Ned Hardy
The Intriguing World Of Entertainment
There’s this scene in White Lotus—Season 3, Episode 6, to be specific. It’s not loud or dramatic. No one’s getting slapped. No one’s confessing to murder. It’s just Tim Ratliff, asking a question he’s probably never said out loud before.
[Read more…] about A Drop Returning to the Ocean: On the Quiet Grace of Death
I’ve always believed that America’s defining trait is its ability to take a bad idea, wrap it in convenience, market it as freedom, and then defend it to the death like it’s a founding principle. This is a country where people will finance a mattress with 72-month APR and then sleep on it like Thomas Jefferson personally endorsed the coil count.
[Read more…] about The Most American Thing Ever: Going Into Debt for Nachos
There’s a particular kind of optimism reserved for buffets. You walk in, and the world feels full of potential. It’s all there, laid out under sneeze guards and warming lamps like a fluorescent-lit promise: a global smorgasbord where sushi sits next to pizza without judgment, and tacos cozy up to mac and cheese like old friends reunited after years apart. This is the Anticipation Stage—pure, untarnished hope wrapped in the aroma of endless possibility.
[Read more…] about The Buffet Cycle: A Journey of Anticipation, Hubris, and Self-Loathing
It starts with a whisper. A distant grumble. The polite, almost apologetic announcement of hunger. You don’t notice it at first. You’re too busy. You’ve got things to do, tabs to close, an inbox filled with messages that don’t actually require responses but linger ominously, anyway. And then, suddenly, it’s a roar.
You are starving.
[Read more…] about The Absurd, Inevitable Tragedy of Overpaying for DoorDash
Costco is like a sociological terrarium for the human condition, a giant warehouse filled with 72-roll packs of toilet paper and existential despair. If you ever wanted to see humanity unravel over rotisserie chickens and $1.50 hot dog combos, Costco is your ticket. Because somewhere between the industrial shelving and the $8 gallon of salsa, decency stops being a human expectation and starts being a casualty of bulk purchasing.
[Read more…] about What Costco Teaches Us About Human Nature
There is a particular loneliness in realizing that every person carries their own private universe, a constellation of sights and sounds and connections only they can chart. We walk through life presuming some overlap, assuming that what we see, others must also see, that what we feel can be understood if only we find the right words. But that’s never true, not entirely. The world you inhabit exists only in you, shaped by the peculiar tilt of your thoughts, the way you absorb light, the shadows you notice that others don’t. Each of us is, in some way, a world entire, complete unto ourselves, even as we brush against one another in the fleeting intersections of shared experience.
[Read more…] about Every Life Is a World, and Every Loss Is Its End