And here we need to remember the lesson of the fishwife: that stigmas become attached to words that are often used by historically marginalized speakers, including in this case many speakers of African-American English and southern varieties of American English. This is part of why debates about words are so important: They are almost never just about words—they are about people and prejudice, about social and political issues, and about power.

If every U.S. citizen ate just one meal a week (any meal) composed of locally and organically raised meats and produce, we would reduce our country’s oil consumption by over 1.1 million barrels of oil every week.

Stop thinking in terms of individual action. What most causes need instead are acts of individual leadership that inspire collective action.

Habits start with the best intentions, but fail because we lack the systems to support them. Learn why most people fail and some easy fixes to implement to help you succeed.

Reading was my first addiction. When I tell people this today, they laugh and nod as if they understand, as if they too are part of a secret book-addict society whose greatest crime is staying up late, a flashlight under the covers, compulsively reading page after page.

As Mark contemplated his future — his legacy and the coming year’s personal challenge — I think he came to this dark conclusion: if Trump can do it, so could he.

After all, not only does Mark now have Trump’s playbook, he owns the tools and sets the rules. And he has something no one else has, the ability to control the algorithm with zero transparency or oversight.

Validation: communication that one is mindful, understands, and empathizes with another person’s experience, thereby accepting it as valid. Put simply, validation shows that you’re there, you get it, and you care.

When you’re too busy to think about your life, you’re able to put off proactive decisions under the guise of responding to what seems urgent. You think you’re doing all the right things, but really you’re just keeping busy.

An insight into the brogue of Okracoke Island

Whereas the old way of thinking was that in-person communication is always better, newer research has now demonstrated that isn’t always the case. There are often trade-offs to communicating in person, and in many situations, video calls, phone calls, email, and even text messages have been shown to be the superior mode of communication.

Bookstores are foundational to community and representation.

Whether you’re an Amazon worker or an Amazon neighbor, you’re more likely to bear the brunt of Amazon’s environmental impact if you’re a person of color.

I lament my own immersion in an economy that grinds what is beautiful and unique into dollars, converts gifts to commodities in a currency that enables us to purchase things we don’t really need while destroying what we do.

What if, instead of being diagnosed—being called mentally ill—what if I had been able to receive care for its own sake. To be in distress, to ask for care, to receive it. What if there were space in this world for care.

The standard of care in orthodontics is thus to instruct the person to wear the retainer forever. This is in line with the general trend of modern medicine to focus on the maintenance of chronic diseases, rather than dealing with their causes.

The Western funeral home loves the word “dignity.” The largest funeral corporation has even trademarked the word. What dignity translates to, more often than not, is silence, a forced poise, a rigid formality.

The biggest hits—be they Coca-Cola or Doritos or Kraft’s Velveeta Cheesy Skillets dinner kits—owe their success to formulas that pique the taste buds enough to be alluring but don’t have a distinct overriding single flavor that says to the brain: Enough already!

Parentified children are often referred to as “old souls” —wise and calm beyond their years. But they can pay for their precocity by harboring a squishy center of insecurity and loneliness, a wound formed in their earliest unsupported years.