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An Excerpt from Eli Burnstein’s Dictionary of Fine Distinctions – – – Swamp or bog? Guilt or shame? Club soda or sparkling water? From food to fashion, ethics to architecture, there are thousands of words and ideas that we tend to collapse, conflate, or confuse. For hairsplitters and language lovers, Tendency contributor Eli Burnstein’s Dictionary of Fine Distinctions: Nuances, Niceties, and Subtle Shades of…

So You’ve Knocked Over a Row of a Motorcyle Gang’s Motorcycles, Again From 2006 to 2016, Sarah Walker offered excellent and specific instructions for essential activities of everyday life, like bullfighting and performing tracheotomies. Thanks to her, our standards of living were improved by 100 percent. Today, to help celebrate our twenty-five (and a half) years of online existence, she returns with more valuable…

I Am Batman, and I Will Restore Order to Gotham by Pulverizing a Man Robbing a Convenience Store to Feed His Starving Family For far too long, the streets of Gotham have been plagued by chaos. Crime never sleeps. Thugs hide in the shadows, waiting to strike like snakes. Never mind the capitalist structures that produce deep and devastating forms of poverty, forcing the desperate lower class to resort to crime in order to survive. Gotham is in danger, and it is my duty…

Been There, Smelled That: Climate Change Is Destroying What You Smell Been There, Smelled That explores the aromas of places around the world. Travel writer Maggie Downs investigates some of the world’s most potent smells, looks at how odor cultivates a connection to place, and presents how humans engage with smells, from scents that have endured generations to the latest innovations in aroma-making. – – – My dad …

Words of Wisdom Written on Tea Bags by a People Pleaser (Totally Okay If You Don’t Read Them) 1. If you give love, you will get love. But, no pressure—only if you want to! 2. Peace starts inside you. And if you can’t get it to start, I can give you mine instead. Would be happy to! 3. Love is the greatest gift, though I’m sure any gift from you would be amazing. And if you didn’t get me a gift, that’s totally okay, too. I probably made it…

I’m the Draft List at This Brewery and No, You Can’t Have a Light Beer Hey man, welcome to our brewery. I’m gonna be your draft list today. The first thing you should know about me is this: I’m approachable. I believe beer is for everyone. If that means I’m a draft list without a single beer that tastes like beer, then hell yeah, brother—that’s what it’s all about. You seem like the type of guy who’s lookin’ to sip…

If They’d Told Me We Were Poor, I Would’ve Ignored the White Gaze Though her family sometimes received food stamps and occasionally had their utilities cut off, Marcie Alvis Walker’s parents led her to believe that they were an average middle-class Black family. They encouraged her to pursue her dreams and told her that if she worked hard enough, she’d achieve them. The small catch was that Walker’s dream was …

The 2044 Election Is the Most Important Election of Our Lifetimes Hello, It’s the Democrats. The 2044 election is fast approaching, and we need your support now more than ever. It is the most important election of our lifetimes. We know it feels like we’re always saying that this presidential election is the most important election of our lifetimes. But we wouldn’t be saying that if it wasn’t true each and eve…

Parents’ Most Common Stress-Induced Recurring Nightmares About Spirit Week 1. Spirit Week continues into perpetuity. No theme will ever be repeated, and your children will need unique costumes every day for the rest of their lives. 2. Out of nowhere, you have another child you have no memory of giving birth to. He’s in third grade, and tomorrow is the first day of Spirit Week. He tells you he needs a toga to wear to sc…

Can I Interest You in a Brand-New Sparkling Water Brand? Hi, I’m wondering if I could interest you in a brand-new sparkling water brand. I don’t have a name for it, because it doesn’t yet exist. Every aspect of this product is still very early in the planning stage. But I can assure you that the name will probably be something fun and catchy, like Zoinks or Floop. Now that I hear it out loud, we’ll pr…

“The Girl with the Green Ribbon Around Her Neck” Updated for the Modern Millennial Woman Once there was a girl named Jenny. She was like all the other girls, especially for this one thing: she always wore a black hair tie around her wrist. There was a boy named Alfred in her class. This made sense, as names from the 1900s had cycled back into fashion. Alfred liked Jenny, and Jenny liked Alfred, despite his name. One day he asked her…

Family Tours in the Kingdom of the Sick: Love Means Saying, “I Told You So.” When COVID struck Rebecca Saltzman’s family, the virus unmasked a life-changing discovery: her husband and two of their kids had genetic heart disease. The kind where people drop dead. As their healthy wife and mother, Saltzman had a new role too—guiding her family through what Susan Sontag called the Kingdom of the Sick. In this column, she’ll …

Emails from My Dentist That Would Actually Make Me Schedule an Appointment YOU’RE OVERDUE FOR A CLEANING! Jennifer at reception started having an affair with one of the dentists, and her husband will be storming into the office to confront them about it during your appointment. YOU’RE OVERDUE FOR A CLEANING! Our new latex gloves are churro-flavored. YOU’RE OVERDUE FOR A CLEANING! We are going to start publicly posting …

The Only Way to Save Public Education Is to Turn Every Single School in America into High-End Condos I hear a lot of pie-in-the-sky utopian BS about education and equity and having an actual building that shields children from the elements. But when will parents and bleeding-heart liberals realize that the only way to save public education in this country is to turn every elementary, middle, and high school from Portland to San Francisco, from …

The Case for Marrying a Prince Who Was Turned into a Beast by a Witch and Then Transformed Back Again “Romances have a setting; I had only intervened to place myself well. Mainly, I spotted the precise trouble of being a woman ahead of time, tried to surf it instead of letting it drown me on principle. I had grown bored of discussions of fair and unfair, equal or unequal, and preferred instead to consider a thing called ease.” — from the essay “…

God Leaves a Voice Message for Jesus on Holy Saturday Hi, Jesus. It’s Pop. Just got your message. Sorry I missed you yesterday. It was kind of wild around her. A good Friday it was not. You wouldn’t believe everything going on with this farkakte universe. Expanding and expanding and expanding, we can’t keep up! And all these bad things happening to good people? Don’t get me started. We’re trying to…

How to Concede an Election While Making It Clear That Your Ideas Are Objectively Better In this column, professional speechwriter Chandler Dean provides partly satirical, partly genuine “How To” advice focused on a hyper-specific subcategory of speeches—from graduation speeches to wedding toasts to eulogies, and all the rhetorical occasions in between. – – – It’s an odd thing that we make our election losers do. You don’t have to g…

Hi, I’m Jesus, and When I Get Back, I Want All the Eggs Hidden Orignally published April 10, 2020 – – – Hey there, I’m Jesus Christ, the Son of God. I know things look bad for me right now, but I’m gonna be back in a few days, and when I return, I want all the eggs hidden. And I want the eggs to have candy in them. And I want all the kids in town to go look for the eggs so they can eat the candy. This is al…

What to Say When Your Family Opens Your Uncle’s Casket During His Wake and Finds It Empty Do Say: “Whoa, where is Uncle Tony?” Everyone will be saying this, so you’ll fit right in. Don’t Say: “He’s in a better place now.” Ordinarily, this would be a fine thing to say at a wake, but the context will make this land a little different. Yes, odds are, wherever his remains are now is a better place than this funeral home, which is rife wi…

The Riddle Master Hits Middle Age Well met, hale wanderer! You have journeyed through the Fiendish Greenwood, over the Sea of Knives, and across the Barren Plains of Evermore to reach the citadel ahead: the Academy of Arcane Knowledge! Owing to my ragged cloak and even more ragged beard, you no doubt believe I am merely the town fool. But to enter the Academy and gain True Under…