All Posts

I keep coming back to Alysa Liu. If you watched the 2026 Winter Olympics, you know who she is. The 20-year-old figure skater who won gold in Milan and somehow looked like she was having the time of her life doing it. Not performing joy. Actually feeling it. What struck people wasn't just the medal. It was the philosophy behind it. After burning out at 16 and walking away from the sport entirely, she came back years later, but only on her own terms. Her own music, her own cost

It has begun to feel perverse. We accept as fixed the very systems that most determine whether pleasure is even possible. Housing. Healthcare. Labor protections. Surveillance. Environmental exposure. These are treated as background conditions, dense and immovable, while we pour energy into optimizing within them. We are trying to perfect ourselves inside structures we never consented to. Hedonism holds pleasure or happiness as the highest good and primary goal of human life.

$12 Billion Deficit & 12 Inches of Snow We’re standing at the intersection of a $12 billion state deficit, a worsening affordability crisis, a federal election cycle, and a string of newly consolidated local races. Thanks to chronically low voter turnout, many elections outside New York City have been moved to coincide with congressional years. Don’t be surprised when your councilperson comes back asking you to fund their campaign. At the same time, affordability has become t