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☆☆☆½ (out of ☆☆☆☆) Jung Da-eun (played by Park Bo-young) Dong Go-yun (played by Yeon Woo-jin)  Song Yu-chan (played by Jang Dong-yoon) Song Hyo-shin (played by Lee Jung-eun) ↑Note: Korean names denote the surname followed by the given name. At the end of "Daily Dose of Sunshine," the protagonist says, "All of us are standing on the border between normal and abnormal." And that right there is the thesis for this K-drama, which centers on a nurse who tackles a new gig in a psychiatric ward.

The Japanese language is full of useful little words like dake, hazu, and wake. It’s often hard for Japanese learners to get their heads around these words. For example, hazu represents a situation where something should be or ought to be or should have been the case, and so the speaker of Japanese as a second language has to make a mental transformation from the structure used to express that in English—a verb auxiliary like should—to a noun-like structure using hazu.

First, HELLO to all 2,162 of my closest friends! That’s right—in the five days since I launched Gentle Foods, more than two thousand of you have signed up to read. I can’t express how meaningful it is to me that you’ve chosen to be here, and I am so excited to bring more essays and recipes your way. I’ve been in a state of creative burnout for many months now, and this is the first time in awhile that I feel truly invigorated and joyful in my work.

Every Tom Waits Song is an email newsletter covering just that, in alphabetical order. Find more info here and sign up to get it sent straight to your inbox: When I first conceived of this project, I had to define my terms. What was “every Tom Waits song”? I could stick to the narrowest definition of the term: songs he released on his albums. But then I’d be missing Orphans, which includes a number of my and many other people’s favorites (and quite possibly my all-time favorite, which we are long ways from getting to).

“E ku odun, eku odun tuntun” is how we greet each other in the Yoruba language for the New Year. I was struck that in English, we say, “Happy” New Year. Supposedly, we want the next year to be happy for others. I think of “happy” as a fleeting yet wonderful emotion. And I think of things or experiences making me “happy.” Joy on the other hand is not external based.

I remember sitting on a patch of grass in Golden Gate Park In San Francisco almost a half-decade ago listening to a girl younger than I was tell me about her polyamorous relationship. The term was newish to me and obvious to her: rather than date one person, you could date many. Unlike just plain dating, each of these ‘partners’ would be a bona fide relationship, replete with all the trappings and trimmings.

Scott Newgent is a 47-year old woman who underwent a series of surgeries at the age of 42. She is the author of the following striking passage from a Newsweek article published in 2021: “I am a 48-year-old transgender man. I was thrilled when the medical community told me six years ago that I could change from a woman to a man. I was informed about all the wonderful things that would happen due to medical transition, but all the negatives were glossed over.

  Please stop citing Leslie Feinberg’s book, Rainbow Solidarity in Defense of Cuba. More specifically, please stop citing its section on the UMAP and why they were closed down. The entire purpose of writing this piece and tracking down all the sources, critically comparing them, and pointing out problems, is to hopefully convince good faith people to stop sharing it.   This piece has been in the works since at least 2019 and I have been coming across some of the misinformation that it spreads for several years even before that.

Welcome to Poetica, the monthly poetry column of Shadowlands Dispatch! This month, Shadowlands Dispatch is pleased to present a poem by Bradford Winters, “FARTHER, FATHER, FEATHER.” Winters is a writer, producer, and showrunner in television whose drama credits include Oz, The Americans, The Sinner, and Clickbait. He is also the author of the comic book and screen project Americatown, about an overseas enclave of American immigrants in the near future. A former blogger for Image journal, Winters has had poems published in a variety of journals including (but not limited to) Spoon River Poetry Review, Georgetown Review, Christian Science Monitor, and Sewanee Theological Review.