And also stupid, necessary, and everywhere — We are living in a golden age of lying. From men lying about their height on Bumble to LinkedIn gurus fudging the zeroes in their bank accounts, there’s never been a better time to bend or stretch the truth. If you want to make it in 2023, you’ve gotta be…

Pink Floyd’s singular 1973 masterpiece is more than a popular album — it’s a generational rite of passage. — In last week’s Billboard 200, SZA’s S.O.S. logged its tenth week at №1. The album’s an eclectic tour de force of modern melodic R&B; it deserves to stay perched on the top for a while. SZA’s a spellbinding, hugely talented artist. Even before making her full-length debut on 2017’s sublime…

Have we reached peak Internalized Capitalism yet? — Approximately 113 million people in the US watched the Kansas City Chiefs battle the Philadelphia Eagles in Super Bowl LXVII. [I was one of them; I love the Super Bowl.] While the game (and Rihanna!) …

Technology is evolving faster than humans can comprehend, adapt to, or regulate — “Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn’t stop to think if they should.” — Dr. Ian Malcolm, Jurassic Park (1993) This’ll be a quick take because I have a workday to get on with and maybe so do you, but lemme start with…

Memories are long; life is longer. Away and back in five parts. — “Papa was born in France.” That was about the size of it. That’s what my Mama told me, in perfect English. I was maybe six years old. That, of course, was never the whole story — it never is. We don’t have time to really process the entirety of what…

Or, how I learned to stop worrying and love Dua Lipa — “You’re not wrong Walter, you’re just an asshole.” — The Dude (The Big Lebowski, 1998) Dua Lipa’s Future Nostalgia is the best pure pop album of this young decade. The singles are endlessly listenable, and the twin towers of top-40 radio, “Levitating” and “Don’t Start Now”, are perfect. Given that…

Or, what I learned on my summer vacation — After I quit my job and fired all my clients, I took a long sail to start my three-month summer sabbatical. I began at Cedar Point — a pretty little pocket of Ohio — and got to take a good long look at Canada. It was dreamy. …

Addictive technologies have fundamentally altered who we are, how we live, and how we relate to each other — with disastrous results. — To be American is to be angry. You can imagine the defiant indignation of the Native-clad Tea Partiers as they dumped chests of loose-leaf into the Boston Harbor back in 1774. You saw on early CNN the car-burning righteous fury of the Black community during the 1992 L.A. Riots. …

C’mon … You know this already. — If you really want to be happy, stop searching. You cannot find happiness. You cannot find the absolute best life has to offer. You cannot get your ducks perfectly in a row. You cannot prepare yourself for everything. …