When Tim Robinson in his poorly fitting outfit that he most likely refers to as his “work clothes” describes an incident in which a monster barrels through his doggy door, we laugh. But when he points at the camera and screams “WHAT DID THEY DO TO US?!” who can laugh? Who, honestly, can write him off as absurd?
The French philosopher, Michel de Montaigne, writing in “Of Friendship,” imagines friendship as a bond so complete it resists explanation. It is difficult to read that text now without noticing how much it assumes proximity, continuity, and a shared life that does not fracture across distance.
I left Congo. But Congo did not leave me entirely. I came to the United States not long after. There were moments when the fear came back. But I had learned something in Congo about fear. Get closer. Look at it. It is never quite what it appears to be from a distance.
The women of Lota, Chile, or Lotinas, represent a long feminist movement to preserve cultural memory and reinvigorate the economy of their city. At the end of March 2026, they flew more than 20 hours to be in residency for a week at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), where they led workshops on art “as a tool of historical storytelling and civic activism.”
Not since Prohibition has there been such a strong and widespread public warning. It feels a little odd.
I was supposed to win the sportsmanship award. By the end of the day, I had made another girl cry. This was not how I understood myself. I grew up playing everything: basketball, volleyball, soccer, but mostly swimming, where competition felt clean and measurable. You either touched the wall…
Anybody who knew Ray knew that Ray liked to do most of the talking. I could never get very far into any of these stories before the conversation turned to something that Ray was more interested in than his influence on me (which, indeed, there was no reason why he should care about this stuff nearly as much as I do). Ray may not have been the best listener, but he always had a lot to say, and what he said made an enormously positive difference in St. Louis.
A brush-up on the toy company’s history points to one simple corporate marketing decision on which this strange trend in crime rests: the death of child’s play, and the rise of adult hobby obsession.
Poetry is a different embodiment in words of the experience of being human. AI does not (yet) understand the mysteries, perspectives, uncertainties, and feelings—the experience itself—of inhabiting a body in the physical world.
The impulse is to think that someone who makes plans for something else also helps bring it about. That fantasy does not seem to be doing us much good as a body politic, but the idea has taken root everywhere, including at Department of State.