There are many conversations the internet is refusing to have with honesty, this is one of them. Since those are desperate times for many of us, we probably should. Right now, your livelihood may be a distant memory or even a receding one. But you’re the self-reliant, creative, enterprising type so you’ve taken it upon yourself to build a new life from scratch writing online and you’re very, very excited about it.

Cool. Hang on to this. Hard.

Enthusiasm is fuel. It can see you through everything.

Protecting, nurturing, and growing it will be your biggest challenge, especially if your situation is precarious. When you worry constantly about shelter and food and health care, there’s no mental or emotional respite. Try as you might, you can’t get out of your head unless you’re asleep, i.e. …

Will we ever relate to one another again through the words we write online? Or are we too far gone? In a culture where everything human is monetized and sensationalism rules, you either become inured to desperation or it overwhelms you to the point of numbness.

Hope is in short supply, self-generated, unfounded, delusional. You don’t know and you don’t care as long as it shows up.

The zeitgeist has distorted humanness so much as to render it inexplicable.

Hope is extra now.

It pays more to hasten our own demise by fanning the flames of fear.

Fear is a distraction tactic and a form of control. Those who are new to fearing for their life and their livelihood are unlikely to pluck up the courage to push back as they’re still in shock. Those who know no other way still see no other way: Danger has never not been imminent. …

I got my first cookery book as a Christmas present when I was around 6, old enough to read and understand simple instructions like how to make bread. Flour, water, yeast, a small amount of sugar to activate it, a pinch of salt, and — if my memory serves me right — a dash of olive oil.

The recipe was foolproof, as befits recipes in a book aimed at children; it had fun, quirky illustrations, too. Although my mother bought it for me, there never was any expectation I would follow in my grandfather’s or uncle’s footsteps and become a baker. Or a pastry chef like one of my other uncle or my cousin. …

Public turns pubic and gets awkward, confusing, and crass. If you write about your vagina on the internet, are you considered pubic media or public media? In the age of political correctness, what amuses one person is guaranteed to offend another.

Here’s a quick fix: Above all else, aim to offend everyone equally.

Create art that meets the moment instead of ephemeral words thrown into the garbage disposal for brain farts that is the internet of greed and grift, a gore fest of mangled grabby fingers, drool, and spite where bloated prose bubbles up and erupts and oozes, clogging up the conversation. …

Predatory capitalism is neither ethical nor humane.

However, egregious acts of truth telling won’t get you far in a culture that can neither identify nor understand what passes for transgression because many people are incapable of critical thinking.

Whether this offends you or not, Trump is the most honest representation America has ever had to date, embodying money-grubbing, profiteering, and self-aggrandizing bullshit down to a T. But the era of disinhibited greed he ushered in will continue to imperil democracy long after Inauguration Day.

Right now, it’s intensifying. The coronavirus, homelessness, and hunger are spreading at an alarming rate in the US while con artists rush to line their pockets with the proceeds of outrage and anger before the Trump-sponsored gravy train derails. …

Mirror, mirror on the Facebook wall, who’s the piggiest of them all?

Since 2016, there’s been no shortage of grifters monetizing this very long moment by worshipping at the altar of make-believe, growing their self at the expense of everyone else’s, most particularly those who look up to them and see an example, an inspiration, and a savior.

It became all about showing the world, an internet, and the ego what hubris could do. And here we are, in an era where ideas are at least secondhand, thoughts are ghostwritten, and human attention span is more evanescent than ever. …

Words on the internet scare me.

The zeitgeist of self-delusion is snorting its own hype and almost everyone has achieved fluency in fear, unwittingly or not. While I readily admit mine comes from a place that may not be entirely rational, my current geographical coordinates tell you all you need to know. Four years ago, I had no idea I’d end up back in Europe. After less than a month of Trump, I wrote about the parallels between depression and fascism. …

Our reality is the sum of all the choices we make, starting with the words we use to describe and document it. Right now, our reality is very much askew. We are trapped in a Billy Joel song, either Big Shot or Honesty, the latter a concept so corrupted by Trumpism it has come to mean the exact opposite.

Instead, honesty now embodies the zeitgeist of deceit, delusion, and ultimately dumb.

Between Honest Trump who, unlike any other politician in the history of US politics — allegedly — tells it like it is because he isn’t a politician but a straight-talking business tycoon and Honest Alex Jones who claims being honest as his superpower, the last four years have drastically expanded the definitions of some of the words we use to refer to core human values. Honesty has gone toxic and turned into a red flag to watch out for. Never mind that politicians have never been known for telling the truth anyway while sales people have their ways for making it appear as flexible as your budget allows. …