The Inner Monologue

The Inflation You Feel Is Not the Inflation They Measure

A lesson the 1970s already taught us—and we forgot Every inflation cycle produces two economies. One exists in data tables, indices, and press releases.The other exists in kitchens, leases, and commutes. When officials announce that inflation is “cooling,” they are speaking truthfully about the first economy.When households say life is getting harder, they are speaking…
Every Place Is Famous for Something

Or: Why Nothing Is Boring, Only Unsorted There is a quiet assumption baked into how we talk about geography: that most places are unremarkable. Flyover country. Nowhere towns. Empty stretches of road. Locations whose defining feature is the absence of defining features. This assumption is wrong. Not morally wrong—structurally wrong. Stuff happens everywhere. All the…
The Lint Trap Is a Ledger

What Dryer Lint Reveals About Wear, Convenience, and the Hidden Costs of Modern Life Every time you clean the lint trap, you are holding a receipt. Not a metaphorical one. A literal one. That soft gray felt clinging to the mesh is not dust. It is not debris. It is not something that mysteriously appeared.…
The Myth of the Hollow Earth, Revisited: What an “Empty” Magma Chamber Really Is

There is a persistent, almost irresistible image that appears whenever magma chambers enter popular discussion: a vast underground cave, emptied by eruption, lurking beneath the crust like a geological booby trap. The picture is cinematic—an enormous hollow void waiting to collapse, swallow cities, or echo ominously in seismic scans. It is also almost entirely wrong.…
The Long Road Home: How Immigration Quietly Keeps America Moving

There is a particular kind of invisibility built into American abundance. It is the invisibility of systems that work so reliably we forget they are systems at all. Grocery shelves replenish overnight. Construction sites hum at dawn. Factories receive parts on time. Pharmacies never seem to run out of the basics. At the center of…
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASETHE WHITE HOUSE: Office of Utensil Preparedness and Culinary Superiority

PRESIDENT DIRECTS CREATION OF STRATEGIC SPATULA RESERVE Declares Spatula “The Defining Technology of the Next 100 Years” Washington, D.C. — In a decisive move to secure America’s future, the President of the United States today signed Executive Order 14,089, formally directing the creation of a Strategic Spatula Reserve (SSR) to ensure enduring U.S. dominance of…
The West Virginia Institute for the Criminally Diseased

When Responsibility Becomes a Diagnosis and Crime Becomes a Condition West Virginia has long been a place where consequences were not theoretical. Mines collapsed. Mills closed. Paychecks stopped. When something went wrong, there was no committee to convene and no glossary to soften the blow. You either fixed the problem, endured it, or left. Which…
The Break-Even Myth: How Cities Quietly Pay for Rural and Suburban America

One of the most persistent myths in American political life is that cities are fiscal drains—places that consume more than they produce, siphoning tax dollars from “real” America. It is a comforting story for those who don’t live in cities and a convenient one for those who campaign against them. It is also wrong. Cities…
“Your 50s Are Collecting Receipts—And Your 70s Will Cash Them In”

Let’s get one thing straight: your golden years aren’t a surprise party. They’re a meticulously itemized invoice for every bad decision you made before your AARP card arrived. Think you can smoke, drink, and couch-surf your way through middle age and then suddenly morph into a spry, clear-minded elder? Oh, honey. Your body doesn’t forget.…
“Delusions of Grandeur: Why the Middle Class Loves Licking Boots”

Ah, the first-world middle class—the ultimate victims of the “temporarily embarrassed millionaire” syndrome. They clutch their Starbucks lattes, scroll through Zillow listings of homes they can’t afford, and whisper to themselves, “Just a few more grind sessions, and I’ll be dining with the billionaires.” Meanwhile, their actual proximity to financial ruin is a single medical…