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There is a specific kind of question that sounds simple until it detonates in your brain. “What beauty products are you loving right now?” It’s the beauty equivalent of being asked, “So who are you, really?” on a third date. You can’t just answer quickly. You can’t be honest without oversharing. And if you try to explain properly, you’ll end up talking for forty-five minutes, gesturing wildly, and referencing at least one formative childhood memory you did not plan to unpack. Because beauty, if you’ve been doing it long enough, stops being about mascara or moisturizer and starts being about systems. Rituals. Control. Comfort. Nostalgia. Identity. The fantasy that this time— this serum, this towel, this vaguely expensive oil that smells like rain on a ghost’s jacket—you will finally transcend being a person who occasionally wakes up with a mysterious new blemish and a sense of low-grade dread. So when people ask what I’m loving right now, my mind doesn’t go blank because there’s ...

There are many theories about poverty in America. Some people say it’s about motivation. Others blame budgeting apps no one uses. A few insist it’s all about grit, hustle, and waking up at 4:30 a.m. to journal aggressively. And then there’s a quieter, far less glamorous explanation that rarely trends on social media: If you can’t reliably get to work or school, everything else collapses. No amount of inspirational posters will change the fact that jobs still exist in physical locations, schools still require attendance, and childcare pickup windows do not adjust themselves for late buses or nonexistent transit routes. You can’t “manifest” your way out of a broken transmission. Enter Cars of Hope , a volunteer-run organization doing something profoundly unsexy and wildly effective: giving people cars. Not crypto. Not “financial literacy workshops.” Actual vehicles. With keys. That start. And somehow, in 2025, this remains a revolutionary act. Transportation: The Unspoken Gateke...

How a 40-Year-Old Arts & Crafts Chain Ended Up in Chapter 11 While Everyone Was Busy Making Vision Boards There was a time when walking into an art supply store felt like entering a secular cathedral. The smell of paper. The faint chemical tang of acrylic paint. The unsettling realization that charcoal pencils are both very expensive and somehow still dusty. These places were not built for speed. They were built for wandering . For touching things you absolutely did not need. For convincing yourself that buying a $38 sketchbook would finally unlock your creative destiny—only to later use it as a coaster. And yet here we are, watching Artist & Craftsman Supply , a 40-year-old arts and crafts chain founded in 1985, file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection while the internet calmly suggests you buy 72 acrylic paint tubes for $19.99 and have them delivered before dinner. This is not just a bankruptcy story. This is a story about how creativity became content, how patience ...

There are celebrity scandals, and then there are stories that feel like they fell through a trapdoor in the American attention economy and landed somewhere far darker than the usual tabloid swamp. The arrest of Tony McCollister—once a blink-and-you-miss-it reality-TV figure—belongs firmly in the latter category. According to reporting, McCollister, a former participant on A&E’s short-lived 2015 series Neighbors With Benefits , has been charged in Ohio with pandering obscenity involving a minor and sexual conduct with an animal. Authorities confirmed that pets were confiscated during the investigation and are currently being cared for. McCollister has posted bail, been ordered to have no contact with children or animals, and is due back in court. His former spouse has stated they are no longer married. Those are the facts as publicly reported. Everything beyond that remains for the courts to determine. But the facts alone raise a more uncomfortable question—one that goes far beyo...

There is a particular kind of seasonal fantasy that descends every December, right around the time the days go dark at 4:47 p.m. and your brain starts operating exclusively on soup, caffeine, and vibes. It’s the fantasy that this will be the winter you finally read properly. You know the one. The winter of capital-R Reading. The winter of Big Books and Serious Authors. The winter where you become the kind of person who casually mentions Faulkner at brunch and means it. You picture yourself under a blanket, snow tapping politely at the window, a mug of something warm in hand, slowly and reverently turning pages that matter . The sort of pages that come with blurbs by Nobel laureates and forewords that begin, “This work resists easy categorization.” And then you get sick for a weekend, down a fistful of ibuprofen, and absolutely demolish a science-fiction-horror-metafiction novel with a title that sounds like a Reddit thread written by an AI having a panic attack. And it rules. ...

Get a whiff of that. There are moments when the internet accidentally stumbles into anthropology. Not the kind with dirt under the fingernails and grants from prestigious universities—but the kind where thousands of adults voluntarily announce the scents that make their brains light up like a raccoon discovering an unlocked trash can. This is one of those moments. A simple prompt— What weird smells do you love? —and suddenly humanity reveals itself not through politics or productivity hacks, but through gasoline nostalgia, cat breath devotion, and an alarming number of people who believe the olfactory experience of bleach is basically a personality trait. What follows is not a list. Lists are for people who think IKEA smells “cozy” and don’t want to unpack that any further. What follows is an examination of who we are, what broke us, and why our noses are apparently feral. Smell: The Sense That Goes Straight for the Childhood Trauma Sight is polite. Hearing asks permission. Tas...

Disclaimer: The following is a satirical, cultural commentary written in response to a reported news scenario as presented. It is not a news report, confirmation of facts, or an obituary. It uses exaggeration, irony, and social critique to examine technology, celebrity, mortality, and modern media culture. THE HIGHWAY, THE HORSEPOWER, AND THE HUMAN CONDITION So here we are again. Another headline. Another notification buzzing in your pocket like a needy insect demanding emotional engagement. A famous person. A fast car. A mountain road. Fire. And then the modern cherry on top: a video clip, thirty seconds long, so you can watch tragedy the way you watch a cat fall off a couch. We’ve turned death into a push notification. Not death in the old sense, mind you. No bells tolling. No neighbors whispering. No awkward casseroles showing up uninvited. This is death with branding. Death with specs. Death with a horsepower rating. Eight hundred and nineteen horses, they tell us. As if t...