beat back bland.

My cat is easily the most “together” person I’ve ever met. She’s always well-groomed. She’s rarely late. She’s religious about getting twelve hours of sleep every night, yet manages to maintain a peak level of fitness. Her persuasion skills are the stuff of legend.

There are many different kinds of evil. Of course, you've got your just plain nasty black-on-black evil, like serial killers and tacky gold-chain wearing despots. Then you've got crazy evil (eating a firefly) and senseless evil (axing Firefly). And of course, let's not forget that there's a whole library of lesser quasi-evils: mildly foul deeds of infamy like sticking gum under public library desks or sneaking almond milk into an innocent person's coffee.

Bear in mind, cryptography had advanced in leaps and bounds since the early years of the 20th century. Military intelligence knew that merely speaking in an unusual and seldom spoken language wouldn't cut it — not by itself. The Allies needed a new kind of code. It had to be intuitive enough to the Navajo that it would feel as effortless as speaking their own language. The code also had to be efficient, allowing soldiers to communicate swiftly about military activity in the thick of battle. And

I learned a hell of a thing this week. It turns out that our hot planetary neighbor, Venus, is shrouded with trace elements of phosphine. Astronomers believe phosphine can only be generated by biological processes — either bacteria or industrial production. Now to be clear, the probability of a canning factory on Venus is pretty slim. But the bacteria thing? That’s getting a solid maybe from astronomers who make it their business to know such things. Yep, 2020 was the year the universe decided

The US is littered with abandoned structures. Some of these spaces are entirely forgotten. Lost, their bones of brick and wood slowly return to the soil with barely a soul to Instagram their passing. Other structures are carefully curated and preserved, like a long-dead butterfly — pinned to cork, neatly labeled, and slowly doomed to fade under endless curious eyes. But a rare few abandoned structures jut raggedly from the earth, like an obscene finger gesture from the past. These places are sti

Years ago, I owned a vacuum cleaner. To be clear, I didn’t buy it. Nor do I have any recollection of someone giving it to me. One day I looked in my closet and simply discovered it nonchalantly resting against a wall. It seemed rude to question its right to be there.

Imagine, if you will, that we are living 33 years into the future. This might sound a long way off but consider this: Back To The Future came out around 33 years into the past. It’s not that far off. It’s the year 2050 and you’ve just purchased the latest model robot. Like your typical robotic companions of the mid Twenty-first Century, this particular model is about 5 foot 9 (not too threatening) and is a beautifully shiny chrome with red speed stripes. It’s controlled via a little piece of t

Picture a cheese sandwich — a truly terrible one. What does it look like? If you’re anything like me, you’re thinking of something like a single square of processed cheese (I see it curling and browning at the edges) encased within two stale, dry slices of wonder white. It’s cut in uneven triangles. Depressingly, every single day countless blog contributors are churning out bland and questionable content — the writing equivalent of a deeply misguided cheese sandwich.