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The Real Threat of Religious Law in America (Hint: It’s Not Who You’ve Been Told to Fear)

By Tony Hicks
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I’ve noticed something strange about fear in America. It doesn’t behave like a rational emotion. It doesn’t track evidence. It doesn’t follow probability. It follows narrative. It follows repetition. It follows whoever is loudest, most confident, and most willing to say, “Be afraid of them.” And for years now, one of the most persistent fears floating around our national psyche has been this idea that America is on the brink of being overtaken by some kind of foreign religious legal system. You’ve heard it before. It gets whispered in comment sections, shouted on talk shows, and baked into campaign rhetoric like it’s a proven inevitability instead of what it actually is: a cultural ghost story. The story usually goes something like this: There’s a creeping threat, quietly advancing, waiting to replace American law with something alien, oppressive, and incompatible with “our values.” It’s framed as an invasion, a takeover, a ticking clock. And the villains in this story are almost alw...
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The “She Said It Was Love” Defense: When Authority, Delusion, and Power Collide

By Tony Hicks
There’s a certain script society expects when a teacher is charged with having a sexual relationship with a student. It usually comes with outrage, headlines, and a collective moral reflex that says: this is wrong, full stop. But then something strange happens. The details come out. The teacher is young. The student is male. And suddenly, parts of the internet—those deeply unserious corners of human consciousness—start asking questions like: “But what if he wanted it?” “But what if it was love?” “But where were teachers like this when I was in school?” And just like that, the conversation derails into a carnival of bad takes, moral confusion, and deeply broken cultural wiring. So let’s slow this down and talk about what’s actually happening here—not just in the courtroom, but in the collective psyche. Chapter 1: The Fantasy vs. Reality Gap There’s a massive disconnect between how people imagine these situations and what they actually are. In the fantasy version: The...
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At 25, She Owned 5 Rental Properties… and Still Managed to Learn the Hard Way That “Winning” Can Be Expensive

By Tony Hicks
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There’s a certain kind of headline that makes the internet collectively inhale through its teeth. “At 25, she owned five rental properties.” Pause. That’s the kind of sentence designed to make half the population feel like they’ve wasted their lives, and the other half open Zillow with a newfound sense of urgency and a dangerously inflated sense of competence. But then comes the twist—the part that doesn’t trend as well on social media: “…but says investing in real estate was her No. 1 money mistake.” Ah. There it is. The emotional plot twist. The financial equivalent of a rom-com where the dream guy turns out to be emotionally unavailable and deeply into crypto. And suddenly, what looked like a victory lap becomes a cautionary tale. Let’s talk about that. The Cult of Early Success We’ve created a culture that worships early financial wins like they’re divine intervention. Buy property at 23? Genius. Own multiple rentals before 30? Visionary. Use the word “portfolio” unir...
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Filibusters, Shortcuts, and the Art of Legislative Laziness: Why Even Republicans Are Side-Eyeing the SAVE America Act Strategy

By Tony Hicks
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There are few things in Washington more sacred than the illusion of principle. Not principle itself—let’s not get carried away—but the illusion of it. The Senate filibuster, that ancient relic of procedural theater, has long been treated as one of those sacred cows. Not because it always produces good outcomes (it doesn’t), but because it forces lawmakers to at least pretend they’ve thought things through. So when a GOP senator publicly calls the idea of gutting the filibuster to pass the SAVE America Act a “foolish and lazy idea,” it’s not just intra-party squabbling. It’s a rare moment where someone in the room says, “Hey, maybe bulldozing the rules every time we’re impatient isn’t the flex we think it is.” And in a city powered by impatience, that’s practically heresy. The Filibuster: Dysfunctional, Yes—But Also a Speed Bump Let’s start with the obvious: the filibuster is messy, outdated, and often abused. It has been used to stall everything from civil rights to routine appoi...
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I Bought Plants So I Could Feel Something: A Beginner’s Guide to Low-Maintenance Flowers That Won’t Immediately Judge You

By Tony Hicks
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There comes a point in every adult’s life when you stand in your kitchen, staring at a wilting bunch of grocery store flowers, and think: I could do this myself. Not because you have any actual gardening skills, but because you have optimism. Dangerous, delusional optimism. That’s how it starts. You don’t wake up one day knowing how to garden. No, you wake up one day convinced that buying soil in a bag is a personality trait. You scroll past a few “Plant Mom” TikToks, see someone misting a fern like it’s royalty, and suddenly you’re in your car Googling “how hard can plants be.” Let me save you some time: plants are harder than they look—but some are surprisingly forgiving , like that one friend who keeps inviting you out even though you cancel every time. If you’re a beginner—meaning you’ve either killed a plant before or are about to—these five flowering plants are your best shot at redemption. They’re low-maintenance, resilient, and most importantly, they won’t dramatically collaps...
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“Arms and Legs Are Very Expressive, Especially With Bruises”: The Absurdist Photography of Yorgos Lanthimos

By Tony Hicks
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There are photographers who want to make you feel something. There are photographers who want to make you think something. And then there’s Yorgos Lanthimos , who seems determined to make you feel like you’ve just walked into a room where everyone agreed on a joke you weren’t told—and now you’re expected to laugh, nod, and possibly remove your shoes. This is not photography that comforts. This is not photography that explains. This is photography that quietly rearranges your sense of what a body is allowed to do in a frame—and then leaves you there with it, like an uninvited houseguest that refuses to make eye contact. The line—“arms and legs are very expressive, especially with bruises”—isn’t just a description. It’s a thesis. A mission statement. A warning label. Because in Lanthimos’s world, limbs aren’t passive. They’re conspirators. They bend, contort, collapse, hover, and occasionally look like they’ve just been emotionally betrayed by gravity itself. And the bruises? Those ar...
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