The past is a nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there



Recently, my wife and I spent a night in Milwaukee. I was there for work, and she came along just for the fun of it. We left the kids with our parents and had 30 peaceful hours all to ourselves.

When you are in the thick of raising young kids, getting away for just one night feels like a hard reset or some kind of meditative retreat that leaves you clear in both mind and spirit. It was a good trip, it was a fun trip, it was a reflective trip.

We sat outside on the roof at Benelux in the Third Ward imagining life if we never left. If we never had kids. If we never changed. If we just ... stayed.

We lived in Milwaukee for a few years before we had kids. We rented a big loft with concrete floors and high ceilings. It was just one big, barren, concrete room. The only walls were the ones separating the bathroom from the rest of the place. It was up on the eighth floor; we had a great view of downtown.

We used old shipping pallets to divide the room. We didn’t have any money back then. We still don’t, but we have more than we did. When we moved to Milwaukee, we didn’t have jobs. I convinced the landlord to rent us the apartment without proof of income or proof of employment. I don’t know if it was possible because things were just really different before, because she was just really nice, or because I was just really convincing. It was probably a mix of all three.

Cart blanche

A few weeks after we moved, we found a shopping cart abandoned by a bus stop. We took it home and used it every week at the grocery store. We would push it to store empty, buy our groceries, and then push it, now completely full, back to the apartment again, stowing it next to the front door until next week’s trip. It was efficient and worked well, and I am sure we looked absolutely absurd.

We had a great time there. Those few years in the concrete loft before we had kids gave us a lot of great memories and a great start to our lives together. But going back and visiting was odd. We hadn’t been back since we left years ago, and finding ourselves in the same places completely unchanged as people who have very much changed felt somehow wrong.

Don't look back

It felt like some strange corruption of memories or maybe like we were somewhere we weren’t supposed to be. Almost like someone might come up to us and ask, “What are you doing here?” It felt like we were taking a detour down some road that’s been blocked off and just looking around for a bit before getting back on the highway again. It was strange and surreal.

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Maybe it’s because life only goes one way. We can’t go back in time. We can’t change the past. We can’t revisit who we were. Maybe in some way, going back to where we lived before feels like attempting to do something we cannot do. It’s like building a replica of some old world city here in the new one. It’s just not right. It’s not as it should be. We can’t go back, and why would we want to anyway?

The path not taken

Well, I don’t want to go back and live life as it was. Walking around there, just us two, talking about how we were then and how we are now, all we could really say was that while we loved being there when we were there and that those memories are ones we treasure still, we are glad we are no longer there. I don’t just mean physically there, either. I mean mentally, spiritually, and situationally there. We very much like where we are now and wouldn’t change it for anything.

We sat outside on the roof at Benelux in the Third Ward imagining life if we never left. If we never had kids. If we never changed. If we just ... stayed. We could have very easily done all that. That kind of life could have happened to us if we let it. The years would have passed at the same rate, we would be the same age, but we wouldn’t be the same. And we both sat there together, slightly nostalgic for who we were — and grateful for who we are today.

Part of the plan

I think that’s how we are supposed to feel. All of it. We’re supposed to love those memories of youth, but we’re also supposed to cringe a little bit at our past feelings or opinions. We’re supposed to not quite respect our past selves. We’re supposed to laugh at how naive we were. It means we’ve grown and that’s a good thing. And we’re supposed to feel kind of weird going back to where we once lived. We’re supposed to feel a little out of step there in that foreign world of the past. We are no longer who we were, that’s the truth, and that’s OK.

The next morning, we left on the ferry to take us back. Watching Milwaukee disappear into the distance as we headed east across Lake Michigan, we were glad we had a day away, thankful for the lives we lived years ago, and happy we were going home to who we are today

The first disembodied generation



Our lives revolve around technology these days, whether we like it or not. Even if we don’t work in a tech-y field or care much at all about the latest technological developments coming out of Silicon Valley, our lives are shaped by digital advancement.

Take the way we communicate. It’s so different from when I was a kid. Video calling? That was something futuristic. Unheard of. Now my kids talk to their grandparents on FaceTime every day.

If the internet was a one-way street, the Zoomers wouldn’t be much different from us. If it was basically super-TV, their emotional calibration would be recognizable.

Email. I didn’t have one until a couple of years into high school. I remember when we had dial-up. No, I remember when we got dial-up! My parents had one email address, and they checked it every week or so.

Of course, we can’t forget texting. We carry on conversations with 10 different people all over the country. Or maybe all over the world! We also have social media. What is that? Imagine telling yourself about X and Instagram in 1992. What a world this is.

Zooming ahead

The profound impacts of technology are so great, and we are constantly in the midst of it. I’m not sure there’s enough time to stop and really realize how it’s changed both our world and us. It’s changed us all, not exactly for the better. But I think it’s changed some more than others, and I think it’s changed Generation Z (the Zoomers) the most.

It’s hard to get my head around the Zoomers. I know them, I see them, I hear them, but I can’t quite understand them. There's something profoundly different about them, beyond the usual generational gaps: the music, the language, the clothing, the general aesthetic sensibilities. It’s something deeper in the way they think and, most importantly, feel.

All generations have a spirit that isn’t so easily understood from the outside. It’s the logic of the time in which they were brought up, the essence of the world at that moment in history. Sometimes it’s easy to pinpoint direct connections between economic realities, global conflicts, collective anxieties, broad societal changes, and how a generation is, for lack of a better word.

The Zoomers have that too, of course. It explains some of who they are, but not all. At a deeper level, the real difference between the Zoomers and the rest of us is technology — and how they and their feelings were shaped by technology.

Emotional calibration

The emotional calibration of the Zoomers is different from ours. All of us — Boomers, Millennials, Gen X’ers, and any of the Greatest Generation that are still alive — were emotionally calibrated offline. Even if we have since embraced the technological world with open arms, even if we are just as plugged in as the Zoomers are today, the way we emotionally relate to others and the world as a whole was shaped offline.

If the internet was a one-way street, the Zoomers wouldn’t be much different from us. If it was basically super-TV, their emotional calibration would be recognizable. They might have 50,000 channels to watch instead of 35; they might have digital access to every book in the world rather than going down to the library just to brow a few thousand old titles; but our difference would be merely a matter of degree.

8 billion ways to cry

But the internet is not super-TV. It isn’t a one-way street. It’s not even a two-way street; it’s an 8-billion-way street. It’s another world, and it’s the world they grew up in. The real thing that altered the emotional calibration of the Zoomers was extremely early exposure to social media, comment sections, algorithms, and pervasive anonymous interaction.

It’s profound, fascinating, and sad. I don’t think I can begin to accurately explore what all the implications are. I don’t think I can actually explain it, really. I don’t think any of us can. Only Zoomers can do it, but they would also need to be self-aware of all these facts, historically literate, emotionally robust, psychologically fearless, and with a real, strong sense of the worlds before them and what they actually were. That’s a tall order for any generation.

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Different cement

I don’t know how to explain all the ways the Zoomer’s emotional calibration is different. But I can feel it, and you can too. And I know the reason. It’s the technology. The social aspect of the internet shaped a different of kind of emotional base for them.

Can it be reversed? I don’t think so. I think they will forever be different from us. Even when they get older and enter more mature seasons of life, they will remain different. The foundation was poured with different cement.

This is why they are, somewhere deep down, something of an enigma to the rest of us. We were raised in an embodied world. The Zoomers were raised in a disembodied one.

I went to a restaurant run by feminists, and it was terrible



I went to a restaurant run by feminists, and it was terrible.

You probably have a lot of questions. I would too if I were the one reading that sentence rather than the one writing it.

These people — the people most obsessed with 'acceptance' as a political virtue — are generally miserable to be around.

How exactly do I know it was run by rabid feminists? Why exactly was it terrible because it was run by such feminists? I will explain.

My wife, children, and I were on vacation. We were off in the deep north of the Middle West. After driving for a few hours, we were ready for a bite to eat. There aren’t too many options that far out in the northern wilderness.

We were thankful to find a place — any place! — about 15 minutes away, right on a lake. A small restaurant on a lake up north, that’s got to be an easy-going, relaxing place to have lunch, right?

Wrong.

Service with a sneer

The atmosphere was rank from the moment we opened the door. The woman at the front greeted my wife with a cold and sour, “May I help you?” We sat down and things descended farther. They didn’t have a children’s menu. Who doesn’t have a children’s menu? They didn’t have booster seats. Who doesn’t have booster seats?

Often, when we go out with our kids, we order a side salad for them to split. Basically every restaurant has one or will make one.

But not this one.

My wife politely asked, “Could we get a side salad for the kids to share?”

Our frigid, tight-lipped waitress curtly answered, “No.”

They had a tiny menu, obviously excluding simple fare to signal some kind of “finer taste.” Remember, this is in the middle of nowhere, no cellphone service. Who are they kidding?

Whine list

There was a small bar with a single bartender. She was the type of gender-confused leftist who dyes her hair black, then chops it off into some kind of faux mullet.

Adorned with doodle tattoos, no makeup, and tasteless piercings, she stood behind the bar seething. Her default facial setting was one of bubbling rage. It looked like she wanted to kill. It may sound like I am exaggerating, and maybe I am, but only barely. This is how she looked, this is how she acted, and this is how it felt.

The general vibe was more reminiscent of a hostage situation than a dining establishment. The tables were full, but barely anyone spoke. It felt like everyone was afraid to say anything. They were scared for their lives.

There was a tense hum of silence over the tables. An older couple came in to ask if they could get a table, and the woman at the front made it seem like they were asking if she could split the atom for them. It was bizarre.

Malice's Restaurant

Different places have different feelings. It doesn’t come down to just one element. It’s the sum of the parts. The way people speak to you, the way they look at you, the way the decor is arranged, the music, the signs on the wall, the kind of people working. Some places are warm, inviting, and comfortable. Others are not, and this place was not.

Everyone working was a woman. At the front, behind the bar, waiting the tables.

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It’s hard to describe why, but I got the sense that they were all owners, like they all pitched in together. They weren’t just workers with paychecks. There was something else there. They weren’t moms, young college students, or anyone else you might expect to be working at a restaurant. Something was off.

They all looked, and acted like, a different archetype of unhappy, unfulfilled feminist. They all had the same kind of unpleasant, tightly wound, ready to snap, judgmental demeanor. They all looked down on my wife and kids with a patronizing and adversarial predisposition.

Of course, they weren’t exactly friendly to me either.

Appetite for destruction

There is a certain way bitter feminists, angry lesbians, and gender destroyers look at me, my wife, and kids. My wife is beautiful; she wears dresses every day. My daughter too. I dress in a classic American style, and so does my son.

For these types of people, our family is an aesthetic refutation of their broken and disordered ideology. They don’t like us (or people like us), and it’s very obvious.

And that’s why their restaurant is so miserable. These kinds of people are not happy people, they are not welcoming people, they are not warm people. They don’t like kids, they don’t like families, they don’t like happy men or beautiful women. They only like bitter, broken, and disordered individuals.

They might make fine food — and the food was just fine — but their obvious disdain for us left a bad taste all the same.

Signal du jour

There were signals of their political orientation on the walls. There were two restrooms. Both had signs that read “All Gender Restroom” in the middle of the door.

These signs, if you haven’t seen them, include three figures. A man, a woman in a dress, and then a figure that is half-man and half-woman. Half pants, half dress. A perfect example of the laziest, most pathetic kind of leftist virtue-signaling.

Again, this restaurant is in the middle of nowhere. The restroom signs are a political act, an intentional provocation, and an obvious indication of who they are.

It was the type of place that hangs a sign in the window that reads “ALL ARE WELCOME” in a variety of colors, despite the actual atmosphere inside being one that is completely acidic and 0% welcoming.

Check, please!

It’s a fascinating thing. You see this a lot. Crunchy grocery stores, vegan restaurants, and other lefty-type places. These people — the people most obsessed with “acceptance” as a political virtue — are generally miserable to be around. They are devoted to acceptance on paper, but their aura is like that of an electric fence.

Women are warm, welcoming, and kind. It’s their nature. That’s why they are called the fairer sex. God made them best with kids and things more sensitive.

Extreme feminists of 2025 are none of those things and possess none of those wonderful attributes. They have, in general, made their identity into one based on opposing any natural female traits, virtues, or sensibilities.

They have instead set their sights on trying, and failing, to be men. They have decided to resist, reject, and make war on all the wonderful things of women. That’s why they are so unhappy, and that’s why their restaurant was so miserable. It was clean, the food was fine, the location was great, but the women were dreadful, dour, sad, and bitter.

Walking out of the restaurant, our kids stumbling over each other, our family gleefully disturbing the morgue-like pall of the dining room, we laughed to one another. Thankful we are who we are and aren’t who we aren’t. It must be a miserable life being an angry feminist.

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