humor
"Humor is what binds humans together and makes difficult times just a little less painful; Sometimes you can't help but laugh. "
Roots and Fruit
Roots and Fruit Photo by Lukáš Kulla on Unsplash Most people evaluate life by what shows. Results, behavior, success, failure, growth, collapse. Fruit is easier to measure than roots, so it becomes the focus almost by default. When something goes wrong, attention rushes to what is visible and immediate. When something goes right, credit is assigned to the most recent action. But this way of seeing consistently misreads causality. Fruit is never the beginning of the story. It is the result of something that has been growing quietly, often unnoticed, for a long time.
By Peter Thwing - Host of the FST Podcast4 days ago in Humans
What car troubles taught me about perfectionism
Often, when we’re chasing perfection, it can feel like everything goes wrong at once. One thing breaks, then another. A friend seems a bit distant and then an unexpected phone bill arrives. Before long, we start telling ourselves that everything has gone to shit and it’s all our fault.
By Chelsea Branch6 days ago in Humans
Where there's Art there's Heart. Top Story - February 2026.
Here's a stupid thing: I adore art, but I start to panic whenever I step into a gallery. In the one place I should be at my contented best - surrounded by walls teeming with creative expression - I fall apart. What ought to be an enriching experience, tacitly designed to facilitate the exploration of human empathy and perspective, is for me an overwhelming purgatory of anxiety that compresses me to the point I cannot breathe. At the same time, I experience a sense of extraction, as though my head is being prized open to create a hole so big my sanity could evaporate. Somewhere between these two opposing forces of vice and vortex, I feel myself dissolving in a stream of panic that makes me want to cry; and I feel so daft feeling this way, that all I want to do is run for the hills.
By Caroline Jane7 days ago in Humans
What the System Forces You to Become
The Question the System Replaces By the time a person has passed through employment law, healthcare coverage rules, unemployment insurance, disability determination, and benefit eligibility, the relevant question has already shifted without ever being stated out loud. It is no longer whether the system helped or failed them. It is whether they managed to remain legible long enough to survive it. Each institutional layer imposes requirements that appear reasonable when viewed in isolation, yet become coercive when experienced sequentially:
By Peter Thwing - Host of the FST Podcast13 days ago in Humans
I Collected Random Pictures From the Internet — And They Said More About Us Than I Expected
Sometimes the internet gives more than memes. It gives mirrors. Today, I scrolled. I clicked. I paused at a handful of random images that grabbed my attention. Some are riddles. Some are illusions. Some are questions that feel simple, until you think about them over again.
By Lori A. A.13 days ago in Humans
The Paradox of "Chill": Why Relaxation Has Become Our Newest Source of Anxiety
In our modern pursuit of a "decent" life, the goalposts are constantly shifting. In the workplace, our primary task is "emotional management." When we return to our hometowns, we are told to stop "internal emotional friction." And when we finally manage to take a trip to clear our heads, we find ourselves reflecting on why we lack a certain "sense of relaxation"—or what is currently trending in Chinese social media as Song-chi-gan (松弛感).
By Elena Vance 14 days ago in Humans
Beyond Epstein
I didn’t know how to stop watching the news. It started as a quick scroll—just a check-in, like I was being responsible. Then it became a kind of hunger. A need to see the latest twist, the latest headline, the latest detail that made my stomach twist into knots.
By John Smith16 days ago in Humans
