When it became clear that President Donald Trump was going to be president again on election night, Paul Curry, a gay man in Seattle, took refuge in his friends. “It felt like an inevitable gut-punch, or a recurring migraine, but we had each other’s back,” Curry said. “A week later, we saw Issa Man’s ‘Hard […]
Small talk — the quick, surface-level conversations that fill elevator rides, grocery store lines and workplace corridors — has long been dismissed as trivial. Yet psychologists and anthropologists argue that these everyday exchanges are critical to how humans build trust, empathy and a sense of community. The way we engage in small talk, however, is […]
As a preteen, I couldn’t resist the siren song of AIM, or AOL Instant Messenger. I’d hear that “door opening” noise or a message notification and rush to my computer, eager to see if the sign-on was my best friend or my boyfriend, both who were equally tethered to AIM at the time. (Naturally, all […]