Susannah: We can’t all earn lots of money

Dear The Tank, Ever since I graduated college with a degree in literature, I’ve watched my friends go on to successful careers in medicine, entrepreneurism, finance, and law. I’m stuck as an assistant manager at a used bookstore. Sure, I feel a lot of envy at times, but that’s just the beginning of my problems. […]

The Tank

Kyle: Find what matters in life

Dear The Tank,
I am a twenty-eight-year-old male who will have to move back in with my parents next month. I’ve been out of work for six months, and in fact had only had that particular job for four months, after having been laid off before that. The move will require me to relocate 375 miles north, from Los Angeles to Daly City, California. My girlfriend is against the move. She can’t or won’t realize that I’m against it, too, but have no choice. What should I do? I truly cannot afford to live on my own unless I want to do it on the streets.

A Life Examined

Some Smell Thing

Tina loved the way he smelled when he held her. She’d first noticed his particular kind of cleanness, as if he just naturally emitted the scent of fresh air in the mountains, when he’d touched her shoulder standing by the copier and left his hand there long enough to mean something, to definitely mean something.

A Life Examined

Utility Executive Demonstrates How Average People Will Suffer if His Company Is Fined

The President and CEO of Tohd Power and Light took advantage of a recent town hall meeting to prove that the public will be harmed if his company is fined for overcharging customers.

A Life Examined

I used to feel perfectly American

when eating bacon, eggs, steak, spicy wings, and mashed potatoes with my Remington 870 12 gauge over my shoulder and my Sig Sauer .45ACP at my side. Then my smart-mouthed friend Will asked why I don’t use my guns to eat. Well, I couldn’t get that idea out of my head.

Frontiers of Knowledge

New Business Helps Wealthy Hold Onto Self-Importance in Modern World

We recently got a special tour of a new venture on Madison Avenue that has been causing quite a stir. The business is called Mammonary Springs Wellness Center. Because Mammonary Springs is secretive to the extreme, a number of far-fetched rumors have bloomed—ranging from the suggestion that it provides a fountain of youth-like treatment to the insinuation that it is simply a high-end brothel.

A Life Examined

Pope Francis’ Twitter Account Hacked; Ex-Pope Benedict XVI “a Person of Interest”

The Holy See confirmed that the pontiff’s stream was penetrated but insisted that the offending tweets were taken down “faster than you can say ‘Galileo.’”

Church officials say they take the pope’s security seriously, and “that includes his Twitter stream. We cannot have the Holy Father being violated,” says Antonio Russo, legate a latere and a spokesman for the pontiff.

A Life Examined

Brewers Fan Apologizes Preemptively for What He Will Do in 2014

Ryan Braun, when you take the field at the top of the first I will call you a scum-sucking piece of alleged—alleged, mind you—human shit. I will then correct myself, and tell you that if a piece of alleged human shit took a shit that then took a shit that was puked on, it would be you. When I notice, in my peripheral vision, my three sons looking up in amazement and wonder, I will tell you to look at what you’re doing to the American family.

Frontiers of Knowledge

Researchers Use Deep Human Emotion to Enhance Identity Security Online

The fulcrum for the new method is shame. Explains co-developer and psychology professor Anna Chull, it’s in the nature of shame to be almost ineradicable from our memory and yet completely private. “Say you once rubbed a dog’s penis to see if it would get erect,” says Chull. “And say you kind of liked it. You’re not going to tweet about that. No. But you won’t forget it. It’s a perfect, entirely personalized security key.”

A Life Examined