First Time Watching: First Time Hearing Videos
By: Ben Johnson A thing people like to do on YouTube is watch videos of people who just got a cochlear implant reacting to hearing for the first time in their
lives. Their eyes light up. They can’t believe it. They burst into tears. They
are usually sitting...

An Open Letter to Trump Supporters
By: Ben Johnson Congratulations. You certainly got my attention. You guys sure know how to get my goat. I’ll give you that.
And I can see how that’d be fun for you. I’m the over-educated liberal nerd
who’d rather be right than happy, and you’re the country-...

Three Good Things: Hats, Walruses, Pillows
By: Ben Johnson     Hats Often referred to by their common social media platform
naming convention #hats, real life hats are a useful and good thing to have on
your head form time to time. Here is a partial list of some things hats do: 1. Cover your head. 2...

Dudes In Dude Bands
By: Ben Johnson This is what you look like when you talk. There’s one of those Important Community Dialogues going on
in the general vicinity of my Facebook feed these days, and as rational of a
person as I like to believe I am about not voluntarily burning...

Candy Crush Saga Life Lessons
By: Ben Johnson Look, I know this is bad, okay? This is real, real bad. From
a certain entirely accurate psychological standpoint, it’s about the same thing
as saying, “sometimes I cut myself,” or “I wish I was dead.” But: I’ve been
playing Candy Crush Saga...

I Am The Bestest
By: Pete Johnson I think the greatest compliment you can get is that you brought joy into this world. I have a weekly pancake date with my niece and nephew, and it is the best. We use the word "goof" a lot. Being alive and in this world and alive is the bes...

On Wanting And Getting Impossible Things
By: Ben Johnson Baltimore-based artist Lexie Mountain organized a world
record attempt for the longest game of telephone that happened earlier today at
the Walters Art Museum. The record was 1,330, set by school children in a soccer
stadium in London in 200...

I Guess I’m Into Astrology Now?
By: Ben Johnson I have decided to like everything about this. I’m not usually one to be taken in
by new age anything, or spiritualism anything, or mysticism anything, or
certainly anything where a random hippie with six remaining functioning brain
cells pre...

Beasts of the Best of 2015: Rolling Stone’s Top 50 Albums
By: Ben Johnson Every year I do this thing where I
take a look at major music publications’ year-end best albums list and slog
through each individual entry for as long as it takes to say literally one
thing I can think of to say, and every year it almost b...

Black Jeans in Baltimore
By: Ben Johnson photo by Mia Moreno-Hines I bought a pair of black jeans last
week. This is a boring non-event to you and to every human in the world who is
not me. I’d never owned a pair of black jeans before, so it felt like a big
step, like a minor ident...