• [ the fine print is our tell ]

    Have you ever asked yourself 1 what, exactly, is the purpose of fine print? Don’t bother, I already did and I can explain. Please, bear with me. Fine print is the nefarious handiwork of bamboozlers and hoodwinkers and goes by many names: small print, disclaimer, micetype, flimflam. Its sole purpose is deception. What the plainly…

  • [ asleep at the wheel ]

    You, being a discerning connoisseur of high culture, won’t find this surprising, but it came as news to me: the whirly girl mysteriously slipped into autopilot somewhere along the way. It became the Tesla of the Internet, home of a self-driving, unsupervised disaster.  The question is, when? Well, I don’t know; I wasn’t paying attention.…

  • [ how to prepare for poorness ]

    With wealth distribution so completely out of whack, an instruction manual seems in order for the 90% of us dwelling at the low end of the scale. For starters, poverty is nothing to be afraid of. Like most worries, the perception is worse than the reality. How do I know? I’m poor. I wasn’t always,…

  • [ or let’s don’t ]

    Much as we love them, not all words are deserving of use. They aren’t charming or helpful. The truth is, many are off-putting enough to be stricken from the English language altogether. Not necessarily because of their meaning, either, which is usually perfectly innocuous. Some are clankers, some are pretentious, or creepy, or insulting. We…

  • [ let’s have words ]

    Captivating conversation is disappearing almost as rapidly as glaciers and ice shelves. The culprit, as always, is the hot air created by humans — mostly in the form of inflammatory belligerence. Militance isn’t quiet. Nor is it chill.  You’ve heard of the Algonquin Round Table, right? They were a gang of smarty pants sophisticates back…