Z.

Well, it's been a year. I embarked on this little writer's sojourn in November of 2024 in an effort to recapture some bygone mojo that hath, in recent years, been untimely sapped of me. "It doesn't have to be good. It just has to exist." So here I am, to write about writing. What this process has been like. How it has gone. And where I think it's going. I'll try more original art moving forward, instead of the cheap and easy but vague and soulless AI art heretofore. First—some housekeeping: I am thankful for an amusing muse who, upon reading their works, reconjured a desire in me to delve back into this kind of writing again. I write by trade. But very impersonally. I write as a hobby. But somewhat formulaically. So to write in a third mode, as a way of expression and self-discovery, has been something of a 'palate cleanser' for me. It's a gear I have repressed since I first began to take writing seriously.  Why repressed? Because this "lo...

Conspiracy theories are the junk food of political and social commentary. They feel good because they tap into primal centers of our brains that satisfy without satiating. It can sometimes feel as though we're really 'figuring things out,' 'getting to the bottom of big questions,' or 'finally pulling the wool from over our eyes,' which can impart a sense of liberation, self-satisfaction and mastery. And before I go much further, it should be stated that I am not (necessarily) anti-conspiracy theory. Because, as we know, conspiracies do happen—and theorizing about possible conspiracies can sometimes change the cultural tenor about specific and important issues. But... "Everything in moderation." "Conspirasize" and "conspirascope" are everything. Because we live in a world of compartmentalized, online micro-cultures, there's a subdivision of society—and socially acceptable thought—that orbits conspiracy theorizing.  I used to ...

Scientists Conclude Science May Be Fatally Flawed, Pending Further Study (Photo: Getty-ish) By Z Zeighmn Blog Updated Nov. 13, 2025, 2:11 p.m. MST In a stunning realization by prominent experts across nearly every field—from chemistry to medicine, environmental studies to genetics, physics to economics—the world’s leading scientists are now joining forces to prove, or possibly disprove, a single startling theory: That science itself is broken. According to several alarming studies—including a 2015 Science meta-analysis that found fewer than 40 percent of landmark psychology experiments could be replicated—research has become harder to verify, impossible to reproduce, and increasingly at odds with past findings. Or so the data suggest. Then again, if the scientific method itself is in question, how can we trust the data suggesting that science is in crisis? If science is collapsing, who’s to say that isn’t just another hypothesis awaiting peer review? I spoke with leading experts in the...

SERIES OF SHOTS: A spry, middle-aged man wakes up before sunrise.  Reaching over to the bedside table, he puts on his glasses.  He springs from bed, and begins a series of robust stretches and lunges in his clean bedroom—which, though small, is well-kept, affording him plenty of space for his lunging exercises. He sways and bends from the hips. Rotating his pelvis. He arches his back, far backward—then forward—like an exaggerated dance, though with no set beat or rhythm. Random. Swaying.  With gusto.  A single photograph hangs framed on the wall. It's an old picture of a young boy standing beside an old man. Very formal. They stand beside each other, arms at their sides, next to a young sapling, freshly planted in the ground. The man looks at the picture between lunges. Between stretches which increasingly move his entire body's posture in extravagant poses in his room, dawn growing outside. Later, in the kitchen.  Though he is fit, we see him extract a whole pa...