The Quiet Revolution That Is Rendering Us Illiterate
What are we to make of this smackdown, all of us who thought AI would never sound profound or witty? Will the writing of books cease to be a human endeavor?
Dispatches
Thoughts on Traditional Marriage in the Age of Feminism
When a single model of progress is treated as universal, difference is easily mistaken for failure. Lives that do not align with that model are read as backward, compromised, or insufficiently conscious. Yet liberation loses its meaning if it cannot account for unequal conditions, uneven timelines, and conflicting needs.
Rock on
Eyes squeezed shut, I can still feel (or at least imagine) my mom’s arms around me, drawing me close to her warmth and rocking me back and forth, back and forth. A reliable rhythm, its arc never too far in either direction. In milky, dazed contentment, I no doubt…
Urban Fishing at Christmas
Jefferson Lake is 14 feet at its deepest but holds Largemouth Bass, Channel Cats, Crappie, Carp, Topminnows, Golden Shiners, and Bluegill. Being a non-fisherman and non-city dweller, I was surprised by the variety.
The Year in Briefest Review: Four Picks
This long strange year yielded some gems....
The Dubious Joys of Bad Movies
“Why,” I asked my husband, “would anyone want to waste time watching a bad movie?”
“Because it’s fun,” he replied, as though this should be obvious.
“No. A good movie is fun, even if it is wrenching. A bad movie is just sad. Pathetic, even. An insult…
What the Acid Queen Can Teach Us
The St. Louisan who preserved Timothy Leary's work—and should have been famous too.
The Most Haunting, Nagging, Maddening Exchange from Jonathan Franzen’s “The Corrections”
Few of us as Americans believe honestly that we are equal in democracy. We only believe that it is better to believe so, rather than do so through policy and programs that will result in strife and arguments. Equality, or as de Tocqueville expressed it, the quality of being “almost the same,” exists mostly in our collective imagination. But if it does not reside, there it might not live anywhere at all.
Boris the Armenian Woodworker
Neighbors who had always been kind, with food and celebrations shared, went cold overnight, then flamed into a murderous rage.
The Prejudice Young People Have Made Their Own
People worried sick about bigotry used to murmur, “Our hope is the young people.” Now the opposite is true.