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Imagine sitting in that Amsterdam courtroom in 1947. The war is over, the Nazis have been driven out, but the scars are everywhere. You’ve lost neighbors, friends, maybe entire branches of your family tree. And now you’re watching a woman — a Jew — stand trial not as a victim, but as a collaborator.
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There’s this moment I keep coming back to. I’m on a crowded city bus, wedged into one of those pairs of molded plastic seats next to a girl reading a paperback. Our thighs touch—not in a flirtatious way, just that accidental, human kind of contact that happens in cities. And I don’t say a word. I barely breathe. I’m too busy memorizing the way her breath fogs the window, pretending we’re something we’re not. It’s pathetic. It’s nothing. But it’s also the most intimate physical experience I’ve had in years.
Rabies is, without exaggeration, one of the deadliest diseases known to humankind. It’s not because it kills millions every year (thankfully, modern medicine and vaccination have kept numbers relatively low). It’s terrifying because once symptoms begin, survival is nearly impossible. Fewer than 20 people in recorded medical history have ever survived symptomatic rabies—and even those survivors required extreme, experimental treatment, often with permanent neurological damage. For all practical purposes, rabies is fatal once it declares itself.
[Read more…] about The 5 Big Questions You’ve Always Wondered About—Finally Answered
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You’ve seen the ad. Some guy running down a city street, his blazer flapping behind him like a cape, leaping over puddles, throwing a football in a conference room, inexplicably kickboxing in an elevator. And the caption is always the same: “Hi Quality. Athletic Fit. Wrinkle-Free. Machine Washable. Professional.”
You don’t walk into a relationship with someone who has Borderline Personality Disorder knowing that’s what it is. You just think they feel more. You think they’re intense, emotional, alive in ways you aren’t. You mistake it for depth. You mistake it for honesty. But it’s not honesty. It’s panic disguised as love.
[Read more…] about What’s It Like To Date Some With Borderline Personality Disorder?
When I was a little kid, and I asked my parents a non-obvious question about the human body or biology, their answer would be “Ask your uncle Paulo next time we see him. He’s a doctor”. Other questions about various topics would get “Let’s call up grandma and ask her; She’s a teacher”, or “Let’s see if the encyclopedia has anything about this”, or “Ask your teacher if, during recess, you can go ask the librarian at school”.
What movies are playing? Let’s check the newspaper.
Why did they keep going?
Why, after seeing entire regiments mowed down in minutes, after watching friends disintegrate under artillery, after spending weeks in flooded trenches with rats chewing on corpses—why did they keep fighting?
Because World War I wasn’t just a war. It was a system. A machine. And once you were inside of it, there was no clear way out.
If you want to understand how wars actually end—not how the treaties are signed or the monuments get built, but how they really end—look at the photograph. A single frozen instant at Nha Trang Air Base in the spring of 1975.
An American official, face taut with fear and frustration, punches a Vietnamese man in the face. The man is clinging to the side of a plane—already packed, engines spinning, ready to go. He won’t let go. He can’t let go. And the American, trying to clear the doorway so the plane can take off, uses his fist.
