In May 2025, WeightWatchers — one of the best-known symbols of the weight-loss industry — filed for bankruptcy protection. For decades, the company sold an idea familiar to millions: follow the rules, control your food, watch your weight, and the…
In 2019, twenty adults spent a month in a clinical research center run by the U.S. National Institutes of Health. For two weeks they ate mostly ultra-processed food, and for two weeks minimally processed food. Researchers deliberately designed the offered…
There is a simple way to notice the difference between hunger and the desire to eat. Imagine that you have just had a substantial dinner and someone offers you another serving of exactly the same food. You would probably refuse.…
The strangest form of sleep deprivation does not begin when a person cannot fall asleep. It begins when sleep is possible, the alarm is set for early morning, the eyes are already tired, and the hand still starts the next…
Grandpa sat at the table, an old laptop covered in banana stickers in front of him. On the screen, the words were frozen: “No internet connection.” He stared at the text in silence for about ten seconds, as if waiting…
The square fish pressed its nose against the bucket and didn’t want to get inside. It wasn’t slippery but rough, as if made of small stones, and its edges tapped quietly against the side of the boat. The fisherman looked…
The monitor flared up sharply, as if someone had switched on a light right in his eyes. Labubu flinched and pulled his hand away from the mouse. The room was warm, even stifling, but the screen breathed cold. His fingers…
For a long time, I was convinced that bedtime stories were something optional. When I had the energy, fine. When I didn’t, nothing critical would happen. The day was already filled with talk, explanations, and household chores. The child wasn’t…
The emerald color appeared not in the sky, but on the windowsill. Labubu noticed it with his peripheral vision while trying to remove a burnt pan from the stove. The spot was thick, matte, without a reflection, as if someone…
How Labubu Got Lost in Minecraft Labubu woke up to the sound of sand crunching beneath him. Not the soft sand he was used to, but square and dry, as if made of small tiles. He sat up and looked…
He didn’t turn on by command. It happened by accident. And that’s exactly what would have scared humans the most, if they were still here. Among mountains of rusty metal, cracked casings, and the empty eye sockets of other robots,…
Once, my grandfather didn’t come out to see me off when I was a little boy going to school. It wasn’t the first day of classes, but I was still nervous. My schoolbag was too big, and the road seemed…
I often think that my grandfather taught me not how to live correctly, but how not to be afraid when something goes wrong. At the time, I didn’t understand it; it seemed to me that he was just silent, just…
They say a common turnip never grows just for no reason. And if it has grown larger than a house, it means the world wants to tell you something. That morning, the grandfather went out into the garden and stopped…
They say that in one of the Roblox servers, between code glitches and the flickering of neon lamps, a war occurred that no one writes about in the updates. A war where the rules changed every minute, and victory depended…