A Doomer Reading List

A woman finds a mask in her coat pocket, leftover from the 2021 mandate. It triggers such a violent emotional reaction in her mind that she throws the mask across the room and starts sobbing, then tweets about the experience. This woman might be suffering from urgent normal syndrome. What’

You’ve probably heard about Helen of Troy. She’s blamed for starting the Trojan War. Not many people remember Cassandra. She predicted it. In Aeschylus’s tragedy Agamemnon, you get Cassandra’s full story. In some ways, the Trojan War is really about a bunch of dudes who don’

Before modern medicine and sanitation, we were at constant war with death.

Most people are more than willing to forget the past, along with its important lessons.

There’s this play by Eugene Ionesco called, “Rhinoceros.” You should read it sometime. It’s about an ordinary dude named Berenger, a Lebowski type who drinks too much and never shows up anywhere on time. Things get interesting when he meets up with a friend for coffee, but their conversation get…

Climate optimists keep talking about hope, but philosophers offer us a warning.

A term from systems theory helps explain the collapse of our climate.

The elite are trying to whip everyone back to the office to avoid a commercial real estate crash.

Rat utopias in the 1950s give us a sneak peek at our future.

Until recently, there was a feeling I couldn’t describe. It wasn’t trauma. It wasn’t fatigue. It wasn’t anger or sadness. It wasn’t depression. It was a feeling that I couldn’t trust anyone anymore. It was a feeling that I would spend the rest of my life making impossible choices that

Normalcy bias helps explain why the public continues to chill in the face of mounting existential threats.

All he wanted was a bunker for the end of the world. He didn’t have money. He didn’t have connections. What he had was a particular set of skills. After getting kicked out of the army for assault, Shannon Gilday knew there was only one way. He’d have to take

When my mom died, I didn’t want condolences. I didn’t want cards. I didn’t want phone calls. I didn’t want to stand around listening to everyone else talk about how much they missed their moms. I didn’t want to talk about it with anyone. I

It all started with a man named Phineas Quimby, a clockmaker who delved into alternative spirituality and mesmerism. During the 1840s, he started traveling around “curing” diseases. He practiced a form of hypnotism in front of large crowds, charging folks $5 or $10 to tell them there was nothing w…

Sleep has turned into a form of class privilege. It’s also a weapon in class warfare. I’m guessing you don’t need yet another life coach or wellness grifter selling you on the concept of sleep. You’ve probably spent a lot of time and money on it

The psychology of reactance.

Public health pundits deserve to be called out for spreading misinformation.

I read about this one family... They were tired of society. They thought civilization was unraveling. They wanted to live off the grid. Authorities found their mummified remains a few months later. The family died from exposure and malnutrition. They didn’t make it. A while back, a prepper t…

Earlier this year, politicians and news outlets tried once again to convince the public that the pandemic was over and that Covid had turned into the flu. They were wrong. Over the coming weeks and months, we’re going to find out just how wrong they were. Highly mutated forms of

Do you know who panics the most during disasters? It’s the rich. It’s the politicians. It’s the elite. It’s the riot police. They don’t panic about actual death and suffering. They panic about money. They panic about their investments. They panic over property. They panic over the possible los…

For trauma survivors, triggering yourself might be good for you.

One year, my boss gave me a chocolate bar for a raise. It came with a Christmas card. The card made a joke about how sweet I was. He appreciated all the extra, unpaid work I’d done. I was invaluable. That was my third year without a raise, despite “exceptional”

A mountain of evidence tells us that even mild Covid is bad for your brain.

Philosophers know the difference between real hope and fool’s hope.

It’s probably been a while since you thought about the Hunger Games. If you remember, Katniss gets a nasty little surprise at the end when the new leader, Coin, decides to keep everything just the same. She even wants to reboot the games. As it turns out, the district she

The author of “Frankenstein” wrote an honest book about the end of the world.

In 1893, George Pullman was one of the richest men in the world during one of the worst financial depressions in history. Now he lies in a steel vault eight feet underground, in a coffin sealed with lead. He was buried at night, in secret, to keep his employees from

Before the world descended into yet another wave of illness and death, western media was promoting a smiling course offered in Japan. It proved that everyone was getting back to “normal,” even countries with strong masking cultures. If you enrolled in the course, you spent all day practicing for a…

About ten years ago, the National Geographic Channel aired this show about doomsday preppers. One woman was filling her entire house with food. She thought she was going to continue cooking gourmet meals while the world burned down around her. One guy tried to build a castle in the middle

Research tells us that Covid itself continues to do more harm than lockdowns ever did.

There’s good news about Novavax, and vaccines in general. Of course, there’s always a reality check.

When someone tells you to give up, there’s a pathology behind it.

Join the revolution.

The CDC plans to weaken infection control guidelines. It’s not based on science.

One book synthesized and popularized the most toxic ideas in American history.

Here’s what we know.

Social psychologists understand why broken systems stay in place.

There’s an ulterior motive in Gaza, and it’s disturbing.