Sign the petition: JD Shadel launches campaign to convince JD Vance to change his name
It's for the good of JDs everywhere that today ESC KEY .CO, the only lifestyle newsletter on the internet, simply asks you to share your email address.
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This year in early internet GIFs: From dragons to drag queens, retro pixels we resurfaced in 2025
In the past year, I've published 166,351 words on ESC KEY .CO ... alongside a whole bunch of GIFs mined from '90s and early '00s websites. Some of you are just here for the GIFs. That's OK. So, here are a few of our favorites and what stories they appeared in.
What getting trapped in an elevator teaches us about the state of media
Concerned by journalism’s decline and the déjà vu discourse around it? This week, I recap a year of meta media headlines and connect that to the psychological toll of watching your industry collapse. It’s also a meditation on a magazine that taught me the business, which just died without a word.
This non-binary bisexual stopped wearing their Apple Watch. The results are ... shocking?!
I first began using an Apple Watch to track my sleep. My watch told me I wasn't sleeping enough. It also alerted me that my heart rate was elevated when I would run to catch a train. Then I stopped wearing it. What happened next?
RIP freelance journalism: Candid advice to the young writers the world needs to read
Every year, freelance journalism pays less. A typical gig today pays 80% less than the same assignment in 2001. It is no longer a sustainable career. It is, more often, a side-hustle, or the domain of the rich. But in the ashes, we have an opportunity to build a different kind of writing career.