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Annie Dillard Was a Real One: The Woman Who Understood That Seeing the World Is Not the Same as Understanding It

Annie Dillard spent her life examining the extraordinary mysteries hiding inside ordinary existence. Her passing reminds me that the greatest writers don't simply teach us how to read the world. They force us to confront how little of it we've actually bothered to see. There is something profoundly unsettling about losing a writer who spent her entire life reminding us that everything was temporary in the first place. It's almost as though death, that arrogant bastard, decided to interrupt a conversation about its own inevitability. And in the case of Annie Dillard, the irony is particularly cruel because few writers understood the strange relationship between life, suffering, beauty, and mortality quite like she did. Annie Dillard died on September 15, 2026, at the age of 81. The world lost a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, an extraordinary essayist, a fearless intellectual, and a woman who possessed the increasingly endangered ability to look at something ordinary and reco...
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Apple Business Connect: The New Age of Corporate Peacocking


Oh, joy! Apple has once again graced the peasantry with a gleaming new tool—Apple Business Connect. Finally, any old business, even those operating out of a dingy basement or a van down by the river, can bask in the glory of appearing before the eyes of over 1 billion Apple users. That’s right, folks, now every small business and side-hustle can plaster their brand across Apple Maps, Wallet, and Mail as if they were big-shot enterprises.

“With today’s updates, we’re helping even more businesses reach customers, build trust, and grow,” gushes David Dorn, Apple’s senior director of Something-Or-Other. How heartwarming! Apple is democratizing the visibility of businesses, from the multimillion-dollar corporations to your local tarot card reader—all while presumably collecting a nifty sum for the privilege.

Let's unpack this, shall we? First off, there’s the charming concept of businesses without a physical location creating a "location presence" across Apple apps. Virtual real estate, how innovative! You can almost smell the desperation of businesses clamoring to be a blip on your iPhone's radar.

Then, there’s the sweet promise of Branded Mail, where businesses can have their logo displayed in emails—because what we all need is more logos in our already cluttered inboxes. Thanks, Apple, for ensuring that emails from “Lin & Daughters” stand out amidst our daily barrage of spam and family updates.

And let’s not overlook the Tap to Pay feature. Now, when you’re about to make a payment, you can see a business's logo instead of a generic icon. Because nothing says "trustworthy" like a hastily designed logo popping up on your phone when you’re trying to buy a cup of coffee or a pair of alpaca socks from a street vendor.

Next year's feature—Business Caller ID—is a real doozy. Now, not only will businesses bombard you with branded emails and payment prompts, they'll also visually assault you when they call. “Hello, this is Definitely-Not-A-Scam Corp, and yes, we are totally legit because you see our logo!”

Let's be real. Apple Business Connect seems like another way for businesses to invade your digital space, dressed up in the noble garb of helping small businesses thrive. But hey, if putting your brand on every possible pixel of a customer's screen is your jam, you do you—Apple’s just made it a whole lot easier.

So, go ahead, register for Business Connect at the nearest opportunity. It's free, it's empowering, and it's totally what your business needs to become just another drop in the overwhelming ocean of digital advertisements. Because in the end, isn’t that what we all aspire to be?

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