On a cross-country flight last week, I found myself with exactly 89 minutes to kill and my finger hovering over the Play button on a childhood favorite: Beauty and the Beast (the 1991 animation classic, not the 2017 Hermione Granger fanfic). I was hesitating precisely because I loved this movie…

I walk towards the homeless encampment carefully. Which is to say, as if it’s not there. I’m not aiming for the people who live here, I’m aiming for the redwoods that shelter them: three colossal Giving Trees that provide protect the optionless people who have pitched tents beneath their boughs. …

We’ve all seen it. If you are capable of growing babies in your body and also desire to work outside the home, you’ve probably felt it: the bias against birthing people in the workplace. Are they as committed? Do they really dare imagine their “real family” is more important than…

Supplements to help you de-stress while democracy fails — The current political mood eerily mimics the lead-up to every bad thing you ever read about in 10th-grade history. Despite this, you’ve managed to convince your parents that the Covid-19 vaccine will not contain a microchip allowing Bill Gates to track their mall walks. You donated more money than you…

We may be physically isolating, but we’re completely overindulging in online communication — “We need to get off our screens.” This is the first line I wrote in a journal on a camping trip to Grover Hot Springs in the Eastern Sierra Nevada. The note was scribbled hastily, almost desperately. Isaac Newton invented calculus during a plague, and similarly, I returned from the…

The social media app offers more than dopamine hits — Back in May, Instagram began to test something radical on its platform, undercutting what many considered its most critical component: the “likes.” …

There’s no one else to blame when you’re your own boss — Last year, I got laid off. I had been working for a toy and hardware startup, and the whole vertical was floundering in the wake of Toys “R” Us committing public suicide. …

Bots got me a coveted Yosemite reservation—should I feel guilty? — “How did you get this site?” I ask the man sitting across from me at a picnic table in Yosemite Valley’s North Pines Campground. It’s Memorial Day weekend. I estimate this site has been sold out since 8:01 a.m. …

Introducing your guides to inner peace — Beyond the publicity and crowds of Burning Man, a series of smaller weekend-long EDM festivals have become a common feature along the spine of California. Some boast free yoga classes under redwood boughs and come-one-come-all “squish tents,” while others advertise technicolor-forest escapes and high-budget art installations. …