It has not been surprising to watch the self-care movement, which originated in radical activist circles, become perverted by capitalism. In our society of millennial narcissists, business opportunities pave the way to personhood. I am not here to critique this or cast blame on those who find pleasure in lugging their Chase Sapphire Rewards Cards from Brandy Melville to Chipotle and back again. I am here to offer a simple self-care tip of my own.

Buy a longer iPhone cord.

The iPhone cord that comes standard with an iPhone measures a stubby one meter. For comparison’s sake, one meter is also the length of “the blade of a longsword” and “4 pieces of paper, A4 format, two of them lengthwise and two of them crosswise,” according to Quora. The average battery life of an iPhone 6, according to trustedreviews.com, is two days, although it is not specified what that means. The average battery life of my iPhone 6s is about four to five hours, and when I went to the Genius Bar to inquire about this, the Genius told me that I shouldn’t use the Kindle app as much. Fuck you, Genius!

So, a little math problem for us. If the length of the “complimentary” iPhone charging cord is one meter, and my iPhone battery lasts four to five hours, and my bed is about 1.2 meters from the nearest outlet, and I am positioned to look at my phone while it is plugged in at a 45-degree angle, what does that give us? The answer is: Fuck you, Apple!

Interestingly, Apple and other outlets sell iPhone-charging cords that are much longer than one meter. Naturally, they cost more than the cord that comes with the iPhone, but less than a new iPhone. Mine, which is the brand Aimus and sells for $5.99 on Amazon (don’t tell me if the Aimus brand is bad I don’t care), was a birthday present from my parents that came adorned with the label “Practical gift — Dad’s idea.” It is the second-best thing my parents have ever given me, after life.

Since I received this six-foot cord last week, things have changed considerably for me. I have less neck pain. My skin has cleared up. I am a better friend. And most importantly, I have read seven psychological thrillers on my Kindle app without my phone dying.

I truly believe buying a longer iPhone cord is the most radical act of self-care with which one can provide oneself in this postmodern era. I am humiliated I did not think of it sooner, and I apologize to my comrades for this failure.

Buy a Longer iPhone Cord was originally published in The Hairpin on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I spent the last weekend with my parents at my dad’s new home in the Smoky Mountains. It’s the first home he’s lived in that I’ve never lived in with him (as long as I’ve been alive, of course.) My mom’s headed down there soon once her job in D.C. is done. His new place is a marker of something slightly out of my grasp both behind and in front of me.

If you haven’t spent time in the Smokies or in a holler, I’ll tell you there’s a slice of evening when the light turns everything a deep blue and the foreground collapses onto the background like an Eric Carle collage. And within that time, there is a sudden instance where the temperature slips and you’re blanketed in a comfort you know won’t last. This light lingers for 20 minutes or so before it gets too dark, and the cicadas get too loud. That light is captured on the cover of Lucinda Williams’ fifth album Car Wheels On A Gravel Road.

But that feeling of fleeting light and time is captured on her second album, Happy Woman Blues. From start to finish, all eleven songs on Happy Woman Blues reveal a woman authentically growing into her adult self and redefining herself in romantic and platonic relationships. The eleven songs are suspended in that low blue light between leaving your first home and creating your next. It’s a roadmap for a burgeoning womanhood.

Lafayette, the opening number, plops you immediately into that purgatory. The singer has returned to her hometown and submerges herself in it’s familiarity.

We danced all night long to a sweet Cajun song
Drinkin’ and jivin’ ’til dawn, I could dance on and on
Doin’ a two-step in my sweet Lafayette
Take me back Lafayette, way down on the bayou
I’m your girl, Lafayette, I’m gonna hang around you

But we’re immediately stripped of the comfort of Lafayette by the following song, I Lost It. Presumably about a former love, the lyrics illustrate the acute pain of not only loss but the uncertainty of moving on from loss. Perhaps we wallow in grief for too long because it honors the memory of what we no longer have.

A few of the songs on the album touch on friendships that she is both weaning off of and finding a new appreciation for. Maria and Hard Road possess kind understandings of companions who’ve cut out on their own for better of worse. It’s again an exploration of extracting the fear of saying goodbye.

Maria, you’re still wild and restless
And I can just see ya ridin’ in a rodeo
You might even make it down to Texas
Or you might head out west to New Mexico

So pack up all of your belongings
A pick-up will take you where you wanna go
You can ride out when you hear mountains calling
Out to Canada or the canyons of Colorado

The great privilege I enjoy of having loving and supportive parents isn’t lost on me. And I know that in comparison, the fear of growth away from them pales to those who were given no choice in that separation. But while the timing of this limbo varies from person to person, at one point or another we all experience dissociation from the environments that once guarded us. We all find ourselves overwhelmed by the blue.

Williams’ album doesn’t just wade in transition, though. What makes it so transformational is the sense of self she starts to establish in the wake of shedding her past. In the titular song, Happy Woman Blues, she offers herself as she is, incomplete and fresh from the bruises of growing pains.

Tryin’ to find lightness in the dark
Tryin’ to live my life, tryin’ to get satisfied
My mind is in the city but my heart is in the countryside

Tryin’ hard to be a happy woman
But sometimes life just overcomes me
Everyday I’m workin’ just to pay my dues

It’s no fluke that she chose this to be song to be the linchpin of the album. In tone and lyric she charges forward while acknowledging how damn hard it can be. For me, this is Lucinda’s fight song. One that pays homage to the working women of country music like Loretta or Dolly while also keeping true to a romantic uncertainty that breaks her away from the domesticity those songwriters found themselves nestled in. Most importantly within yet despite that uncertainty, she is happy.

I had the opportunity to meet Lucinda Williams about two years ago after a concert she held in Brooklyn. I’d gone by entirely by myself which was a first. It was an evening after work and I wore a bright pink JanSport backpack, swaying in the front row, younger than most people in the audience by at least a decade. I waited in line to have her sign her latest CD, Down Where The Spirit Meets The Bone.

I’m sure many people have told her how her music has been a roadmap for them. I was just the thousandth young woman traveling down that road. I wanted to explain that Happy Woman Blues felt like a how-to guide of making it on your own and loving those you leave behind. I got to the front of the line.

“I Lost It was the first song I learned every single word to as a kid,” I thought to say as she signed my CD. She smiled and laughed and said, “As a kid? Damn, you sure know how to make a woman feel old.”

We took a photo together and while I was partially mortified I had made her feel old, it was actually exactly how, in the most wonderful way, her music made me feel as well.

Growing Older to Lucinda Williams was originally published in The Hairpin on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Marjory Stoneman Douglas (b. 1890–d. 1998) is now regarded as one of the most important figures in conservation. She was also a tireless fighter for and defender of civil rights and public safety, helping countless people to have safe, running water and indoor plumbing. Awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1993, she died in 1998 at the age of 108.

They called it a swamp. They thought it was a stagnant muck that was worthless as it was. So they wanted to drain it, to turn it into something they felt was more valuable: land for real estate and farming. But Marjory Stoneman Douglas, a journalist and activist, viewed this place as special. The Native Americans called it Pa-Hay-Okee (meaning “grassy water”). We know it as the Everglades. And it was Marjory whose voice helped rescue it from being drained, developed, destroyed.

Though not a particularly outdoorsy person, she immersed herself in the Everglades and wrote the definitive book on it (entitled Everglades: River of Grass, 1947). She researched tirelessly, consulting with scientists, historians, and Native Americans to learn everything she could about the Everglades. Her book showed the world that the Everglades was not a swamp, that the water was not stagnant at all, but a slow-flowing river. She captured the of the place in the opening line of her book by writing, “There are no other Everglades in the world.” She understood — and convinced others — that the Everglades was truly unique.

But, unlike other natural landscapes people love to explore, the Everglades is not a place where a person goes to just wander the wilderness or camp. It is a harsh environment, difficult to penetrate and unwelcoming to visitors. In her memoir, Voice of the River, Marjory writes, “To be a friend of the Everglades is not necessarily to spend time wandering around out there.” In fact, she hardly spent any time out there at all. But, she understood that nature’s value was not just it’s useful as entertainment for people, “I know it’s out there and I know its importance.”

Ultimately her book, along with the efforts of many passionate conservationists, led to the creation of Everglades National Park. But even with the creation of the park, the work was not done. By the late ’60s, Marjory’s book was nearly 20 years old, and she herself 78 and losing her sight, when the real conservation work began. She used her skills and connections as a journalist and activist to persuade others and influence politicians. She spoke to anyone who would listen, and even some who wouldn’t. She helped convey to the public that the Everglades were more than just a beautiful place, and that the gentle water flow in fact was crucial to life in all of south Florida. Perhaps it is a stretch to call Marjory Stoneman Douglas a naturalist in the traditional sense. But she proves that a person’s relationship with nature is not always based on their ability to live in it, but how they live with it.

Art by Sarah Pedry. Words by Sarah Pedry and David Obuchowski.

Scenes and Sketches: America’s Women Naturalists was originally published in The Hairpin on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Dear Swole Woman,

First of all I want to say I’m really grateful for your column. I love your writing and your insights especially regarding diet and how much progress to expect from your training.

It so happened that I had to live with my parents for a little while, and my dad keeps some weights in his garage. I decided to do some minimum weight training to increase my muscle mass. I instantly fell in love with it; I had read a couple of articles and watched a few videos of the basic lifts and in six months in can bench, push press and front squat more than half my weight, plus I can deadlift a little less than my weight (it’s not much I know but to me its a lot of progress).

The thing is, I am moving out of my parents’ house again, so my access to weights will be gone. I can’t spend time or money on a gym, and I’m afraid I’m going to lose my gains. Do you think its possible for me to maintain my strength with just body weight training? My main concern is my delts, cos when I started training they were the weakest and now finally I have some ‘real’ shoulders. I’ve read that handstand presses against the wall are a good substitute for military press. I’ve also read articles on the internet but they’ve left me very confused.

— polly

This is kind of a grand debate I’m reluctant to wade into — body-weight training versus regular weight training. There is kind of a weird ascetic mystique that surrounds body-weight training, like it is somehow more virtuous because it, theoretically, happens in almost a vacuum. Everyone is particularly impressed with the actor who shows up on screen cut as fuck and attributes it all to his simple “anywhere, anytime” bodyweight routine. This debate is extremely fraught, but here we go anyway.

For one, let’s cut through the mystique a little: it’s easier to maintain muscle than it is to gain it in the first place. That doesn’t mean it will stick around forever for no reason, but it is somewhat harder to lose than it is to gain. It’s also relatively easy to build back up the muscle you once had, compared with building it completely anew, which is a wrinkle that no one ever talks about when it comes to admiring the “bodyweight routine” physiques of those celebs. If that celeb ever did a few cycles of real, heavy weight training with barbells and plates, that is the reason their muscles are popping after a few pushups and pullups, not because of the pushups themselves. Muscle memory is real. (Also they are probably shorting their carb intake to reduce fluid retention and almost certainly a little dehydrated.) Look at Jason Stackhouse up there; he was literally a semi-pro triathlete before True Blood.

This is not the ONLY mechanism at work, however I strongly suspect its significance is severely underplayed in almost every narrative of “how this celebrity got cut and jacked for the latest X-Men movie.” There’s also some mystique around the sheer functionality of bodyweight stuff, for instance, being able to do a pull-up or muscle-up or handstand. For the record, while practicing the actual thing is essential, regular weight training can absolutely give you the strength to do these things, and probably faster than trying to do this stuff alone.

The whole point of weight training is working against resistance, producing force against some kind of obstacle. In body weight training, your maximum resistance is, well, your own body, plus any force you can generate by dropping your body through the air (think jump squats vs regular air squats). This works pretty well for upper body muscles, because they are relatively small and your body is relatively heavy. But for any muscles that are large (pretty much anything in your legs and hips), it’s hard to do much for them. Your legs’ strength potential is huge and it’s a mistake to not spend time with them. The r/bodyweightfitness subreddit’s recommendation for training legs is “go to a gym,” if that tells you anything.

Ask A Swole Woman: Yes, You Have To Learn To Use Your Muscles

Another issue with bodyweight stuff is that it can be hard to create a nice steady incline of progress because, again, your body is a single (mostly) immutable thing. It’s like if you were trying to learn to pick up a 100lb sandbag. Do you think you could learn to do it if all you had was the 100lb sandbag? Probably not; you would just struggle and hurt yourself. What if you had a collection of sandbags in increments of 5lbs; do you think you could learn then? Probably yes. Regarding the handstand press vs. a regular barbell overhead press — would you rather press a barbell, or a length of wood with a person doing a handstand on it above you? Do you see what I mean?

You can break down some body-weight movements into easier and harder movements (a pushup with your knees resting on the floor vs a regular pushup vs an decline pushup), but there is not a lot of in-between. It’s like trying to learn to run faster on a treadmill that only goes at one walking speed and one insane sprinting speed. You can do it, but it involves a lot more playing around than any system that lets you go incrementally faster, or target certain paces. This applies also with weights — there is a smoother groove to, for instance, getting stronger legs with squatting because you can just add 2.5 pounds to the bar every session or week. How do you go from an air squat (very easy) to a pistol squat (very difficult)? Something like this I guess, but even in here, you’re doing all different kinds of movements with your weight distributed differently. With a barbell squat, you’re doing the exact same movement every time.

The Biggest Training Fallacy of All | Mark Rippetoe

Lastly, we need to distinguish between training and exercise. You can get exercise through any kind of moving around; “health” comes from “exercise.” “Training” is when you want to systematically improve the intensity or efficiency of your exercise, either for bigger muscles or more strength or more speed.

So to finally, actually answer your question: you probably won’t be able to maintain your same strength with bodyweight stuff, and maybe not your current lewk. Bodyweight training feels easy for certain reasons and feels effective because of the narratives that float around it, but I think both of these things are vastly oversold, especially to people who stridently wish to only work out at home, for a variety of reasons from laziness (I’m sorry, this doesn’t make sense) to insane schedules.

Ask A Swole Woman: All Exercise is Bad

However, bodyweight stuff obviously doesn’t do nothing. It is great exercise! It’s great for variety. Some people see great progress with it. It’s just harder to Train with it, because of everything I’ve said here, which makes it harder to appropriately challenge your muscles to their capacity without going too far, without it feeling either too hard to too awkward or too easy. On the plus side, you will maintain some strength and look with bodyweight training, and if you ever return to regular weights, your muscles will come back that much quicker. Re: your money and time point, if you can’t do it you really can’t, but I’d point out there are plenty of gyms that cost only $10–15 per month and 30 minutes is only 2 percent of your day, and that 30 minutes will make the other 23 hours and 30 minutes a lot better.

Got a question for A Swole Woman? Email swole@thehairpin.com. You can also follow her on Instagram or Facebook.

Ask A Swole Woman: The Myths Of Bodyweight Training was originally published in The Hairpin on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

38. Who’s my little sweetie?

37. Who’s my little tiny guy?

36. Who’s tryna eat a bee?

35. Who’s got his leg tangled up in his leash?*

34. Who’s always expecting a treat because I’m always giving him a treat because I need him to know that I love him and I’m not sure how to do it without the treats?

33. Who’s got a doggy body?*

32. Who’s scaring the guy on the walk who was scaring me before you scared him even though you’re little?

31. Who’s hungry for dinner?

30. Who’s my littlest love?

29. Who’s got a little dog toy in his little dog mouth?

28. Who’s a dog doll?

27. Who’s a dog doll who came to life?

26. Who’s gonna pee on the house rather than the curb when I look away for one second and get me in trouble with the neighbor who always seems to be watching me no matter what time of day?

25. Who did a good jump?**

24 .Who’s just so sweet that I can’t even stand it?

23 .Who’s asleep?

22. Oh my gosh who’s tryna eat a bug?

21. Who is a bug??

20. Who’s got giardia?

19. Who’s afraid of his giardia medicine?

18. Who’s afraid of cats but likes to pretend he just wanted to run away from them into the road because there was something there he wanted to smell?

17. Who’s afraid of his new collar that I spent $40 on which was a lapse in judgement on my part?

16. Who’s my little yawn guy?

15. Who’s so little that I can’t even see him?

14. Who’s a tiny living thing that I own (!)?

13. Who’s a puppy?

12. Who’s a doggy?

11. Who’s a little doggy boy?

10. Who’s got those ears?*

9. Who’s got those teeth?*

8. Who’s got a tiny nose?*

7. Who’s got big baby eyes?*

6. Who’s got a tail?*

5. Who’s got that face?*

4. Who’s got those little feets?*

3. Who’s got those little tap dance nails?*

2. Who’s the littlest guy in town?

1. Who’s a good boy?????????????????

*For these it’s “you do.”

**For this one it’s “you did.”

Dog Questions To Which The Answer Is “You Are,” Ranked was originally published in The Hairpin on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

In a recent Swole Woman, Casey suggested doing a few “sun salutations” every morning to care for your growing muscles. I don’t have growing muscles but I still do a few “sun salutations” every morning because generally when I wake up my body feels like cement and I can’t throw myself into the sea no matter how much I’d like to so I gotta do something. Do you do them? OK, well, let me ask you this, then: Have you ever done a “moon salutation”? I go to yoga classes let’s say uh sometimes and I never heard of one, but they do exist. You’re lucky to have me as a writer online, look at how much you’ve learned already this morning and let’s not even get into how entertaining it’s been. Here is one:

“Moon Salutations are a beautiful, soothing and grounding sequence of yoga postures,” says this YouTube. But let me ask you this: Should it not be a moon valediction? Sun salutation, moon valediction? Just something to think about. Not trying to mess with yoga; I know it’s ancient.

Anyway. This song reminds me viscerally at once of every single era of my life since I was 13, not that I’m ever inclined to write about myself on this blog due to a deficiency in curiosity about anything external especially because I hate it when other people do that and complain about it loudly to anyone who will listen:

Have You Done A Moon Salutation? was originally published in The Hairpin on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

What are you doing tonight to celebrate the final days of summer? After work? It’s easy to just be in bed and think about digging your grave and worry about things and then also think about how you have to pay rent already even though it seems like you just paid it, but maybe you should do something else, too. I don’t know what. Fall in love? That would be very nice for you, if you could fall in love tonight. Have a slice of pizza outside? I have to admit I didn’t know where this was going when I started and I haven’t yet figured it out and I don’t have any suggestions for what you should do tonight partly because I don’t know you and I don’t know what you like, but I do think you should listen to this song, first of all:

When you google “what to do on a summer night” this is the snippet:

Obviously these options range from bad (“catch fireflies”) to insane (“set up a lemonade stand in your neighborhood”), but maybe you’d like to make potpourri from seasonal flowers tonight. Hm? Fireflies are disgusting, if you ask me. I like how they light up but otherwise they’re just scary gross bugs. Let me see what else online says. This Ryan O’Connell Thought Catalog piece suggests seeing The Dark Knight Rises “because it is seriously the only movie event of the summer that matters!” So. Maybe you can do that. Also it says this:

14. Tell your crush that you like them because they’re more likely to like you back in the summer than in the fall. There’s like scientific proof.

Maybe you are Curtis Granderson and your crush is me? If so you can email me. And this is very wise:

16. Go home to visit your parents for Labor Day. Or not. If you hate your parents, save your money and don’t do it.

Not sure if that helps for tonight, but. What else. This list on EXPERT HOME TIPS says build a pool from bales of hay and then another option is “Create your own Facebook page” which is placed under the subhead “A little bit random but oh so fun..”

There’s this eHow page “Things to Do on a Boring Summer Night.” It’s just like…look at stuff with binoculars, have a picnic, take a walk in the park, read “a good book indoors.” Also it says to make s’mores, and then it says, “Line two graham crackers with pieces of a flat chocolate candy bar and then wedge your toasted marshmallow inside. Eat the treat like a sandwich.” Imagine you didn’t know what a s’more was ‘til you read that.

You can also get oysters? I love to get oysters. Maybe you can get them somewhere for a dollar.

I’m going to look one more time to see if I can find something good online. This website is called KC Edventures which I like because my initials are KC (Kelly Conaboy). It’s mostly the same shit as the rest of them but this one does suggest going to a drive-in which I would like to do if I lived somewhere near a drive-in. Oh also it says “Enjoy late admission at a Local Attraction” which reminds me: did you know the Empire State Building stays open until 2 a.m.? I was up there then once and it was all drunk people. (I was not drunk.) That could be fun. It was cold when I went!

Hmm, what else. I don’t know.

The End

Maybe Do Something Nice Tonight was originally published in The Hairpin on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

• cancer of any variety
• the flu
• a flu
• ebola
• crippling and debilitating exhaustion
• a case of the ‘natural female face’-s
• eyelash balding
• a loss of the will to live
• poison ivy
• poison oak
• poison acne
• anemia
• paranoia from a ghost sighting
• pink eye
• vintage polio
• very understandable depression
• very understandable self-loathing
• an STD from a dirty subway seat or a blood infusion but DEFINITELY NOT sexual intercourse
• early-onset death

Diseases My Male Coworkers Diagnosed Me With On The One Day I Didn’t Wear Make Up was originally published in The Hairpin on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

That’s being dramatic, but I know you’re thinking the same thing. A significant portion of Facebook is now filled with random acquaintances, suddenly turned entrepreneurs, who want to offer an amazing opportunity to join their ‘biz’ and make some mad cash. But come on, do they really think I’m gonna buy a skin peel from them? I would quite literally rather peel my actual skin off.

Sometimes they’re called pyramid schemes, sometimes they’re called multi-level marketing plans, sometimes they’re called “amazing opportunities”. But they’re all bullshit.

Let’s break it down for a second because these things make me shake with so much rage, I can barely click the “hide from timeline” button to remove it from my feed. Probably the biggest push with multi-level marketing schemes is recruiting others to join your team, because you ultimately make money off other salesmen. Makes sense, right? No it doesn’t.

Say, for instance, you recruit five people to your business, and each of those people pay you $100 — you and the recruiters before you get a cut of that profit. Then you encourage each of those five people to recruit another five, and so on and so forth.

In case you forgot, in a normal business, you just make money off the product you sell and not off other distributors. And since I explained this rather poorly, I suggest you watch this John Oliver episode if you have time. Oliver better explains the hook, line, and sinker of multi-level marketing plans — in an English accent! Charming!!

Now that you’ve had a refresher course in Bad Business 101, you’re probably thinking, “Ha! Funny. Thank God people IRL don’t get involved in those.”

WRONG.

I suppose this trap could be easy to fall in if you’re a big fan of the idea of making a lot of money with very little effort. That’s where it all starts, by the way: with a pinch of false hope that you can make six figures selling protein shakes. And if you think this works, then you clearly put no thought into it beyond “I can make six figures by selling protein shakes”.

But it’s not all just novel-length Facebook posts and shitty graphic design. These companies feed on the false projection of empowerment and success. Their propaganda can easily be tailored to quench whatever your thirst may be.

You want to be a powerful #bossbitch? So do we.

You want to work from home? So do we.

You want this to be your side job? So do we.

You want this to be your full time job? So do we.

You want the opportunity to maybe drive a Cadillac in five years? So do we!

Herbalife, Mary Kay, Rodan + Fields, Amway; a pyramid scheme can take on different disguises but it’s all the same shit. The promise of hitting milestones and level-upping while receiving new fake titles is also a big appeal, apparently. Some of these incentives come in the form of a bonus, free product, or even a car.

It’s important to note that technically not everyone in a pyramid scheme gets screwed. And it’s true! The problem is, only the people at the top come out profitable. The farther down on the pyramid you are, the less chance you have of making money. And by less chance, I mean wayyyyy less chance…

It’s believed that about 90% of people who get involved in a pyramid scheme lose their money. This is due to the fact that the recruitment cycle can’t go on forever. Clearly the pool of people who would want to sell bad makeup or gross health shakes is relatively limited; even if these companies are successful in recruiting everyone I’m friends with on Facebook (they’re getting close) it’ll end eventually. Thus, the model collapses.

With most multi-level marketing businesses, you have to buy all of the product yourself in order to sell it. The problem here is that depending on what you sell, the product can expire before you even have the chance to sell it (i.e. Herbalife shakes). Another issue is that the seller becomes so engrossed with wanting to move up the ladder (Level V Executive Consultant, anyone?!) they end up buying more product than they can sell. The more product you purchase, the ‘higher’ you can move up as a consultant — but that doesn’t always mean you’ll actually sell all of that inventory. Hence, you lose your own money.

In the end, you’re left with a basement full of eyeshadow, a lot of time spent Facebook, and not a whole lot of dignity.

So the next time you get a lengthy private message from your ex’s sister’s roommate’s cousin about buying some great product and joining her [insert company here] team for the opportunity of a lifetime, proceed with caution. Don’t give in. Don’t even buy one item out of pity, because as we learned, our Facebook friends don’t win in these scenarios.

Maybe politely say, “No thanks, Jennifer (I’m assuming). Your company is bullshit and let me explain why.”

Good luck. And now I will leave you with this inspirational quote:

It’s Hip to Be Pyramid was originally published in The Hairpin on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Things change, sometimes because they need to and sometimes even when they don’t. There is no use in trying to assign reason to the blowing of the wind. It is life; it moves crushingly and ceaselessly forward; it is eligible for free agency after the World Series. And, you know, this season has turned into a bit of a “rebuilding” one (season) for just about all of us. C’est la vie.

Lucas Duda is a Tampa Bay Ray now.

I’m a Mets fan, but I’m not a Mets fan who knows too much in particular about the Mets or, more generally, baseball. In fact, that Lucas Duda was a Mets first baseman was one of the main things I knew about the Mets. Now the things I know about the Mets are: Curtis Grandson is very kind, Noah Syndergaard is 24 years old, and Yoenis Cespedes had a custom walk-up song by Fina that went “Cespedes.” And that I will love the Mets undyingly forever. But this isn’t about me.

As you know, Lucas Duda was the involuntary co-star of wefollowlucasduda, Instagram’s best account. It is — perhaps more accurately, was — maintained by Curtis Granderson who is my Met crush, in case he is reading this. I wrote about it once. (A good tip is to never reread anything you’ve written.) There have been few updates in recent months, and it is now clear that we should have taken the lack of updates as a positive i.e. “no news (du’s) is good news (du’s).” Yesterday we got two.

The final two.

No.

“He’s got a long red-eye flight tonight,” Tampa Bay Rays manager Kevin Cash said unfeelingly, of Duda. “He’ll get in here, and the plan is to DH him tomorrow.” I do not know what DH means. But I do know that the idea of trading is too harsh. Perhaps trading in sports should be outlawed. But that is a topic for another day.

Today, let’s remember to cherish our friends and our loved ones and our favorite Instagram accounts and our Mets. Who knows who could be a “Tampa Bay Ray”* next.

*A euphemism both for dying and for being traded from the Mets.

We Used To Follow Lucas Duda was originally published in The Hairpin on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.