Alex Burns

Now, Mr. Burback goes months between posts. The videos tend to be either sprawling, deeply researched video essays — about the state of late-night television, ghost kitchens or the Apple Vision Pro — or strange travelogues, taking him on road trips to every Rainforest Cafe or Margaritaville in the country.

His viewers have responded, with his ghost ... See more

The Power of Full Engagement whose author Jim Loehr (recently on Farnam Street) argued that we must manage our energy rather than our time. He advises to alternate between being fully engaged and fully dis-engaged, between intense spurts and deep rest — real rest, not the low-burning engagement which leads to burning out.

The past several years have ushered in a wave of “brand” tales in Hollywood—films that speak to America’s prodigious capitalist ethos, just in case you forgot to look at a billboard. From Blackberry to Air to Flamin’ Hot ,these films have captured the full spectrum of brand power, documenting the highs, lows, and synthetic cheeses of big business. ... See more

“I can feel jealous of David Sedaris’s fame, I can feel like I’ll never get to that point, but I should ask myself: am I doing 15 or 20 full rewrite drafts of my essays? Am I pushing myself to search for a universal feeling, for a moment of poignancy, and for a laugh, all in the same piece? Am I doing what he did, in my own way? No, no, and no. I a

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A recent study out of the University of Kansas found that it takes about 50 hours of socializing to go from acquaintance to casual friend, an additional 40 hours to become a “real” friend, and a total of 200 hours to become a close friend.

Admitting that the motivation behind losing weight is to look better first and that health is a secondary concern feels in part like betraying a sacred liberal feminist covenant that insists we must love ourselves the way we are.