Corona, the cosmos and these strange digital days — An interesting feature of the present is that we’re all-time travelers now. I can’t believe we’ve spent over two entire years like this. None of us can. I’m hardly the first to point it out, but the “Tiger King” phase of Corona feels as though it was a decade ago…

Briefly, Anyway — I’ve been procrastinating on doing one of these for long enough, so here goes. My name is Ben and I’m a 26-year-old writer living in Philadelphia. I love to write. Some of the authors that have had the greatest impression on me are Tom Robbins, Khaled Hosseini, Sam Esmail, Vince…

An eerie new development in the world of artificial intelligence — Artificial intelligence has been on the rise for years. Within the last few months alone, some of the developments within this area of technology have become difficult to ignore. With the advent of AI image creation services like Dall-E 2, Midjourney and Lensa, this burgeoning new field has grown into…

This is a piece in a growing series of mine about dreams and lucid dreaming. In these stories I give first person accountings of some of the dreams that I have each night. Identities and locations can shift around with little to no warning and the narratives don’t follow typical…

Can I train ChatGPT to talk like Trump? — After forking over the $20 monthly membership fee for the latest version of ChatGPT, I decide to put it to the ultimate test. Below is a real conversation I had with ChatGPT. Me: Write an essay that's as human-sounding as possible about Honey Nut Cheerios, Spongebob, Kirby, Ted Lasso, and…

Slow and steady wins the race — For the next person who incites an insurrection in this country, they can be sure justice will be swift. Not swift as in fast, but swift as in I think Taylor Swift would see more justice for shoplifting from Starbucks. Justice has been taking its time lately. But if you…

The update that changes everything — When I was younger, the internet was a smaller place. Finding answers to our questions wasn’t quite as easy. Learning new hobbies wasn’t as simple as finding a Youtuber to guide us through the beginning stages. With a staggering 65,000 videos being uploaded to the platform every single day, it…

A poem — With bold words and bleary eyes beating, he teetered with a vacant sort of madness The clouds overhead even seemed as though they had somewhere they needed to be The weary people on the tired streets were each engaged in a thousand hurried routines They paused and grimaced and went on with their…

The benefits of lucid dreaming — I recently wrote a piece on how to lucid dream but, in writing it, it occurred to me I wasn’t able to explore in depth exactly why someone would want to in the first place. Just as the methods for achieving lucid dreams can vary, so, too, do the reasons…