No one stops Republicans from criming, so I hope they all cawthorn each other — The U.S. House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack continues to work steadily. Six weeks ago, I gave a brief overview of the committee’s work, and I reviewed possible outcomes. …

Do we learn it from a crystal ball—or from our guts? — Sometimes, when we ask ourselves who we truly are, we feel as though we’re gazing at the horizon. Be it light or dark, foggy or clear, the far-off air doesn’t yield answers about us. So how do others state with certainty that they know who they are? Do they have…

And what, by the way, is choice? — While reading Iain McGilchrist’s philosophy book The Master and His Emissary, I was indirectly reminded of an old debate about whether people choose to be gay. When the debate is framed in an adversarial way (as it usually is), gay people typically find it necessary to give a resounding “no.”…

Always follow the typos. They reveal what editors aren’t researching. — Lately, all major newspapers everywhere have turned into a hellscape sinkhole of anti-trans burp swamp. What I want to share today is the line that connects a couple articles by Jonathan Rauch to the latest column by David Brooks. In 2004, Rauch published Gay Marriage: Why It Is Good for…

I’m using words here. But we can think without them. — An essay centers the importance of words. But are words essential to thought? Here are some words suggesting: No. Central, yes, but not always essential. First, Sense Perception José Saramago wrote: “In order for the brain-in-the-head to know what a stone is, the fingers first have to touch it, to feel its rough…

Someone’s mad at your car. Did you almost run them over? — A couple days ago, as I was walking on the city sidewalk, I saw a car backing slowly out of its space, across the sidewalk, into the street. It looked as though it might hit another pedestrian ahead of me. The driver seemed oblivious to this, and the other pedestrian…

Trains represent where we’ve been & where we‘ll go next — We can’t use fossil fuels anymore. We know this. We have to change everything. Do we know what we have to change? To many of us, this is less obvious. If we look to history for context, we can’t overlook that everything has been changing, technologically, for a couple hundred…

There is a word. — A TV personality changed his Twitter bio to this. Those Are Six Falsehoods No, he hasn’t won an Emmy, graduated from Harvard or Yale, or affiliated with the Aspen Institute—nor does he want to. Culturally and ideologically, he aligns himself far from those institutions. He’s used his platform to cast skepticism on vaccines and…

There’s a moment when a writer might have to say it. — A couple decades ago, as an undergraduate, I wrote a short story to apply for a fiction writing workshop taught by Ben Marcus through my university’s English department. …