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…

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. on November 25, 2018, approximately one minute after it became available…

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. …