Annie Zhang

Other practices, while not as deceptive, are wildly untraditional. Green lattes and smoothies are prepared with shortcuts (batched concentrate, nicknamed batcha) and flavorings (banana bread!) that send ripples of horror down the spines of matcha purists. Baristas inhale so much airborne green powder that they joke about coming down with matcha... See more

One thing happening in the background here is that marriage rates are declining most among low-income and low-education groups. That means the marriages that do happen are more likely to involve higher-education, higher-income couples who have always had a lower divorce rate.

Marriage is getting rarer, older, and more stable. Consider the typical 25-year old American woman. If she was born in 1940, she had an 80 percent chance of being married. If born in the 1990, she had a ~20 percent chance of being married.

I ended the day thinking of Stanley Tucci’s line from The Devil Wears Prada, “Let me know when your whole life goes up in smoke. Means it's time for a promotion”

no matter how important or unimportant it is, I want to feel something!

In my opinion, that deserves our respect. Being born with fine cheekbones or a chiseled jawline is no accomplishment; figuring out how to use a bunch of Korean treatments and products to look more like you want to look is a feat of personal initiative and intelligence. As the beauty industry becomes more and more technologically advanced, beauty... See more

In fact, many characters in literary fiction are so unusual as to be nonexistent — the author just dreamed up a guy who seemed kind of interesting. The best literary authors are typically incredibly skilled at making up fascinating fantasy people.

But this skill is extremely dangerous, because it can give the reader a false impression of what human... See more

Basically, my theory of fiction is that it’s all some form of exotic travel writing. Whether you’re telling the story of a bitter rich man trying to get his ex-girlfriend back, or a World War 2 bombardier growing tired of war, or a dragon-riding queen battling an army of zombies, or a boy genius waging war against insectoid aliens, the appeal of a... See more

Jerry Seinfeld once said: “Men don't care what's on TV. They only care what else is on TV.”