life

A friend of mine manages an event place in Scotland, and they’ve banned 50ths. Hen nights, stag dos, 40ths, no problem: but some combination of the manic nihilism that sweeps over people and the middle-aged mal-coordination that crept up on them leads to a wild amount of breakage. Whatever the party anxiety is, and however overwhelming it feels, it’s useful as a displacement emotion. The proximal moment of becoming 50 is, in the end, a lot less terrifying than the point it marks in your life, a whole half-century lived, probably somewhat less than that to come.

Like many of us, I talk to myself out loud, though I’m a little unusual in that I often do it in public spaces. Whenever I want to figure out an issue, develop an idea or memorise a text, I turn to this odd work routine. While it’s definitely earned me a reputation in my neighbourhood, it’s also improved my thinking and speaking skills immensely. Speaking out loud is not only a medium of communication, but a technology of thinking: it encourages the formation and processing of thoughts.

The cost of medications, testing, retrieval, and storage involved in egg freezing is just one series of numbers in a process and procedure that feels like a combination of math, alchemy, and luck.

Should you be getting Botox? Welcome to Ask Ugly, our new beauty column!

You won’t get suggestions for the best new niacinamide serum from Ask Ugly. Just eat a sandwich. I won’t recommend some celebrity-loved surgery for sucking the fat from your face – it needs fat. Instead, I want to dig into capital-B Beauty here: what it is, what it means, and how it’s been industrialized and assembly-line machine-squeezed into billions of plastic bottles.

Japan’s hilarious Jimi Halloween (jimi means “mundane”) event is where participants dress up in “costumes” that illustrate boring everyday situations.

Think of your browser like an ongoing autobiography. Why would you ever delete it?

The digital experience has wreaked untold damage, especially upon the young. But all is not lost.

Forests once deemed resilient are suffering surprising die-offs. To predict the fate of the world’s woods in the face of climate change, researchers need to understand how trees die.

Modern action and superhero films fetishize the body, even as they desexualize it.