We can watch a stranger's entire day unfold on our phones. But much of that connection is performance. We show the finished product: the good grade, the clean desk and the acceptance letter. We rarely show the long, boring, frustrating middle part, the part where you've read the same paragraph four times and still don't understand it.

Audiences and fandoms treat understanding complex men as an honor; they are characters that hold nuance and make us think about our own morals and what-ifs. We sympathize with the evil they have to do for the sake of good.

Picture two piles. Everything you control goes into the first one. Into the second one goes everything you don't. Epictetus believed most of our suffering comes from mixing up the piles. We pour our energy, worry and self-worth into the second pile, then feel helpless when it doesn't obey.

There is a concept in economics that can be applied to any aspect of our lives, called “opportunity cost”.

We live in a world of splintered media. Shared cultural touchstones are irrelevant, and if they are well known, they’ve been reduced to eight-year-olds using the newest nonsensical Internet slang that seems to last a week at most.

I was walking through the aisles of a second-hand book store when I stumbled upon a book. The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera. It sounded so philosophical. The juxtapositional title intrigued me even more. The unbearable lightness? How can lightness be unbearable? Honestly, after reading the book over the course of several months, annotating it densely, and pondering upon it for weeks afterward, I still can’t tell you.

When I first stepped onto the University of New Haven’s campus, I didn’t think I was going to be an English Major.

My journey through Horseshoe Magazine was a bit different from other people’s.

Photo Credit - Erik Mclean As you get older, you come across paths that you have forgotten, and for me, it happens through music. Some songs become a part of your life’s soundtrack, and others are quiet and patient. They wait until the right moment to return to your memory as if it never left. “Like a Stone” wasn’t just a song for me, it was a road that I will never forget riding on. The hummed feeling buzzed beneath something I was too young then to understand. I was eight

Photo by Adam Relkin Contributing Writer Adam Relkin To Mark Martin and Denny Hamlin, no kept coming up as an answer for wanting to change NASCAR for the greater good. Both never gave up and went out of their way to overcome incredible odds to make a change that has left the sport in a more positive light for 2026 and beyond. I’ve been a NASCAR fan since I was six years old and have always loved the sport being a part of my life. After I had started watching, I noticed howev

Photo credit - Nataliya Vaitkevich SATIRE There are only a few characters who have graced American literature with their chaotic charm, balanced with a curation of flair, more than Daisy Buchanan in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby.” While some readers praise Gatsby’s powerful ambition or Nick’s reserved perceptiveness, those who are more intellectual would applaud Daisy’s grand becoming of the quiet, powerful and competent driving force of this novel. She is a marvelo

Photo by Tima Miroshnichenko on Pexels SATIRE After the overflowing sound of praise for Justin Baldoni’s “It Ends With Us” 2024 and Josh Boone’s “Regretting You” 2025, I should have known I would yet again be blown away by another Colleen Hoover book turning into a movie. Like the world renowned “Don’t Worry Darling” actor Harry Styles once said, "My favorite thing about the movie is, like, it feels like a movie. It feels like a real, like, you know, go-to-the-theater-film m