Full disclosure: somehow I have lived a full life without once thinking about M&Ms’ animated characters. Now, that bliss is over, because now, they will be woke animated characters. And that word I first loved, with its sense of awakening from a dull slumber to fresh, sharp insights, has itself been commodified, […]
One of the last wells of mystery is about to dry up. Tech’s latest promise is to engineer our dreams. By rehearsing with VR, zapping certain parts of the brain awake, and cueing it with whispered dream prompts, sounds, even smells, we will be able to rid ourselves of nightmares and implant dreams […]
“How dare you?” he would thunder, stalking onstage, knocking down a few music stands along the way. The calm, self-congratulatory performance of his Symphony No. 10, finished this fall with the help of AI, would halt in jangled discord. Resurrected Beethoven would then settle his wild locks, raise the baton, and conduct an […]
Only tween girls loved the unicorns; the rest of us were happy to see those sparkly, fussy, phantasmagorical critters leave the internet. They were replaced—in the artisan goods sold on Etsy and the memes shared everywhere else—by a totem far less fleet and dainty: the sloth. Because I do not stay on […]
One shows up now and again for auction, but the surest way to find a Delphos dress (if you would rather not exhume Susan Sontag, who was buried in one and might resent resurrection) is at a museum. Fortuny’s iconic dress (which was really the creation of his […]
“I’ve stopped watching the news.” “Can’t think about it.” “It’s all too much.” “We need some good news!” I have perhaps shared a few too many articles about the possibility of more violence, even a spattered, incoherent civil war. It felt cathartic to email my worries, but the recipients of all this […]
Oscar Wilde preferred absinthe and repartée to the nine-to-five grind. The notion that drink was the curse of the working classes? He twisted it like a lemon-peel garnish, declaring that work was the curse of the drinking classes. And he was secretly in earnest. In “The Soul of Man Under Socialism,” Wilde […]
First, it was my name. Not the “cookie” part—it took a while for me to realize how sexist that was, as condescending as “cupcake,” as hopeful as “Candy.” What is it with the sweet stuff, guys, wishful thinking? But no, my albatross was “Hydrox.” I sounded like a sterile chemical. And in […]
Dr. Jon, the owner of the Heart Attack Grill calls himself. Jon Basso’s schtick is his menu: greasy burgers topped with cheese and bacon, malts with extra butterfat, Flatliner French fries dipped in lard, Coca-Cola made with pure cane sugar, unfiltered cigarettes, vodka Jell-O shots given in syringes. Food so bad for […]
We breathe in so many ways. Huge gulps of air, the icy cold burning our lungs. Shallow panic. The heavy breathing of passion, first rhythmic then faster, faster, like a car rolling downhill without brakes. The daze of hyperdistraction, answering email after email, and forgetting, for long stretches, to breathe at all. That […]
