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PLAYERS: Infertility can be played alone, in a couple, or with a friend who promised that if you were still single at forty, they’d hook you up.

OBJECTIVE: The goal is to strategically bankrupt yourself physically, financially, and emotionally to become a parent. Average playing time is anywhere between two and ten years, but can last even longer, depending on your willingness to be mistaken for grandparents.

HOW TO PLAY: Starting from “Optimism Alley,” players choose one of three paths to begin: IVF Lane, Surrogacy Street, or Adoption Road. Players roll the dice to move down their path, landing on completely random outcomes that either propel them into frightening new stages of anxiety or spiral them backward into psychological and bodily horrors. The first player to outsmart human biology wins. At any time, players can quit and get into beekeeping.

Told one brush stroke at a time, this love story spans decades, journeys over continents, and navigates life’s highs and lows

- Directed by Ian Bruce

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On call with the volunteers offering humanitarian aid to thousands of migrants from the Global South trying to enter into Europe

- by Aeon Video

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New research reveals that physical attractiveness is more about personal compatibility than meeting universal standards

- by Annett Schirmer

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Last month, Chris Worrall — the apparently ‘pro-housing’ Labour councillor and founder of Labour YIMBY — announced his defection to the Conservatives. As he did so, he claimed that Labour had become a ‘PIP and asylum seeker PAYEpig’, and that the party had extinguished hope for the burgeoning YIMBY movement. For the unfamiliar, YIMBY stands […]

The first map of the Atlantic seafloor revealed a dynamic world under the waves

The post When the Ocean Floor Came Alive appeared first on Nautilus.

The climates that run through us

The post With Regard to the Invisible appeared first on Nautilus.

A tiny microbe discovered by accident challenges the definition of cellular life

The post A Rogue New Life Form appeared first on Nautilus.

The site did an “investigation” into preexisting conditions in starving kids in Gaza — the same logic that would have you believe typhus killed Anne Frank.

The post Bari Weiss’s Free Press Wants You to Know Some Kids Being Starved by Israel Were Already Sick appeared first on The Intercept.

Inspired by the boycott of South African goods and apartheid-affiliated institutions in the St. Paul’s neighbourhood of Bristol, people in our city today are opposing the Israeli genocide by organising a community boycott of all Israeli fresh produce. The Bristol Apartheid-Free Zone was launched at last year’s Bristol Transformed festival with a call for local […]

It was beautiful witnessing our children’s blossoming friendship when they were in Miss Penny’s first-grade class—and by extension, our friendship too. That said, seeing as next year your kid will be in Mrs. Lang’s Second Grade Class, and mine in Mr. Dodd’s, I’m afraid it’s time to say goodbye, because we will never see each other ever again.

I know, it’s hard. We grew so close. Together, we cut out hearts for the Valentine’s Day Party. Enjoyed each other’s cookies for the Christmas/ Hanukkah/ Diwali/ Kwanzaa Celebration. Trolled the Moms for Liberty at PTA meetings. Sang “So Long, Farewell” at the Parent/Teacher Talent Show. But from this moment on, whatever it was between you and me is over.

Now, you’re just somebody that I used to know.

It’s 1:17 a.m., and I’m sitting on the floor of my kitchen drinking Dr Pepper Blackberry out of the can like it’s medicine for a heartbreak I haven’t earned yet. I haven’t cried today, but I can feel it coming, crouched behind my molars. This beverage might be the gateway.

The label promises “Delightfully Dark. Subtly Sweet,” which, coincidentally, is also how I described myself during a short-lived phase in college when I tried to brand myself as “the mysterious girl who reads Bukowski and wears velvet chokers.” It didn’t stick. Much like this flavor profile.

I pop the tab. The hiss is aggressive, like the soda is already judging me for buying it. Like it’s muttering, “This is what we’re doing now?” before surrendering to carbonation.

Blackberry hits first. Not a real blackberry. Not a berry that ever knew soil or sunshine. This is the kind of blackberry that grew up in a basement listening to My Chemical Romance and wearing fingerless gloves. It’s dramatic. It’s synthetic. It’s here to make you question everything you once believed about fruit.