Do you ever do a Dead Hang? It s not a pull-up or a chin-up, it s just grabbing the bar and hanging for as long as you can. I had to work up to my full weight, but then I ve been increasing the time I hang. I m up to 30 seconds on most days. I take ... Read more
This morning I was doing curls. I count left-right as one rep, so my 75-rep target means 150 individual counts. On a good morning, when I can muster the energy, I get up to a 150 count (75 per arm). Most mornings I’m good for a 100 count (50 per arm). The muscles aren’t the ... Read more
When doing a curl, you grip the dumbbell, you lift, then let it back down. It s a fairly simple concept. Gravity pulls the weight down, you pull it up and (if you re doing it right) when you lower it, you go slowly, defying gravity the whole time. The key is Tension. It s not about the ... Read more
The Booger Head Every other creature in this bestiary wears a disguise. The Enthusiastic Ambivalent pretends to be a Skeptic. The Pontificating Ignoramus pretends to be an Expert. The Compassionate Hatemonger pretends to be a Guardian. On down the line, each one has a false identity, a costume that lets them believe they’re something nobler ... Read more
The Big-Hearted Bigot She’s very concerned about minorities. She wants you to know that. She posts about equity. She shares articles about systemic injustice. She has strong opinions about which words are harmful and which policies are needed to level the playing field. She is, by his own accounting, one of the good ones. She ... Read more
The Angry Sloth Her timeline is a war zone. Every post is an emergency. The government is destroying democracy. Children are being put in cages. The planet is on fire. Fascism is here. If you scroll back far enough (you won’t have to scroll far) you’ll find that last week’s extinction-level crisis has already been ... Read more
The Compassionate Hatemonger It starts with a screenshot. Someone said something online — maybe it was clumsy, maybe it was genuinely offensive, maybe it was a joke that didn’t land — and now the Compassionate Hatemonger has found it. Within hours, the machinery is running. The offending post is shared with breathless commentary. A list ... Read more
In the Middle Ages, monks compiled bestiaries — illustrated catalogs of animals, real and imagined, each entry describing the creature’s nature and behavior and offering a moral lesson to the reader. The monks understood something useful: you can’t avoid a dangerous animal if you don’t know what it looks like. The internet has its own ... Read more
There’s a difference between an insult and a logical fallacy. When Donald Trump Jr. stood at a Saudi business summit in October 2025 and called No Kings protesters “older and fatter,” that was mockery. The room already agreed with him. Nobody in Riyadh was deciding whether American protesters had a point. He was playing to ... Read more
If you’ve been following American politics for the last few years, you’ve watched the word “existential” get beaten to death. Existential threat. Existential crisis. Existential danger to our democracy. Biden used it. Harris used it. Every cable news anchor with a teleprompter used it. They used it so often, and so loosely, that your average ... Read more