Reasons and tips for writing at a lower reading level — If you’re anything like me and are obsessed with getting more eyeballs on your articles, then this post might help you with that. We often read a lot about various tricks of the trade to help our stories and articles perform better. This one focuses on an easy way to…

Allow me to introduce you to Johnny Boom — Let me tell you a story. Johnny Boom was born in 1960 to incredibly wealthy parents. …

Including their book summaries and why they were idiotically banned — The famous author Salman Rushdie once said, “What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist.” His words came from experience. The author’s controversial book — The Satanic Verses — resulted in protests around the world, multiple assassination attempts on his life, and murders of…

Recounting the scariest part of my childhood — He preferred to be called T. He’d get immediately soured if you referred to him by anything else. But we all loved him nonetheless. T loved listening to 90s grunge music, binge eating on Friday nights, and having long conversations with friends who didn’t always listen to what he’d have…

A night sky odyssey over Middle Earth — A red-eye flight from Toronto to San Francisco for a quick layover. The airline is Air Canada, and the amenities are far from the labor-class luxury of most long-haul Asian airlines I’m accustomed to. But what is often lacking on the fancier Asian planes is space. As in, I have…

A fun look at the age-old stereotype — “What’s your number?” If you’ve had the unfortunate pleasure of venturing on Tinder in recent years you might come across this question. A typical answer might be 3 or 4 or even 10. For those in the hook-up scene, they might be inclined to lean more towards 20 or even…

A strange true story — On a bitterly cold January night in 1982, as the snowflakes danced like restless spirits over the Colorado landscape, Harold Bray, a sheriff from Jefferson County, found himself entranced by an unusual spectacle below. Cruising comfortably at a lofty altitude aboard a United Airlines jet, most passengers were snuggled in…

Is it all it’s cracked up to be? — When you open the pages of Robert Greene’s “The 48 Laws of Power,” it’s akin to discovering the secret manual to life’s most intricate board game. The book is designed as a guide for maneuvering through the complex labyrinth of social dynamics, aiming to arm its readers with the skills…

When the pages stop turning — I loved my basement as a kid. The cool concrete floors, the drop-of-a-pin silence, the old mangey couch cushions that could turn a drab room into a harrowing fortress adventure — it was a grand escape. But my favorite thing was the boxes full of hundreds of old National Geographic…