Normal is never coming back. We’ve got to be gentle with each other. This is a dispatch from another planet. For millions of people, for the rest of this mad, sad year, the world will return in pieces. Instead of remembering lasts we will start counting firsts. The first day…

The logic of abuse has ordered our lives for so long, it must not be allowed to rule our politics any longer — Pain has no place in politics. That’s the rule. And it’s definitely the rule if people with political power have caused you pain. You don’t talk about your trauma. You don’t show the damage. You smile at your abusers. You make things comfortable. …

Conservatives have declared war on abortion. That’s not about ‘protecting the family’ - it’s about controlling women. Whose families matter? As the clock ticks down on the first Trump era, conservative concern-trolling has given up on original thought and is just playing the hits. This week in America, haunted Stepfordian…

What happened to sisterhood? Last week, beloved children’s author J.K. Rowling briefly became the world’s most famous transphobe. …

The human heart is shoddy at sustaining outrage. In any ongoing crisis — a pandemic, a police crackdown, several centuries of brutal racial segregation or all of the above- people have a funny way of getting used to it. Normalising obscenity is a human instinct, unless we are in mortal…

Edvard Munch turned his mental struggles into spectacular work. But do artists need to be tortured to achieve greatness? — Produced in Partnership with SFMOMA, where Edvard Munch: Between the Clock and the Bed is on view until October 9th, 2017.

I went backstage at the biggest political show on earth- and found America telling stories about itself. — “America is great because America is good.”- Hillary Clinton. “We dream of a brand new start- But we dream in the dark, for the most part.” — Lin-Manuel Miranda, Hamilton. When I was a child, I always half-suspected that America wasn’t real. It had to be made up. It was…

Here we are in the desert of moderate liberalism. The storm has hit, and nobody was prepared. — Banquo: It will be rain tonight. First murderer: Let it come down! -William Shakespeare, Macbeth. It’s high noon on the first day of the Democratic National Convention and the block is, in every sense of the word, hot. It’s almost a hundred degrees in the shade. …

What my evening with Milo told me about Twitter’s biggest troll, the death of reason, and the crucible of A-list con-men that is the Republican National Convention. — ROS: Fire! GUIL: Where? ROS: It’s all right — I’m demonstrating the misuse of free speech. To prove that it exists. (2.68–70) —Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. This is a story about how trolls took the wheel of the clown car of modern politics. It’s a story about…