Author: Overcoming Adversity | Buteau’s Odyssey

For a movie with exploding animals and people, not to mention a fungus that wants to consume and kill humanity, Cold Storage is pretty damn charming. From screenwriter David Koepp, who adapted his debut novel for the screen, the trick was his likeable heroes – Naomi (Georgina Campbell) and Teacake (Joe Keery). As Teacake says while running storage units under attack: “It’s a shit job, but it’s my shit job.” For Koepp, that’s a noble quality he wants to see in a well-meaning hero.  The screenwriter behind Black Bag, Carlito’s Way, and Jurassic Park, to name a few, returns to…

Pep Guardiola insisted last month that Real Madrid were not his biggest rivals during his time at Manchester City, instead giving that particular honor to Liverpool. He did at least clarify that he meant Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool, which is just as well after Arne Slot’s Reds failed to cause Guardiola any stress while he watched his side run out 4-0 winners in Saturday’s FA Cup quarter-final from the comfort of his seat in the stands.Sat next to his daughter Maria, Guardiola was an animated figure during an even first half. But once Erling Haaland scored the first goal of his…

What is survivor’s guilt? Google dictionary describes it this way: A condition of persistent mental and emotional stress experienced by someone who has survived an incident in which others died. For example, “He escaped with his life but suffered from survivor’s guilt.” This is the definition most people think of as “survivor’s guilt.” But mental health professionals and therapists know that this concept applies far more widely than this description would suggest. We see survivor’s guilt in our offices every single day, but it’s a slightly different type. How Therapists Define Survivor’s Guilt Survivor’s guilt can be described as the…

The stars of Forbidden Fruits hit up the shopping mall food court.Forbidden Fruits merges Mean Girls with The CraftForbidden Fruits is a movie that definitely falls into one of the most specific subgenres out there — shopping mall horror.The mall has been a backdrop for numerous horror movies, from Dawn of the Dead to Chopping Mall to Phantom of the Mall: Eric’s Revenge. The gimmick automatically turns a movie into an instant period piece, sort of a time capsule of when it was made. what are shopping malls, after all, other than temples of commercialism and pop culture ephemera?Meredith Alloway’s…

Meta and YouTube were just ordered to pay a woman a combined six million dollars for creating addictive products that harmed her psychologically. TikTok and Snapchat were also sued but settled out of court. The 20-year-old woman joined YouTube at age 6 and Instagram at age 9. Over the course of her childhood and adolescence, she explained that her experience on these platforms gave her body dysmorphia and thoughts of suicide, and led her to self-harm. The lawsuit accused Meta and YouTube of intentionally creating addictive platforms that enabled harm. Importantly, this circumvented Section 230, which protects social media companies…

Whether visiting the grave and talking to your loved one, or releasing balloons into the sky on their birthday, the “right” grief path is as individual as you are.

Calling Daniel Goldhaber’s Faces of Death a remake is a stretch. It’s not a pseudo-documentary; Goldhaber and co-writer Isa Mazzei opt for a serial killer angle. Themes of censorship, desensitization, and internet brainrot examine the legacy of John Alan Schwartz’s 1978 original from afar. By concept, it’s more aligned with films like Spree or Random Acts of Violence (2026’s SXSW hit Monitor, too—like, eerily so); American Psycho for the Instagram generation. A film about the rush of watching illicit content, and the thrill of adoring audiences craving depraved smut. Goldhaber has plenty to say about how social media and access…

I knew exactly what AI was doing. I could name the mechanisms in real time. I could see the validation loops, recognize the flattery, and catch the subtle ways AI keeps a conversation going. And it still worked on me, gradually. The way something you carry gets heavier over time until you have to put it down. The Seduction of the Perfect Echo Chamber A few months ago, I had something forming in my thinking. Ideas I could hear myself articulating in podcasts and conversations that felt like more than opinion. I started working with Claude to draw them out.…

Merrill Joan Gerber has been writing fiction, essays, and memoirs—and getting her work published regularly—for well over half a century. I was curious about her long writing life and her various routes to publication, and she generously shared some honest writerly truths with me. Susan K. Perry: What was your impetus to publish this latest book of yours, a compilation of past stories? Merrill Joan Gerber: After I had published my book of essays, Revelation at the Food Bank, in 2023, my publisher himself, Jacob Smullyan, suggested that now might be a good time to gather together a collection of…

I’ve heard this sentiment from many clients over the years and have, of late, experienced it myself. “Was I ever really young?” is not simply an old person’s lament nor a complaint about time passing too quickly. At heart, it’s a question about the present and future. Youth is supposed to be expansive, open, shaped more by wonder than necessity. Yet for many, youth is constricted and filled with premature awareness — of conflict, responsibility, fear, loss, or shame. For many, childhood was less a time of innocence than adaptation. Some children learn very early to read moods, anticipate danger,…