I’ve spent enough time in countries where I don’t speak the language to know that Google Translate is a liar. It will give you words. It will not give you meaning. A direct translation might be technically correct, but it almost never lands the way you want it to. Meaning lives in context, in tone, […]
I have lived in Thailand, Germany, and China. Nine years across three countries, where I arrived speaking almost none of the language each time. You learn quickly that communication is not about knowing the right words. It is about reading the room. In Thailand, I learned to simplify. The Thai language relies heavily on context […]
I have a tattoo on my hand. It is a small asterisk, the kind you might see at the bottom of a page pointing to a footnote. Most people do not notice it. The ones who do usually ask if it is a star. I tell them it is a reminder. Kurt Vonnegut started his […]
I first picked up Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita because of my 100 Greatest Novels project. I knew its reputation: beautiful prose, impossible subject matter. I assumed the experience would be academic. I would admire the sentences from a safe distance and return it to the shelf. Instead, it broke something in me. Not because I sympathized with Humbert […]
Tyson Peveto 