“I was surprised, as always, by how easy the act of leaving was, and how good it felt. The world was suddenly rich with possibility.” — Jack Kerouac, On The Road I awoke one morning, several weeks ago, and decided to take a road trip. Or, rather, the decision thrust…

When starting a garden just isn’t enough — I walked by my girlfriend taking a shower yesterday. She turned off the tap and whispered, “I’m so sad.” I laughed. We both laughed. I’m a notoriously bad listener, so the fact that I heard this secretive whisper was doubly funny to us. …

Why America Just Can’t Get This Right — We’ve lost so much to COVID-19 — we’ve lost people. We’ve lost jobs. Time. Opportunities. Money. Freedom. But first, we lost nuance. The rest followed. Recent decades have borne witness to a great flattening of American dialogue; an intellectual and cultural hollowing out. But as the American national conversation simplified…

Today is March 10, 2020. It’s important to note the date of publication when talking about COVID-19. Each 24 hour news cycle is a new reality. Articles written days ago may as well have been about a different planet. A little over two weeks ago, Italy had 21 cases of…

How coronavirus could change the West — Update as of March 9, 2020: This story was written before serious face mask shortages threatened healthcare workers. Please do not buy/stockpile. However, the cultural dynamics discussed in this article are playing out in a far more dramatic way than I could have imagined when I first wrote this. …

Why the end of privacy is comfortable — I had an experience the other day that should have been quite normal. I boarded a Delta flight. As I boarded the plane, I went through the same robotic motion I’ve performed a hundred times: arm out with passport and ticket. Only this time, the smartly dressed flight attendant refused…

Watching mental breakdowns in the age of social media — Not-quite-forgotten acquaintances sprinkle our Facebook feeds like nostalgic speedbumps. There are the usual surprises that slow our browsing — marriages, dogs, jobs — but every now and then, someone makes us stop. Danny* made me stop. I never would have expected it — Danny was normal, like an indistinct side…

The brutal tyranny of small decisions — Eleven hours. That’s how long it took me to buy hiking trousers. Eleven hours of reading reviews. That’s one fourth of a working week. That’s a whole season of Game of Thrones. That’s enough time to learn a new language. Eleven hours. Buying a computer mouse? Four hours. A sleeping…