Playing Favorites
In a post-apocalyptic future, a man I barely know offers to risk his life so that I might find my kidnapped son. Actually he’s a robot, both in the sense that I can see gears turning through a hole in...
View ArticleClose Reading
The cold, drafty basement apartment I lived in had oppressively low ceilings that were punctuated with pot lights that radiated warmth. When they and all the other lights went out on a frigid January...
View ArticleYour Brands and Lovers
At the peak of the hunt, there were seven dark-gray sofas under consideration. To the average person, they are likely indistinguishable. But who wants to be average? As I toggled between tabs,...
View ArticleThe Things We Carried
With every heavy travel season comes another round of calls to privatize or kill the Transportation Security Agency. Hatred for the hapless agency seems to have reached an all-time-high this summer....
View ArticleCrisis Mode
In The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein famously demonstrated the power of world-altering crises like 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina to “shock” people into a kind of stupor that prevented them from pushing back...
View ArticleI Write the Songs
http://reallifemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/I-Write-the-Songs.mp3 Full-text audio version of this essay. On August 7, Donald Trump issued an executive order that would ban TikTok in the U.S.,...
View ArticleCome Into My World
Something that still always blows my mind is just how close together everything is online, design-wise and conceptually. If you’re ever feeling wrung out, ask your friends about their private online...
View ArticleMuse Feed
Greg Capetty is 45, separated, lives in Livonia, Michigan, and works at Roonys Pizza and Pop. His social world is limited to his coworkers and his son, Jordan. Once, at a gas station, a woman named...
View ArticleImage Feed
Forty-two pictures of a hotel buffet lunch in Mexico. Soggy lobster ceviche that had been messily scooped onto wilted romaine lettuce near stacks of stale nacho chips, a few greedy dollops of guacamole...
View ArticleContracirculation
http://reallifemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Contracirculation.mp3 Full-text audio version of this essay. The video of George Floyd being murdered by former police officer Derek Chauvin has...
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