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Remember 2020? Before the sky turned that interesting shade of "Ominous Neon," we had a dress rehearsal. And if that era taught us anything, it’s that when humanity faces the abyss, our first instinct isn't to pray, build a bunker, or seek higher ground.
No. Our first instinct is to make sure we have enough toilet paper to wrap the Great Wall of China three times over. The Great 2-Ply Crusade If historians (or the sentient cockroaches replacing us) ever dig up our remains, they’re going to be very confused by the shrines we built to ultra-soft quilted fiber. While the world teetered on the edge, we decided the ultimate currency wasn't gold, or even clean water—it was the ability to hoard 48-packs of Charmin like they were Ming vases. The "Essentials" Hall of Fame:
So here we are. The fire is burning (as discussed in Part 1), the Road Warriors are practicing their manners (Part 2), and you’re sitting atop your throne of stockpiled canned beans and 14 cases of sparkling water. The Final Irony: We spent years prepping for a disaster by buying things we didn't need, only to realize that when the end actually arrives, the most "essential" thing you own is a sense of humor—and maybe that one bottle of top-shelf tequila you were saving for a "special occasion." Newsflash: This is the occasion. --- A Toast to the End As we wrap up this series, let’s take a look at our hoard. If you’re still sitting on a mountain of 2020-era hand sanitizer, use it to start the bonfire. If you’ve got 400 rolls of toilet paper, hand them out as party favors. The world is ending, but at least we’re clean, we’re fed, and we’ve got enough sourdough to feed a small army of mutants. Thank you for joining me for this week of existential comedy. Keep laughing, keep sharing your jokes, and remember: if you see a mushroom cloud, don't forget to check if you've muted your mic on Zoom first. Stay safe, stay sarcastic, and we’ll see you on the other side (or at least in the comments section).
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Welcome back to the wasteland, everyone. Now that we’ve collectively agreed to let the world burn (and acknowledged that the lighting is fantastic), it’s time to talk about the logistics of the "After." Just because the social contract has been shredded and used as kindling doesn’t mean we have to be rude.
If we’re going to be barreling down a salt flat in a vehicle made entirely of scrap metal and spite, we might as well do it with a little class. Here is the definitive Road Warrior’s Guide to Etiquette. 1. Dress for the Job You Want (Even if it’s "Warlord") In the old world, "business casual" was the bane of our existence. In the new world, your outfit should scream, "I found this in a dumpster, but I make it look menacing."
Currency is dead. Long live the half-empty bottle of lukewarm soda and the single AA battery.
In a world without traffic lights, the right-of-way goes to whoever has the largest flamethrower. However, there’s no need to be a jerk about it.
Your Turn: What Are Your Rules? The wasteland is a big place, and I’m sure you’ve encountered some serious social faux pas out there near the radioactive craters.
Welcome to the Front Row of the Fireworks
If you’ve looked at a news notification lately and felt the sudden urge to buy a violin just so you can play it while everything dissolves into chaos, you’re in the right place. Welcome to day one of our new series: Jokes for the End of the World. Our first theme? Laugh While It Burns. There’s a specific kind of freedom that comes with total uncertainty. It’s the "This is Fine" dog energy, but with better prose. When the metaphorical (or literal) world is on fire, you have two choices: panic or realize that the flames provide excellent lighting for a selfie. Think about the perks of a burning world:
To get your creative juices flowing, here are a few thoughts to chew on: The Silver Lining: The good news is that if the world ends tomorrow, you don't have to finish that spreadsheet your boss asked for. The bad news? Your boss is probably an immortal cockroach who will still expect it by EOD Monday. Customer Service: Imagine calling the Apocalypse Hotline. “Your call is important to us. Please stay on the line. You are currently number 8 billion in the queue. For Fire, press 1. For Ice, press 2. For 'I’d like to speak to a manager about the gravity situation,' please hold.” Now, It’s Your Turn We’re crowd-sourcing our survival through satire. I want to hear your best (or worst) jokes about Laughing While It Burns. Give us your one-liners, your "walks into a bar" scenarios at the edge of the abyss, and your most absurd coping mechanisms. Post your jokes in the comments or send them in—let’s turn this dumpster fire into a bonfire. See you after tomorrow for Part 2, where we tackle: "The Road Warrior’s Guide to Etiquette." It feels like an island, even though the maps insist otherwise. Not the kind drawn with clean blue borders and neat coordinates, but the kind you arrive at without quite remembering how you got there. A place where things end up rather than begin. Where people drift in, carrying fragments—languages half-kept, past lives folded into the lining of their coats—and then stay, not because they’ve found something, but because the current has quieted just enough that they can’t return.
In my corner of this place, the air is thick with suspension. Conversations hang unfinished. Plans dissolve into long afternoons. Time does not move forward so much as it pools. You can feel it in the way people linger over coffee long after it’s gone cold, in the way the sun stretches itself thin across the buildings as if reluctant to leave, as if it too has nowhere urgent to be. Everyone seems to be in transit, but no one is moving. They’ve come here for reasons that no longer quite hold true. Escape, maybe. Or the promise of becoming someone else, softer at the edges, less burdened by whatever they carried before. But the sea does something strange—it doesn’t wash things away so much as it rearranges them. Deposits them differently. You arrive thinking you’ve shed something, only to find it again, lodged in a quieter corner of yourself. There’s a sort of gentleness to the drifting. No one asks too many questions. You can be vague here. You can say “I ended up here” and it is enough. Stories remain partial, identities fluid. People introduce themselves through what they are no longer, or what they might become, someday, eventually, when something shifts. But nothing shifts. Or maybe everything does, just imperceptibly. Like the tide, always pulling, always returning, reshaping the shore grain by grain. You start to forget the urgency you once had. The need to arrive, to define, to declare. It all softens into a kind of ongoing pause. And in that pause, something both beautiful and unsettling takes root. Because drifting can feel like freedom, at first. The absence of anchors, of expectations. But after a while, you begin to notice the quiet weight of it. The way directionlessness hums beneath everything. The way people circle the same conversations, the same desires, never quite landing anywhere. It’s an island of almosts. Almost starting over. Almost becoming. Almost leaving. And yet, there is a strange intimacy in it too. A recognition, unspoken, between those who have washed ashore. You see it in fleeting glances, in the way strangers open up too quickly, as if sensing that everyone here is, in some way, untethered. There is a shared understanding: we are all a little lost, and for now, that is enough. At night, the feeling deepens. The streets quiet, the air cools, and the sense of being suspended becomes almost tangible. You can walk for hours and feel as though you are moving through a dream that belongs to no one in particular. Lights flicker in windows, lives unfolding behind them, each one its own small orbit of longing, of waiting. And the sea is always there, just beyond, breathing. It doesn’t call you, exactly. It doesn’t promise anything. It simply exists as a reminder—that everything here arrived by way of movement, even if it has forgotten how to move. Sometimes I wonder if this is what it means to be in between. Not lost in the dramatic sense, not broken or searching desperately, but simply… unmoored. Existing in the space after departure and before arrival, without certainty that arrival will ever come. An island, yes. But not one you escape from. One you slowly dissolve into.  Beauty…it’s a fascinating evolution! We’ve essentially gone from finding the "Divine Proportion" in marble and canvas to trying to squeeze it into pixels and glass. The relationship between our digital habits and the Golden Ratio, often represented by the Greek letter f (phi), is a mix of traditional aesthetics and modern practicality.
What is the Golden Ratio? To understand how our perception has changed, we have to look at the basics. The Golden Ratio is an irrational number: Historically, humans perceived this ratio as the pinnacle of balance and beauty as it appears so frequently in nature (shell spirals, flower petals) and, subsequently, in classical architecture. When we talk about a "natural" view, we are referring to the fact that The Golden Ratio isn't a human invention, it’s an observation of how the physical world grows and organizes itself. This is why our brain finds its "natural" aesthetic more satisfying and one of the reasons why we often have issues with digital design. The "Biophilia" Connection So, we see that humans have an innate tendency to seek connections with nature. This concept is known as biophilia. The Golden ratio often manifests through the Fibonacci sequence—a numerical pattern in which each number is the sum of the two preceding ones—appears repeatedly in natural forms, from the spirals of shells and galaxies to the arrangement of leaves and seeds in plants. This recurrence helps explain its connection to Biophilia, the innate human tendency to seek connection with the natural world. Because many living systems grow according to efficient, self-organizing principles reflected in Fibonacci patterns, these forms often feel harmonious and aesthetically pleasing to us. Biophilic design draws on this instinct by incorporating such patterns into architecture and art, subtly evoking the logic of nature. In this way, the Fibonacci sequence is not just a mathematical curiosity but a bridge between biological growth and human perception, reinforcing our deep psychological resonance with natural order. The "Natural" Field of Vision Believe it or not, there is a biological reason why we might feel a conflict between "natural" views and "screen" views. Our binocular field of vision (what we see with both eyes) is roughly oval in shape, and significantly wider than it is tall. The human eye has a horizontal bias, which is why we prefer wide, cinematic views. And, again, we have the Golden Ratio which is wide enough to feel panoramic, but tall enough to feel grounded. The Digital view In the digital age, our primary "window" to the world has changed shape. Digital media is built on a Cartesian Grid, straight lines, 90˚angles, and rigid pixels. This is fundamentally "unnatural." Our phone screen or computer monitor is a hard rectangle forcing content to fit into a box. While the Golden Ratio suggests a rectangle of roughly 1.618:1, digital media has standardized different dimensions. Most modern monitors and TVs use a 1.77:1 ratio. The rise of smartphones has created a vertical shift where we now view much of our world in 9:16. This verticality is a complete departure from classical proportions, yet our brains have adapted to find these "tall" compositions natural. How Digital Design Has Kept The Golden Ratio Alive Even though the screen has changed, the content inside often still clings to f (phi). Digital designers use the Golden Ratio to create "visual hierarchy”, so our eyes don't get overwhelmed by information. Examples include:
Has Our Perception Changed? There is now a growing debate among psychologists about whether "Digital Native" generations perceive beauty differently.
Why Modern Media Feels "Off" However, if you are perhaps not a Digital Native or simply prefer a natural view, modern social media (like TikTok or Instagram Reels) might feel claustrophobic to you.
In the end, the Golden Ratio was never just about numbers, it was about alignment between our human perception and the natural world. What has changed is not our sense of beauty, but the frame through which we are forced to experience it. Screens did not erase phi; they constrained it. They reshaped our visual habits, training us to accept efficiency over harmony, speed over balance. And yet, beneath the rigid grids and vertical scrolls, the same ancient logic quietly persists, guiding layouts, structuring information, and subtly influencing what we find pleasing. Perhaps the real question is not whether beauty has changed, but whether our environment has drifted away from it. But, when we step outside the screen—into landscapes, into art, into anything that grows rather than loads—we recognize something instantly familiar. A sense of rightness. A rhythm. A proportion that doesn’t need to be learned. The Golden Ratio still lives there. |
