.png "Why Are People Torching Their Birthday Cakes on Social Media?")
X content This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from. Weirdly for a man who is—as his many birthday candles clearly indicate—81 years old, Biden is right on trend with Gen Z (cake-wise, if not approval-rating wise). Bettina Makalintal recently reported about the pervasive new TikTok trend of burn-away cakes, which … Read more
Last week, as I thumbed through the clothing in my closet, I came upon a piece that took me down. It was an oversized patterned vest in thick tan wool, a Prada find from the Real Real, and the sweater I chose to wear for my first session of chemotherapy. I was diagnosed with cancer … Read more
Enter my home on a weekday around 4 p.m., and you’ll find a scene that feels ripped from a medical drama: Rushing, shouting, various equipment flying through the air. A ticking clock. Only when you squint do the differences come into view: Absolutely no one has sanitized their hands and while the stakes feel life … Read more
We’re now less than a month away from Super Bowl LVIII—set to take place on Sunday, February 11 at Nevada’s Allegiant Stadium—and the question on everyone’s lips (besides, well, which two teams will face off that day) is this: What will Usher perform at halftime?! The singer, who has now been famous for nearly 30 … Read more
It’s TV’s biggest night, and seemingly all of Hollywood is out in force in Los Angeles to take in the 75th annual Emmy Awards. The speeches are ranging from hilarious (Matthew Macfadyen thanking Sarah Snook and his “other onscreen wife, Nicholas Braun”) to emotional (Niecy Nash-Betts speaking out for “unheard…yet overpoliced Black and Brown women”), … Read more
I may still be on the library waitlist for Britney Spears’s incendiary memoir (curse you, other readers!), but the part of my heart that’s been reserved for Britney since roughly 2001 just grew three sizes: It was reported this week that Spears is collaborating with none other than Charli XCX on new music for an … Read more
There was a time—not so long ago—when my phone was prone to overheating due to its sheer volume of apps. There were the usual suspects like Uber and Spotify, of course. (I’m nothing if not a standard-issue boring millennial.) But the ones that took up the most storage and the majority of my mental energy … Read more
Sophie Turner recently called 2023 “the year of the girlies,” noting in a post on Instagram that she expected 2024 to be much the same—and personally, I need to believe she’s right. (To be clear, while I am very over “girl” trends, I’m by no means over girls themselves, especially when they’re in their plural … Read more
At 25, I bought a one-way ticket to Johannesburg in the months after Paul Theroux’s Dark Star Safari: Overland From Cairo to Cape Town was published. My hazy goal was to re-create his overland journey across Africa, except I’d do it from Cape Town to Cairo. My desire was to crisscross Southern and East Africa … Read more
Over the course of my ceaselessly peripatetic life, as a writer who’s lived all over the place, the word “home” has always carried a complicated meaning. My tiny family of origin is fractured, far-flung, and nontraditional. By the time I was 15, we’d moved to four different houses in the Bay Area and three different … Read more
