It didn’t use to be this way. A politician was once “electable” based on things like erudition, military service, critical thinking. But since the age of television, and now the internet, the criteria have changed. A politician with some combination of being telegenic, outrageous, and brandable holds the most cards…

We’re on the brink of an absolute nightmare — here’s what has to happen now — We’re chroniclers, now, of climate change. We’re observing the drying up of rivers and lakes around the world, droughts in East Africa and parts of the US, floods in Pakistan, a hurricane devastating southwest Florida, and the melting of sea ice at the poles. Maybe we’re writing about it to…

Is it time to start prepping? If you’re a smoker, you don’t smoke a lifetime of cigarettes all at once. You smoke one cigarette at a time. This creates an illusion of innocuousness. Each time you light up, you’re not sparking the entirety of all the cigarettes you’ll ever smoke…

Free will is an illusion I think we know the universe is deterministic. We just fool ourselves otherwise. Our egos need to believe in their own agency. Yet, there are clues all around us we’re playing a charade. Let’s start by thinking of the number of phrases we use, everyday…

It’s not what you think — Look! Another massive statistic that will be ignored: 56% of the use of the Colorado River goes to livestock feed. That’s right, livestock feed. Not residential use, not wheat or grain, but making food for animals to eat so we can kill the animals and eat them. Go ahead, check…

Why aren’t we saving planet earth? Two words: this douchebag — Have you heard of Brandolini’s Law? It states that the amount of energy required to refute bullshit found on the internet is an order of magnitude greater than it takes to produce it. It’s why I’m not going devote this article to disproving Tucker Carlson’s claims about climate change. Suffice…

(an intentionally grabby headline) — There’s a movie you might’ve heard of — it swept the Oscars — it’s called “Everything Everywhere All at Once.” This article is not about that movie (of which I only watched the first twenty minutes or so), but about the title. Everything Everywhere All at Once — the title…

The answer is right in front of us — Take anyone, anywhere in the developed world right now, and drop them in the middle of nowhere, see how long they last. This piece is not about doomsday-prepper chest-thumping, it’s a thought experiment meant to illustrate a point: we are completely dependent on the system. Consider homelessness. Picture the filthy…

The old definitions no longer apply — A quick Googling of “different kinds of fiction publishing” yields scant results. Mostly, the results describe the different genres of publishing, not the different types. And the few that delineate the types differ a bit. Languagehumanities.org describes three types of publishing: traditional, independent, and self. But for this website, “traditional”…