You might be thinking, “Hey, I’m not living in one of those historic colonial towns where everyone pretends it’s 1790 for educational purposes, so why the heck do I still use a cutting board made of wood?” I mean, it is 2020. We have made material advancements. But...
One of the few bright spots of being in isolation this long has gotta be watching regular people suddenly discover that the thing they’ve been using one way can, in quarantine, be used in a completely different way than originally intended. Video chat is a perfect example...
When the quarantines were announced back in March and early April, the conventional wisdom suggested that limiting our interaction with the outside world would at the very least provide a first line of defense against the coronavirus for ourselves, our families and — in a macro sense...
Part of the reason our phones are so filthy is that we tend to bring them everywhere. Like, we’re probably scrolling in between wiping our butts. Unless we’re bringing our computers with us into the bathroom (seek help, if so), there’s a bit more of a barrier in place —...
One of the extreme new realities of life under quarantine is the idea of (semi-)permanently working from home. For some of us, that transition’s been an easy one: Wake up, get dressed (maybe), work in the peace and comfort of a makeshift (or if you’re lucky, a...
Needless to say, life in quarantine can be a bit redundant. If your schedule is anything like mine, you wake up, maybe mosey over to your couch, where you work, eat, nod off a bunch of times and scroll through the internet until your thumbs go numb...
Thank God for next-day shipping. I get paid on Thursdays and my wife’s birthday was this past Friday — I’d planned to head out to the mall on Thursday and get some new sneakers that she was excited about. I’d had this figured out for weeks, but I...
Becoming a cyborg could have been liberating. In 1985, scholar Donna Haraway posited that as the categories of human, animal and machine became blurred, the rigid boundaries of gender, labor and other symbolic oppressors could collapse. In some ways, the smartphone has made progress toward this end: In cyborg fashion,...
It’s weeks into most states’ COVID-induced quarantine, and the change of routine is, for many of us, the new normal. Outside the house is now bad, and inside is our cocoon of safety. In an amazing display of ingenuity, that’s led to a number of innovations in...
Under most normal circumstances, wearing pants is an advisable, if not imperative facet of daily life. But any semblance of normalcy was abandoned when the coronavirus struck and stay-at-home orders were implemented, and whether we need to wear pants while enduring the confines of our homes was...
As I’m writing this, I’ve been in self-quarantine due to the COVID-19 pandemic for a few weeks. I am, of course, worried about getting the virus. Or maybe more so about it being dormant inside of me and passing it to someone else. But as I spend more...
Like a new cohort of workers affected by the coronavirus, I work remotely from my apartment. On a daily basis, my colleagues cooperate with my bulging head, projected like the Wizard of Oz on an enormous flat screen in our faraway headquarters. The same corkboard where I keep...