Tricky Sol

When Zohran Mamdani responded to Cuomo's attacks with 'What I don't have in experience I make up for in integrity,' I knew I'd witnessed something rare—a politician who actually answers questions, has a strategic plan grounded in precedent, and understands that well done is better than well said. NYC's first Muslim and Asian-American mayor isn't just making promises; he's offering lifelines in a landscape of economic anxiety

Every time someone strums a banjo in Nashville or a rock guitar screams through stadium speakers, you're hearing the echo of the greatest heist in cultural history. From the banjo's African origins to rock and roll's Black pioneers, American music was built by Black hands—but the wealth it generated was systematically diverted elsewhere. Recognition without reparation is just another form of exploitation.

We've turned dinosaurs into content machines—CGI spectacles, video game bosses, breakfast cereal mascots. But a former assassin standing in a museum understood what we've forgotten: a dinosaur's mystique comes from not moving. In our rush to resurrect them through technology, we're murdering the very thing that made them magical: their profound, mysterious stillness.

Before there were words, there was rhythm. Before cave paintings, there were bone flutes. Music didn't happen to us—music made us. That unconscious head nod when the bass drops isn't a casual response; it's evidence of the invisible river flowing through you, connecting you to humanity's oldest technology for creating meaning, building community, and conjuring the spirit that makes us most fully human.

We're taught to think in straight lines—progress, growth, liberation—as if you level up and never look back. But that's not how anything actually works. Everything that matters oscillates: sacred and profane, creation and destruction, the versions of yourself you're becoming and leaving behind.

Between 1740 and 1834, it was illegal to teach Black people to read—slave masters knew books were weapons of mass liberation. Now we have unlimited access to more knowledge than any generation in history, and we're choosing TikTok instead. Your ancestors died for the right to read; the least you can do is honor that sacrifice by picking up a muthafuckin' book.

Every utopian vision hides an uncomfortable truth: to build the better world, we must destroy aspects of the current one. The question isn't whether destruction will accompany creation—it's whether we'll be conscious participants in shaping what emerges from the necessary endings

Pride isn't just a celebration—it's a revolution birthed by Black and Brown trans women who threw the first bricks and paid the highest price for demanding the right to exist. What they created wasn't just safety for queer people; they cracked open society's rigid ideas about gender and self-expression, giving everyone more freedom to be human

Seven blogs. Seven invitations to remember what we've been taught to forget: that our bodies hold wisdom, that sovereignty means conscious connection not isolation, and that the sacred lives in every corner of our lives—from the dance floor to the dinner table. This isn't philosophy to study; it's a framework to embody, weaving together the fragments of ourselves that the world demands we keep separate.

'You know that's spiritual, right?' I told my roommates as we watched women dancing at a Caribbean carnival. They laughed, but I was serious. The twerking they saw as purely sexual connects to West African sacred practices—embodied wisdom about healing trauma and honoring the divine that the Western world has deliberately forgotten.

There are people who will bait you into playing their games, using your vulnerabilities against you. But here's what they don't want you to know: you're always in control of whether you engage. This is how I reclaimed my emotional sovereignty—and how you can too.

While renewing my passport, I confronted an uncomfortable truth: this little booklet represents both extraordinary privilege and a deeply unjust system. I need it to move through the world, yet every border it crosses reminds me that these lines weren't drawn by mutual agreement—they were imposed through colonial violence and maintained through power.