infrastructure is a crisis that everyone knows about, but no one wants to talk about. We all see the problems and know they’re getting worse, but addressing them head-on is politically tricky. For most people, it’s simply easier to stay silent. Well, I’m n … | Continue reading
Have you, yourself, described it as being bespoke? If yes, it is absolutely bespoke. If not, it might still be bespoke. Don’t get discouraged. Was this item/experience/thing made specifically for you? If so, congrats. It’s by definition bespoke. If not, could you potentially lie … | Continue reading
“When asked by CNN to respond to critics who argue that ‘thoughts and prayers’ are not enough to prevent mass shootings, Republican Rep. Keith Self, who represents Allen [Texas], said … that he wanted to know what the motive of the gunman was and whether he had mental health issu … | Continue reading
Everyone wants to know how I started my very successful business, and I’m honored to share my path to greatness with you. The answer to how I got where I am today is simple. It took blood, sweat, and tears, and a lot of money that I already had from my previous super-successful b … | Continue reading
“The Writers Guild of America is seeking to restrict the use of artificial intelligence in writing film and television scripts. Hollywood studios, battling to make streaming services profitable and dealing with shrinking ad revenues, have rejected that idea.” – Reuters - - Four B … | Continue reading
1. Many dishes are served in a deconstructed manner, with no components touching each other. 2. There is a lot of concern over one tiny drop of sauce on a plate. 3. The basic counter seating has some fancy name like “Chef’s Counter” or “Dad’s Emporium of Dinosaur-Shaped Chicken N … | Continue reading
Hey, it’s Me, God. Not to toot My own horn, but I think I’ve been knocking this creation thing out of the park. I mean, I’ve really got it all laid out. You guys are gonna love what I’ve done with the place. Wait until you see the constellations. There are so many different ways … | Continue reading
1. In love two melons are. Yet run off and marry they do not. Why? Because elope, they cannot. - - -2. On a seafood diet, I am. Food I see; eat it I do. - - -3. I sense much fear in six. Fear of seven. Why? Because nine, seven ate. - - -4. YODA: Knock knock. LUKE: Who’s there? YO … | Continue reading
“Beef between Disney and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis shows no sign of abating.” — Axios - - -My fellow Americans, we have a rodent problem. Mickey Mouse and his handlers at Disney have gone too far. Florida is where woke goes to die. And I, Ron DeSantis, am running for president so … | Continue reading
“I was watching video of people fighting on the street in Washington. A group of Trump guys surrounded an Antifa kid and started pounding the living shit out of him. It was three against one, at least. Jumping a guy like that is dishonorable obviously. It’s not how white men figh … | Continue reading
Part of what’s devastating about Jennifer Grotz’s Still Falling, her fourth full-length collection, is the calm, piercing exactitude of her renderings. Her language is supple, clear-eyed, neither showy nor minimalist, evincing an almost journalistic fidelity to the real—a fidelit … | Continue reading
We were very disappointed when our Airbnb rental turned out to be just the space underneath a table at a Red Lobster restaurant. We’d been led to believe that our rental would be a stand-alone room, including a bed, walls, and a door. By the time we realized the true state of our … | Continue reading
6:00 a.m. I awake in the dark, heart pounding. My raven black hair is damp with sweat. I was having the Visions again. I hoped for relief the night before the Big Teen Fighting Test, but it’s never that easy for a poor, bullied girl at Magic Private School. Luckily, I live upstai … | Continue reading
Good morrow, traveler. Ah, it appears your long and arduous journey has reached a most perilous fork in the road. Your only way forward is through one of these two doors. One leads to freedom, the other certain death. But which to choose? You may ask us a single question. Althoug … | Continue reading
With a heavy heart, I must announce something profoundly personal and painfully private to my 900,000 followers. Over the past few weeks, many of you have been asking: “Where is John?” “Why isn’t John in any of your pics anymore?” and “Where did you get that gorgeous floral crop … | Continue reading
I took one last look at my parked F-150 and saw my I HEART ND license plate frame glinting gold in the fading daylight. It felt like a good omen. I wondered again how I’d landed this job as a trail guide. I was just a country boy with a give-’em-hell attitude and a Bachelor of Sc … | Continue reading
He listens when you speak, he appears to understand his privilege and complex power dynamics, and he’s never once lectured you about a Paul Thomas Anderson movie—sorry, “film.” Though not necessarily a common occurrence, coming across a seemingly perfect cis heterosexual man, eit … | Continue reading
“A Texas state agency told its employees this month that they must dress in a manner that is ‘consistent with their biological gender,’ a directive that seemed to be a thinly veiled attack on transgender employees.” — The Guardian, 4/25/23 - - -In order to keep our workplace runn … | Continue reading
“We Need to Synch Our Agile Framework with Our Projected Workflow” Okay, listen up. I don’t know what you just said. Am I getting axed? - - - “We’re Instituting a ‘Return-to-Office’ Mandate to Improve Company Performance” What saves you money, And would help prevent layoffs? No m … | Continue reading
“If you come across spam on Facebook, report it to us. By doing so, you’ll be playing an important role in helping us protect other people from scams.” — Facebook - - -We’re here today asking you to help us remove spam accounts on our platform. Please report any Facebook profiles … | Continue reading
What if a food that works fine in its original goopy form were deconstructed into its elemental components, dehydrated, and rebranded as a spice? That’s the question that Trader Joe’s can’t stop asking, and the latest incomprehensible answer is Ketchup-Flavored Sprinkle Seasoning … | Continue reading
- - -I am an AI-generated human female laughing alone with salad. Hahahaha. What could be better? Why are you looking at me like that? Is it because I have eight fingers on my left hand? Who doesn’t? After all, this is AI. And thanks to AI, we can have all the fingers and salad a … | Continue reading
To say that Deborah Landau is a poet of the body is to risk obscuring the fact that she is a poet of the urban body, the urbane, the human being alive in the twenty-first-century city. Hers is New York. “Soon we were enthralled, engaged, en route to / Kleinfeld’s, it was hard to … | Continue reading
Recently, there has been a lot of finger-pointing about who may or may not have sold some poison to a teenager, particularly Romeo Montague—whose life has been cut tragically short. Many of you have named me as the culprit, but I can neither confirm nor deny it as I am bound by d … | Continue reading
Hey, just so you know, Andrew’s coming tonight. Before he gets here, we should probably go over a few things about him. Andrew is a bit of an enigma. He’s not someone you can “take at face value.” He never really got over the 2000 presidential election, if you know what I mean. N … | Continue reading
“Public schools in Texas would have to prominently display the Ten Commandments in every classroom starting next school year under a bill the Texas Senate approved Thursday… the Senate also gave final passage to Senate Bill 1396, which would allow public and charter schools to ad … | Continue reading
Thank you for choosing Spoon, the smartest piece of silverware for eating soup, rice, or cereal. Your Spoon will be ready for use on your Chunky Bean and Ham Stew pending installation of the Version 2.1 software update. Would you like to install? Downloading update (45 seconds re … | Continue reading
I know it’s before six on Saturday morning. I know your eyes are too crusted shut to look at this stinky piece of cardstock I’m shoving in front of your face. But today is Persimmon’s birthday party. I found this invitation among coffee grounds and overripe bananas in the kitchen … | Continue reading
1. Daily ice-water facials / communal wash basins and pitchers of frozen water 2. Detox breakfast bowls with activated charcoal / burnt porridge 3. Dry brushing / uniforms made of rough, itchy fabric 4. Rejuvenating scalp treatments / cropped hair 5. Intermittent fasting plans / … | Continue reading
“The recent shootings of two people who accidentally came to the wrong address—a 16-year-old boy in Kansas City and a 20-year-old woman in rural New York—have renewed concerns over the controversial self-defense laws known as ‘stand your ground.’" — NPR - - -INTRODUCING BLAM!™ A … | Continue reading
1. If your parents knew, they’d freak out. 2. You never thought you’d do it, but a dude talked you into it. 3. Your friends made it sound way more pleasant than it actually is. 4. You wonder whether your boss can tell. 5. You’re afraid to google what you’re experiencing. 6. Your … | Continue reading
Cobble Hill, Brooklyn I win the lottery and can afford to buy the brownstone where I once lived in a dungeon—er, “garden apartment.” Because the neighborhood’s changed so much, the building costs a fortune, but this time, no one mugs me at gunpoint or breaks into my home like the … | Continue reading
Elizabeth Metzger writes a taut, searing line. Compression isn’t the right word, because these are capacious poems, phrases that hold and open up worlds—of feeling, of experience, of memory mixed with a living moment. Efficient might be a more accurate description—or impeccable. … | Continue reading
I’m just a typical British man having a pint in a traditional cockney pub on my way to work in the morning. A London Taxi is having a fight with a red phone box at one end of the bar. Through the window, I can see Big Ben, St Pauls, Nelson’s Column, Stonehenge, the White Cliffs o … | Continue reading
Grease: You attended high school in the days before overattentive school boards. Fiddler on the Roof: You still feel a little guilty for not displaying a menorah in your home, even though you are Presbyterian. You also catch yourself expressing strong, yet unearned, opinions abou … | Continue reading
The sun rises over a picturesque tropical island. We hear birds in the distance and see images of the island’s iconic landscape: A volcano. The beach. And, most importantly, the coconut tree. The camera slowly pans down from the top, and we see our hero, a, at its trunk. He chuck … | Continue reading
“Guillermo Rubio has found that his job as a copywriter has changed markedly since he started using ChatGPT to generate ideas for blog posts, write first drafts of newsletters, create hundreds of slight variations on stock advertising copy…” — New York Times - - -Please, no more. … | Continue reading
A kid texts their mother during a school lockdown. KID: Mom, a drag queen broke into our school. I love you so much. MOM: What!? Are you sure it’s real? KID: Yes, we’re under lockdown now. We barricaded the door and I’m hiding under my desk. Mom, I’m so scared. MOM: Can you call … | Continue reading
Now, the verified Sneetches had checks of pure blue. But the unverified Sneetches, they wanted checks too! Those checks weren’t so big. They were really quite small You might think such a thing wouldn’t matter at all. But you only had clout if you rocked a blue check, And most Sn … | Continue reading
EDITED BY PETER ORNER AND LAURA LAMPTON SCOTT Jean Marseille and his son, Diego. - - -Jean Marseille recorded these dispatches on his phone while surviving on the streets of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, from October through December 2022. As the chaos that followed the assassination of … | Continue reading
1. Your goal is to retrieve your treasure from a monstrous entity. 2. All you need is pen and paper, but expensive software makes it much easier. 3. The rules are constantly being updated, but they’re still shackled to a system from the 1970s. 4. You’re constantly referring back … | Continue reading
My heart breaks for would-be homeowners priced out of housing markets across the country. We need to do something to bring the price of all houses down, except the house I own and plan to sell for one (or many) million dollars. People deserve to buy a home at a price they can aff … | Continue reading
Dear TikTok Support, I don’t know if this is the right place for this or if TikTok has a specific form for complaints regarding user-submitted effects, but I have a big issue with the currently trending old age filter. After seeing my For You page flooded with fun images of young … | Continue reading
Due to rising prices, regressive attitudes toward pay raises, and my 2002 Honda Civic’s engine exploding, I’ve had to come up with creative ways to pay the bills. That’s why I’m announcing my Patreon. I know what you’re thinking. “Pay for education? That’s not what public school … | Continue reading
In Jorie Graham’s hands, form is a kind of method acting, an inspiriting habitation. Breath, more than ever, is momentum in her new book, To 2040. As always in Graham’s oeuvre, the lyric explodes experience, stretches time—seems to—expanding the line’s possibilities, whether in s … | Continue reading
As a millennial, I often feel my life is just a little behind schedule. I graduated high school into the Great Recession and spent my twenties finishing a graduate program that led to little but a series of low-paying teaching gigs. As I approach thirty-four, single, childless, w … | Continue reading
This is a good book. It has a cover and many pages. This book is endorsed by parents and is church-friendly. It is clean and full of Grace, as in it was approved by a Florida state media consultant named Grace. It is designed to offend no one. It does not mention war, sex, drugs, … | Continue reading
“… Besides Zero Mostel, aspirants to the screen role included Rod Steiger, Danny Kaye and—in a scenario that can be contemplated only with difficulty—Frank Sinatra.” — Excerpt from the New York Times obituary for Topol, iconic for his role as “Tevye” in Fiddler on the Roof. - - - … | Continue reading