Latest posts

  • Nicole Kidman & Keith Urban: The Divorce Heartbreak Tour We Never Wanted

    Nicole Kidman & Keith Urban: The Divorce Heartbreak Tour We Never Wanted

    I don’t know who put “Public Divorce” on this year’s marquee, but somehow it cast Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban as its centerpiece act—the tragic stars of a love story we all believed in. Their separation announcement hit like a meteor strike: stunning beauty in motion frozen mid-dance, two icons unraveling in public while fans…

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  • Tribal Theater in Fiji: Survivor 49’s Grand Illusion of Fairness

    Tribal Theater in Fiji: Survivor 49’s Grand Illusion of Fairness

    The two-hour premiere of Survivor’s latest season dropped us straight into the tropics: Fiji. Sand, sweat, whispered alignments, and the familiar tension that says, “You’re not safe.” But what struck me most was not the immunity challenges or the plundered rice rations — it was the spectacle of alliances forming and betrayal already baked in.…

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  • Democracy with a Matchbook: How America Learned to Love Political Violence, Tribalism, and Excel Spreadsheets

    Democracy with a Matchbook: How America Learned to Love Political Violence, Tribalism, and Excel Spreadsheets

    Pod Save America did what it does best: deliver the bad news with a podcast ad break for magnesium powder and underwear that “feels like on-body AC.” The guest of honor was Dr. Liliana Mason, Johns Hopkins political scientist and unwilling Cassandra of our collapsing republic. Her subject? The roots of political violence in America…

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  • When Congress Governs by Split Screen

    When Congress Governs by Split Screen

    Democracy has always been a little theatrical. The marble halls, the pomp, the roll calls delivered like Broadway overtures—it’s part politics, part melodrama, part daytime soap. But lately the Capitol has taken the metaphor too literally. On one screen: a government funding bill collapsing in the Senate. On the other: a resolution sanctifying Charlie Kirk,…

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  • My Predictions for the 77th Primetime Emmys

    My Predictions for the 77th Primetime Emmys

    Every year, the Emmys give us an opportunity to reflect not just on the television that entertained us, but the television that defined the cultural conversation. Some shows break through because they’re technically brilliant. Others linger because they captured a mood or gave us characters we couldn’t stop talking about. This year, the ballots feel…

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  • A Single Round, A Million Excuses: A Cultural Critique of the Assassination of Charlie Kirk

    A Single Round, A Million Excuses: A Cultural Critique of the Assassination of Charlie Kirk

    Let us convene, grim-eyed, on the manicured quads of Utah Valley University, where normalcy shattered into shards of ideological glass in a single, solitary moment: the death of a political firebrand, felled supposedly by a single bullet from a nearby building. That bullet—cold, precise, unembellished by flourish or bombast—reduces weeks, perhaps years, of incendiary rhetoric…

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  • In Defense of the Binge: Why Autoplay Is the New Therapy

    In Defense of the Binge: Why Autoplay Is the New Therapy

    On August 29, 2025, researchers at the University of Georgia committed the academic equivalent of saying the quiet part out loud: binge-watching might actually be good for you. Their peer-reviewed study, published in Acta Psychologica, didn’t just poke at the pop culture habit everyone denies and everyone does—it blessed it, like a priest sprinkling holy…

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  • iPhone 17: The Awe-Dropping Slab We’ll All Pretend Not to Need, Then Buy Anyway

    iPhone 17: The Awe-Dropping Slab We’ll All Pretend Not to Need, Then Buy Anyway

    On September 9, 2025 at 10 a.m. PT, Apple will once again transform its glass spaceship into a megachurch of consumer longing, inviting the faithful to witness what it calls the “Awe-dropping” keynote. The name alone is a corporate sleight of hand: awe as in wonder, drop as in your rent money, and keynote as…

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  • Big Brother, Small Man: The Rylie Jeffries Eviction Tour

    Big Brother, Small Man: The Rylie Jeffries Eviction Tour

    When Rylie Jeffries was evicted from Big Brother Season 27, he didn’t walk out of the house so much as stumble into a reality that had been waiting to eat him alive. On the inside, he was the cowboy-hat-wearing bull rider with a showmance and a storyline. On the outside, he was suddenly the subject…

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  • The Soundtrack of Survival: Thirteen Artists Who Speak To Me

    The Soundtrack of Survival: Thirteen Artists Who Speak To Me

    Growing up queer, biracial, abandoned, and too often invisible, I didn’t have a roadmap. What I had were songs—other people’s stories sung like confessions, shouted like rebellion, whispered like prayers. These artists didn’t just entertain me; they saved me. They gave me language for my own sadness, resilience for my own survival, and proof that…

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