Yes, really. — I recently watched the Netflix series The Staircase, and I found myself more interested in this series than I am in most true crime documentaries. What was so enthralling for me was that I honestly could not decide if Michael Peterson was innocent or guilty of killing his wife. Usually…

If not the cops, then who? — Every single person I know has had a bad experience with the police. The police are known for being bigoted, dishonest, incompetent, and mean. Cops kill a disproportionate number of Black Americans, and they are also known for killing mentally ill people (like me) while they are having mental health…

Honesty from someone who knows — I think my bipolar disorder probably started during my early teens, maybe around the time that I dropped out of high school, ran away from home, and started following some of the remaining members of the Grateful Dead on tour. …

Men know what it’s like to be a woman more than women do — I know this guy. Let’s call him Max. Max has a prestigious degree from a prestigious law school, and he likes to bring this up in conversation as much as possible. What he doesn’t like to mention is that his law license has been suspended for over a year. Max…

On toxic no-snitching culture — We’ve all heard it. “Snitches get stitches.” (and wind up in ditches) “Loose lips sink ships.” “Blabbers get stabbered.” “Nobody likes a tattletale.” …and so on. In case you’re from Mars and have never heard any of these phrases, let me break it down for you. What these phrases mean…

Advice from someone who has experienced it firsthand — I have bipolar disorder, a mental illness that causes intense mood swings. When people with bipolar feel extremely high (manic) or extremely low (depressed), we can sometimes experience psychotic symptoms. Psychosis can be incredibly scary and confusing. It’s good to have people around you who can help you through it…

Understanding and destigmatizing revictimization — If you’ve ever been the victim of violence or another kind of interpersonal abuse, you know how awful it can be. If you’ve been victimized more than once, that awfulness can feel exponentially greater. It can be easy to blame yourself for the abuse, especially when it’s happened to you…

Unpacking Jesse Prinz’s Moral Mary. — Jesse Prinz’s “Moral Mary” is a thought experiment where he asks us to imagine a person who has had no inherent moral inclinations, but knows everything that there is to know about normative theories of ethics. The point is to make the argument that emotions are inescapably tied to morality…

Nietzsche on Zarathustra and Eternal Recurrence — The doctrine of “eternal recurrence” is Nietzsche’s idea that history repeats itself in the same series of patterns, forever. If the doctrine is true, then you and I will repeat the lives we are living now an infinite number of times, and we have done this already. Scholars differ in…