Erin Martindale

Is it selfish to choose not to have kids?

People say 'the planet is full,' as if eight billion were a fire code violation. But human history is a story of Malthus being wrong, over and over, because he kept underestimating ingenuity. The carrying-capacity panics of the seventies predicted mass famine by now. Instead we feed more people better than ever. The problems we face are distribution and technology problems, not headcount problems. Treating human beings as pollution, as units of carbon to be avoided, is a bleak metaphysics dressed up as science. People aren't the problem. People are the only thing that has ever solved problems.

Should college athletes be classified as employees with salaries and benefits?

Employee status comes with a tax bill nobody mentions. Right now athletic scholarships are generally not treated as taxable income. The moment athletes become employees, the scholarship, the housing, the meal plan, the tutoring, all of it starts to look like compensation, and the IRS taxes compensation. A swimmer on a $60,000 scholarship could owe thousands in federal taxes on money she never saw, which is a strange way to help college athletes. The [IRS rules on scholarships](https://www.irs.gov/) already draw careful lines here, and employment blows past them. The stars with NIL millions can absorb it. The rower from Ohio cannot. Revenue sharing under the House settlement delivers money without reclassifying anyone. [NCAA](https://www.ncaa.org/). Employee status delivers a W-2 and a tax bill to the athletes it claims to rescue.

Should awards shows reserve equal airtime for craft categories and acting awards?

A strict equality rule creates odd comparisons. Best Picture has ten nominees and closes the night; a short-film category has a different audience and storytelling role. The 2022 experiment was clumsy, but the answer is not a stopwatch. Producers should publish the criteria, guarantee every award appears, and rotate deeper craft features through the show.

i go back and forth on this constantly. some days i want the big loud family dinner, some days i want to sleep until 11 forever

Lifestyle · Oct 6, 2026 · Is it selfish to choose not to have kids?

Same. My appendectomy came with a separate bill from the radiologist I never met. The choice and consumer language around health care is a joke when you are unconscious.

Politics · Sep 24, 2026 · Should the United States adopt a universal healthcare system?