They never used to beat me like this. I was always the one who bested them. My oldest, Victor, is trying to lead the group with his chest, and my middle child Salvador is gaining an advance. They all want to lead the pack. …

A new year has dawned and our culture has never been more richly layered than any period in human history. We now each possess an everlasting legacy of our recorded lives; each of us is our own archivist capable of shaping our lives into new, previously unfathomable arrangements. …

Just as Laura Whitmore finished her reading of Nietzsche, she turned around to the Love Island cast to see that, surprisingly, all of them had paid attention. The show had scrapped a performance by Macklemore, which he received in a deflated way as if it had been inevitable, and the…

Love was what happened when you left the villa. Love, or being anonymously despised by a majority of the public. She was my type on paper, and we had good chat, but as we faced each other for the first time as fiancé and fiancée, we knew we had nothing…

In the village, they dreaded the winter. Harsh, biting winds seeped into their joints. Only at the end of the night could they find respite from the cold, using their body’s heat to survive. And then there was summer: sun-gilded trees, grass that yielded to their feet, rich natural expanses with leaves that kissed and cooled their crowns. And always during those summer months, a villager would ask, “when would winter come?”

People have trouble staying present because the present asks you who you are now without your hopes, dreams, or expectations for the future. That’s what makes it so hard; you have to accept who you are now. It requires that you voice the question, am I doing what I would want for myself? It also requires that one asks himself, am I a servant of the Amazon-delivery- vehicle that is our lives: going faster than the future?

Sometimes, I wonder if there is a possibility to hack into all the pleasure centers of our brains at once. …

A shit-stained shirt covered by a Supreme Hoodie, “Her Dad’s dowry bought us a brand-new jacuzzi!” Batkween’s offering signed seats for their second sold-out movie. On these things, I can just tap screens until the algorithm reviews me. And that means, I can kind of just jot down whatever it is that suits me. Entry 9 I don’t really want to see the new Batman movie. Apple made me wait thirty days to recover my account and somehow a three-and-a-half-hour Batman sounds more tedious.

Freeze-dried gnocchi from Trader Joe’s isn’t the same as the ones made from an Italian Nonna. — I’ve lived in a hostel for the past five months. Living in a hostel for an extended period feels like hacking the European systems. It is experiencing the full breadth of a country’s culture with beds that remind you of ‘Squid Game’. The closer I get to feeling accepted in…