cara

first dates are basically two people pretending to be completely normal while silently deciding if they want to see each other naked someday.

ilsa: can i tell you a story, rick?
rick: has it got a wow finish?
ilsa: i don't know the finish yet.

(see: casablanca (film))

the biggest little city in the world. host to hot august nights, a car show event which attracts international visitors.

feels like you might be forgetting something important. feels like being nervous when there is no reason. can cause you to experience suspicion of any positive feedback. can manifest itself physically in tapping, shaking, butterflies in the stomach.

i think i've been spending way too much time on instagram lately, because once again, after seeing some random instagram post, i somehow ended up thinking about manipulation.

does anyone else feel like we've been hearing that word way too much lately, or have i just been exposed to it more than usual? whether i'm reading posts online, taking advice from instagram psychologists, or sitting around talking about problems with friends, it's always the same words:

"manipulation, manipulative, manipulator."

actually, another one just came to mind: regulate. but i like that one. regulate yourself. regulate your emotions. struggle to regulate, but regulate anyway. i used it in a post a few months ago, got it out of my system, and i still think it sounds kind of cool.

anyway, back to manipulation.

whenever people talk about problems in relationships, this seems to be the word that comes up first. people have no problem accusing the other person of being manipulative, but in reality, nobody really knows who is what. i guess it has always been like this. maybe we just didn't call everything manipulation before. or maybe we did and i was completely clueless.

i've used the word myself plenty of times, of course. and i haven't just used it casually in a sentence either. i've definitely labeled people as manipulators before. the funny part is that i've also been accused of being manipulative myself. so good luck figuring out who's actually right.

and apparently these manipulative assholes are everywhere. the sneaky ones, the calculating ones, everyone has their own little game going. you've got people messing with your head under the excuse of "i'm only doing this for your own good." people who look perfectly well intentioned. people who have practically written the textbook on playing the victim. people who twist your words, interrupt you, reshape everything you say, and somehow make it work in their favor. then there are the ones who look you straight in the eye and somehow make reality do a backflip.

every flavor is represented. sweet lies, ugly lies, white lies, colorful lies, tactics, labels, psychological terms. whatever you're looking for, apparently it's all here.

one of trump’s more interesting moves last month had nothing to do with immigration or tariffs.

on september 29, he brought major ai companies including openai, google, meta, anthropic, and nvidia to the white house for a voluntary ai safety agreement. the companies agreed to things like outside auditing and protections against hacking, while trump talked about creating a small oversight group to watch the industry.

the weird part is that it captures the whole ai moment pretty well.

governments know this technology could reshape society, but they also don’t want to slow down while another country gets ahead.

so for now, one of the most powerful technologies ever created is partly being governed by companies promising to behave responsibly.

that’s a pretty fascinating political experiment.

emmett till was 14 years old when he was kidnapped, tortured, and murdered in mississippi in 1955 after being accused of offending a white woman.

his mother, mamie till mobley, made the devastating decision to hold an open casket funeral so the world could see what had been done to her son.

the men accused of killing him were acquitted by an all white jury and later admitted to the killing in a magazine interview.

emmett till became one of the clearest examples of how racism in the jim crow south wasn't just personal prejudice. it was backed by social norms, institutions, courts, and violence.

sometimes one photograph can expose an entire system.

online dating is kind of broken in opposite directions.

a lot of women get more attention than they want.

a lot of men get less attention than they want.

one side is filtering through noise. the other is trying to be noticed.

somehow both leave exhausted.

the 2026 vmas somehow felt like pop culture looking backward and forward at the same time.

taylor swift became the most awarded artist in vma history, madonna won seven awards, snoop dogg hosted, and nirvana received the video vanguard award. there was even a tribute to dolly parton.

kind of wild that an awards show built around “what’s next” ended up being one of the biggest celebrations of artists who have already shaped decades of music.

cancel culture feels very internet age, but the basic idea is ancient. societies have always used public shaming, boycotts, and social exclusion to punish people who break accepted norms. social media just made it instant, searchable, and global.

james gunn was fired by disney in 2018 after old offensive tweets resurfaced, then rehired months later. kevin hart stepped down as oscars host that same year after old homophobic tweets came back into circulation.

that’s probably why the term is so hard to define. sometimes it looks like accountability. sometimes it looks like a punishment wildly bigger than the original mistake.

one person’s accountability can easily look like another person’s public pile on.

might be the internet’s weirdest public archive.

he loved her like the sea loved the stars. from afar; and from her perspective, quietly. reflective and beautiful, a silent ballet of ripples and smiling patterns scattered across the waves.

from his, it was a roaring and chaotic love. constantly moving, and always full. swells and crashes of emotion when he would see her. he'd hide from her behind the clouds and feel his storm inside him, and when the clouds would clear, and the waves would fall back, he would peek through the clouds and see her again, calm and beautiful as ever.

and then when the sea was still, each star reflecting perfectly on its surface, sometimes she would smile back. the twinkle of a star flitting across the sky. a wink that said "i love you too."

but they would never touch.

biggest free to use video streaming platform, released in 2005. originally started as a dating website, failed catastrophically, and was bought by google 18 months after its initial launch to become the massive video sharing platform it is today

dune. https://www.imdb.com/..._sr_srsg_0_tt_7_nm_0_in_1_q_dune

before becoming known for children’s books, roald dahl was a fighter pilot in world war ii and later worked in washington during the war.

that part of his life makes his writing feel a little different in hindsight. the danger, dark humor, strange adults, and sudden cruelty in his stories probably didn’t come from nowhere.