Ned Hardy
Get Smarter Everyday
If you’re the kind of person who spends an inordinate amount of time contemplating the backstories of minor movie characters—if you are, in essence, the sort of person who reads unauthorized biographies of fictional men—then you already know who Dr. Cornelius Evazan is. Or at least you think you do.
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[Read more…] about Lets Take a Stroll Through The Art Museum
There’s a moment in Apocalypse Now that feels like it exists outside the film, as if Francis Ford Coppola spliced in a scene from some lost European art-house movie just to see if anyone would notice. It’s the French plantation sequence, an atmospheric, elliptical detour that was originally cut from the theatrical release and only restored decades later. And the reason it was cut is fairly obvious—it slows everything down. But that’s also exactly why it’s fascinating.
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1. You feel peaceful near him/her. They don’t trouble you. Their presence is reassuring, they stand by your side, they encourage you, they will challenge you to be a better person. Of course they are still human with flaws, they have good days, bad days, times of fear, worry. They do not put you down, they are proud to show you to the world, they will try to bring you joy. If they know you like something they will do that, maybe if that’s not big on their list.
[Read more…] about 14 People Reveal What Is It like Being Married to the Right Person
When I was eighteen, I joined MENSA, because that’s exactly the kind of thing an eighteen-year-old who joins MENSA would do. I lasted a year. Long enough to confirm what I already suspected: MENSA is less of a genius society and more of a self-congratulation echo chamber where people who peaked in standardized testing gather to be impressed with themselves. It was weird.
[Read more…] about Confessions of an Underachieving High IQ Individual
There was always something illicit about walking into Spencer’s Gifts. Not “illegal” illicit—nobody was slinging black tar heroin behind the lava lamps. But illicit in that very specific suburban way, like sneaking a sip of Smirnoff Ice from your friend’s older brother’s mini-fridge or watching South Park with the volume so low it was practically subliminal messaging.
[Read more…] about Spencer’s Gifts Was the Mall’s Fever Dream—And We Loved It
Every neighborhood in the 90s had that kid. The one whose existence subtly reshaped your understanding of social class. For most of us, wealth wasn’t an abstract concept; it was tangible, like a pool in the backyard or a second story on a house. But then there was the Neo-Geo kid, and their wealth felt different. It wasn’t about having more—it was about living in a completely different dimension of existence.
Whatever you’re doing, just stop. Not because you’re doing it wrong, but because none of it matters for the next few moments. Whether you’re knitting, doomscrolling, arguing with a stranger on Reddit about Blade Runner 2049, or, I don’t know, curing cancer, none of it is relevant. Why? Because there’s a faint, creeping itch at the back of your eye. And it’s about to derail your entire existence.
There’s a certain kind of resignation you feel when you walk into a trap that you know is a trap, but you still convince yourself it might not be a trap. That was me, standing in an MGM casino with my girlfriend, trying to parse how $75 in free play could possibly be worth the spiritual extraction process that was clearly about to happen. But she was adamant: “They give it to you just for showing up. My friends did this. It’s not a big deal.” This is how I agreed to an event that, I would later realize, could double as a psychological case study on manipulation tactics.
[Read more…] about What’s It Like To Attend A Timeshare Presentation
There are certain moments in life that don’t just make an impression—they leave a scar. And for anyone who walked into an arcade in the early ’90s, seeing Mortal Kombat for the first time was less about playing a game and more about realizing the world had changed overnight. It was like when Bob Dylan went electric or when someone played Nevermind on repeat and said, “You have to listen to this.” There was a palpable shift, and it smelled like stale nachos and quarters that had been in circulation since 1972.
