Reading

Hey, it’s me, the closest trail to the metropolis, and I’m begging you to take your midlife crisis elsewhere.

Every week, a fresh crop of you forty-something corporate marauders comes on pilgrimage like I’m your personal Annapurna.

I’m a two-mile gravel slope with a play area, Carl.

You haul up to my “trailhead” (a.k.a. the Jiffy Lube parking lot) wearing six hundred dollars’ worth of tactical nylon, looking like you’re about to audition for Outward Bound: The Musical.

The sippy straw of your inevitable hydration bladder quivers next to your budding jowl.

What is it, can’t risk twisting off a bottle cap at this altitude?

There are ZARAs taller than me.

And put those hiking poles away. It’s a 5 percent incline. You could have done this in Crocs.

You inhale richly and muse aloud that you love being off-grid, as the lights of a 7-Eleven glitter in the near distance.

You’re about as off-grid as the Times Square T-Mobile.

Did you know Uber Eats delivers here?

You’ve Always Been This Way is a column written by Taylor Harris, a late-diagnosed neurodivergent woman and 1980s preschool dropout, who identifies every moment from her past that filled her with shame, and mutters, “Yep, that tracks. I see it all now.”

A quick note from Taylor Harris: This installment detours from my typical style of sharing actual events from my life and trying to make sense of them. What you’ll find here is satire. I’ve had the chance to respond publicly to RFK Jr’s comments on autism, but I wanted to come at white Christian nationalism, pseudoscience, and ableism from a different angle here.

[A church staff member greets a woman asking for prayer after the service.]

“Moving to the center would enable Democrats to confront [Trump] more aggressively and effectively because voters would see them as credible.” — From “The Partisans Are Wrong: Moving to the Center Is the Way to Win” by The New York Times Editorial Board

American politics today can seem to be dominated by extremes. President Trump is carrying out far-right policies rooted in white supremacy and open brutality, while some of the country’s highest-profile Democrats identify as democratic socialists—two exactly equal sides of the same coin. To those of you who are not writing this editorial, moderation probably feels a little outdated.

An uncomfortable reminder of the tension between your beliefs and behaviour might give you the push you need to change

- by Matt Huston

Read on Psyche

A fresh investigation of vast numbers of young people from around the world has thrown up some surprising results

- by Jakob Pietschnig & Sandra Oberleiter

Read on Psyche

A mass movement against the Trump administration is essential, but no one should take an Iraq War booster’s advice.

The post David Brooks Is the Last Person We Should Be Listening to Right Now appeared first on The Intercept.

India’s Maoist guerillas have just surrendered, after decades of waging war on the government from their forest bases

- by Rahul Pandita

Read on Aeon

Democracy should mean the rule of the people. But in modern Britain, democratic will is often subverted by the rule of money. Financial oligarchy and political democracy are incompatible.   This is the deep contradiction at the heart of capitalist ‘democracy’. On the one hand, the intrinsic equality of universal suffrage guarantees every citizen the same […]

Sure, it was a huge bummer that they cut funding for fixing the streets in our town. We enjoyed going places. But, overall, it’s worth it for the tax cuts we expect any day now. I mean, at least we owned the libs. Libs love streets. Did you see that video of Trump dumping shit on libs marching in the streets? Got ’em!

Ah, dang. Groceries have never been more expensive. We really thought this was something Trump might be able to help us with. But the high cost of food is worth it so a transgender teen in Idaho can’t use the school locker room. Libs aren’t cheap to own, but the price is more than fair.

Wait, when they said they were going to dismantle the Department of Education, they were talking about, like, America’s Department of Education? The one that funds our schools? Shoot. Our kids will have to learn how to read from the back of cereal boxes. But at least the cereal doesn’t have Red Dye No. 2 in it. And as we all know, the libs are OBSESSED with Red Dye No. 2. Owned!

All my spooky comics in one post.