Niki Dunagin

Which is why I think the modern idea of “self-care” is quietly killing our confidence. We’re told to cancel the plan, block the number, cut the “toxic” people, and shrink our world until it feels safe and cozy. But safe isn’t the same as alive.

Maybe I’m a masochist, but how else are you supposed to get wonderful relationships, deep skills, and... See more

In Japanese, there’s a word for this: gaman (我慢), enduring the seemingly unbearable with patience and dignity. There’s no real English synonym, which might explain why we’re drowning in the male loneliness epidemic, dopamine addiction, hustle-culture nihilism, and the self-care industrial complex.

Lux Magazine — a socialist feminist magazine that explores the intersection of identity and politics, from abortion networks to 911 alternatives. It’s an amazing (and visually beautiful) place to find cultural critiques tied in material conditions.

Every time you do something hard on purpose, your mind takes note.

You stop seeing yourself as fragile.

You start trusting yourself again.

Real Life — a magazine about living with technology, with an emphasis on living. Though it’s now archived, it is still an incredibly rich source of esssays that connect technology to identity. I think archived sites are amazing places to see what opinions on certain topics used to be and how they’ve since changed.

A “deep dive” has to reveal something that the reader may never have considered before.

This is when you need to start zooming out. Take whatever main point that caught your eye and try to figure out a larger pattern or contradiction within it. I usually ask myself—

☐ Is this part of a bigger trend or shift?

☐ Have versions of this conversation been... See more

The Drift — a contemporary, youth-driven site for essays, fiction, poetry, interviews, etc. that are serious without being overly academic. I would say their tone is set somewhere between Substack and literary journals, so it can be a useful reference for what ambitious internet writing can look like .

For years, cultural capital was built on aspiration, on curated lifestyles, designer hauls, and the illusion of ease but now we’re seeing a major shift