A good joke doesn’t just fall out of a coconut tree. It exists in the context of all in which it lives and what came before it. And so it’s worth considering the mood on July 15th, the...
Leftovers, eaten the day after, or maybe late the night of, are the best part of Thanksgiving. The performance of the big meal is done, the mood has relaxed, the more distasteful guests are long gone. You are...
Using “the Internet” sometimes seems disconcertingly synonymous with using Google. Google Search, the most popular search engine on the planet, indexes the open Internet, driving traffic to Web sites, and Google Ads provides the revenue that publishers survive...
On social media, rewarding oneself with “little treats” has become a de rigueur form of performative self-care. Did the laundry? You deserve a matcha latte. Filed your quarterly taxes? Time for a gel manicure. Animating the trend is...
The first issue of the magazine Giant Robot I ever came across featured the Hong Kong actor Tony Leung Chiu-wai on the cover—this was enough to stand out on a crowded newsstand in the mid-nineteen-nineties. But what caught...
In a Faustian bargain, there’s little suspense about how things will end. The Devil doesn’t hand anything over—beauty, knowledge, power—without first laying down some heavy hints. And so it goes as the lights dim for the musical “Death...
If you remember anything about this painting, may it be that the dog’s name is Noble. The black poodle in the bottom left greets us as a silhouette with a few shiny parts: teeth, eye, damp nose, pink...
Carrie Lowry Schuettpelz, a former Obama Administration official, was six years old when she became, as she puts it, “a card-carrying Indian”—an enrolled member of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina, from whom she is descended on her...
