Society, god and Garfield would have you believe that Monday is the worst day of the week. This is a lie. The worst day is — as you’ve always suspected — Tuesday. Monday gets a bad rap, since it marks the end of the weekend and a...
“Welcome to the Den of Horrors.” Leslie Knope, the go-getting super-administrator in the peppy sitcom Parks and Recreation is telling it like it is to a group of costumed children at the Parks Department Halloween party. “Where’s all the scary stuff?” asks one of the kids, perplexed. “The scary...
If the modern automobile had a status on Facebook, it would undoubtedly be “It’s complicated.” With their computer-controlled fuel-injection systems, continuously variable transmissions and three-phase four-pole AC induction motors, the days when every Tom, Dick or Harry could wrench on their ride seem long gone. So let...
Sixty years ago, if you weren’t going to work in a suit, tie and perfectly clean shaven, then clearly, you were a hippie. In many offices these days, however, especially ones in creative fields, showing up in anything other than jeans, a T-shirt and a five o’clock...
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...
A while back, in the same week that many schools and offices went entirely online to curb the coronavirus spread, my internet betrayed me. Pulling up Google became an achievement, and streaming even the shortest of videos was completely out of the question. As a result, my life...
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,...
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...
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...
There comes a time when one simply must part with an aging car. It’s a moment that’s often laden with emotion, given most people bond with their vehicle over years of driving. But it’s once you’re finally ready to say goodbye that the hard work actually starts — assuming...
The new coronavirus has accomplished what many commute-crazed, meeting-ravaged office workers have been long awaiting: Their companies are finally encouraging them to work from home. While, for many of us, working from the comfort of our homes is preferable to working in a dreary office building in an even more dreary cubicle, it can also...