Latest posts

  • The Surveillance Suburbia: When the “Perfect Neighbor” Is the Watchtower of Fear

    The Surveillance Suburbia: When the “Perfect Neighbor” Is the Watchtower of Fear

    There’s a palpable hum in the night of suburban America—the 21st-century soundtrack of kids laughing under street-lamps, sprinklers buzzing, and the infinite ping of Ring-cams catching everything except the lives they claim to protect. In The Perfect Neighbor, directed by Geeta Gandbhir, this quiet suburban soundtrack becomes acoustic evidence of paranoia. The film chronicles a

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  • Trump’s Gilded Palace: The $250M White House Ballroom That Bulldozes History And Resembles What He’s Doing To the Country

    Trump’s Gilded Palace: The $250M White House Ballroom That Bulldozes History And Resembles What He’s Doing To the Country

    Privately funded, process-dodging, and Rose Garden–erasing: a donor-built venue turning the people’s house into a pay-to-play stage while democracy waits behind the construction fence. The White House is supposed to be a workplace. Not a logo. Not a set. Not a gold-plated stage for a man who buys property and slaps his ugly name on

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  • The Hunger Games: Trump’s SNAP Shutdown

    The Hunger Games: Trump’s SNAP Shutdown

    There’s a moment every fall when America pretends to care about food. Usually it arrives in the form of syrupy commercials: laughing families in sweaters, grocery carts brimming with abundance, the phrase “holiday spirit” hovering over a table that looks sponsored by a butter manufacturer. This year, that tableau feels like parody. Because as the

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  • Fascism, ‘Woke,’ and $7 Lattes: How We Got Played While the Billionaires Cashed In

    Fascism, ‘Woke,’ and $7 Lattes: How We Got Played While the Billionaires Cashed In

    From immigration panics to crime bait, the outrage machine drowns out the boring policies that actually save you money. A love letter to boring policies in a country addicted to feelings “Kitchen table issues” sounds like a placemat you forgot to rinse. It lands in the brain like a PSA about flossing. Everyone nods at

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  • Soap Operas, Talk Show Thrones, and the Gospel According to Drew Barrymore

    Soap Operas, Talk Show Thrones, and the Gospel According to Drew Barrymore

    There’s a special kind of American optimism in handing out golden statues while the world burns. On October 17, the 52nd Daytime Emmy Awards beamed from the Pasadena Civic Auditorium, where a theater full of people in sequins and spray tans cheered for the institutions that have taught us to cry at noon, gossip at

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  • No Kings Day: America Remembers We Do Not Bow To Authoritarian Rule

    No Kings Day: America Remembers We Do Not Bow To Authoritarian Rule

    I woke to drums on my phone, not the kind that say war, the kind that say get dressed. Somewhere a sousaphone blared and a snare line snapped, and every clip in my feed looked like a country remembering how to count. A multi-city rhythm rose up from breakfast tables and bus stops and union

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  • Is America Replaying 1930s Germany? Trump, Fascism, and the Creep We Pretend Not to See

    Is America Replaying 1930s Germany? Trump, Fascism, and the Creep We Pretend Not to See

    I remember sitting in history class as a kid and staring at the photos they always brought out for the chapter on Germany, the ones with the flags and the straight lines and the faces that were either rapturous or empty, and thinking how did they let this happen. I was convinced there must have

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  • Prince Andrew’s Title Tantrum: When the Crown Smells Smoke From the Epstein Files

    Prince Andrew’s Title Tantrum: When the Crown Smells Smoke From the Epstein Files

    There’s something about the smell of royal scandal that hits differently—less like smoke and more like an expensive candle trying to cover up the scent of a body decomposing under the palace floorboards. The official word from Buckingham Palace this week is that Prince Andrew, formerly the Duke of York, is voluntarily “stepping back” from

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  • Top Secret, Do Not Forward: The Bolton Doctrine of National Security Scrapbooking

    Top Secret, Do Not Forward: The Bolton Doctrine of National Security Scrapbooking

    The federal government has finally located the one man in Washington who can make Donald Trump’s document crimes look like a Marie Kondo project. His name, once again, is John R. Bolton—a man whose mustache has seen more classified briefings than most senators. According to a newly unsealed federal indictment in Maryland, Bolton, the hawkish

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  • Trump’s Failing Ceasefire That’s Cosplaying As A Peace Plan

    Trump’s Failing Ceasefire That’s Cosplaying As A Peace Plan

    At the midpoint between “mission accomplished” and “please hold,” the Gaza ceasefire now lives in the liminal space where optimism is just fatigue wearing better clothes. Cameras caught the handshakes, the solemn statements, the flags arranged like theater props—but now the applause has faded, and the work has begun to creak under its own paperwork.

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