On January 4, 1999, Christopher Lee Merritt, a man living in North Mankato, Minnesota, stole a truck from his stepfather’s parents, stole a rifle from his stepfather, loaded 3,000 rounds of ammunition into the back of the truck along with a rifle, a pistol, and a knife and then sped…

My last year of secondary was chaos. My aunt died of cancer at the beginning of the school year, after a year of my mother carrying on via long phone calls at every opportunity about the “miracle factor” and boosting up the collective family denial instead of genuinely coping with…

The people screaming “commie” as an insult know they’re using it wrong because they are engaging in deliberate rhetorical distortion. I don’t see it as much as I used to, but here and there, someone will propose something like healthcare in the United States not designed to bankrupt everyone but…

I’ve opted for self-employment since 2006. Is it tough to have an uneven and often unpredictable income? Yes. But I also have much more predictable expenses than working in corporate because I don’t have to factor in the random. …

Hey Kid - We haven’t spoken in over a decade: you had NOTHING to do with that, but I can see why even a very-distant-you-may-never-see-it contact might just be met with resentment. Acknowledged, but bear with me, if your boundaries can allow it? …

Occasionally, I will look back on my childhood and get stuck on a story. The story is a “what the fuck was that?” question. I know from the narcissistic abuse survivor forums that I am far from the only person that needs to vent these memories or just needs them…

In 2014, I sat down to dinner with Twitter’s engineering team. I was there because my ex was fielding competing job offers between Twitter and Google, and she asked me along because I read people well. …

I have been struggling to write the last six months. After heralding in the new year with my family hiding in the kitchen of the Rain Forest Cafe because of an active shooter situation, it’s been chaos. The Uvalde shooting, combined with the cowardice and disrespect of the police is…

An active shooter differs from a mass shooter. An active shooter refers to someone that shoots three or fewer people in a populated area. A mass shooter refers to someone that shoots four or more people in a populated area. Both are bad, but a mass shooter is worse in…