Googling and Barracks

Revised Definitions Of The Verb “To Google”

Jessica Camargo | McSweeney’s | 9th December 2025

The state of the search engine today, less satire and more lament. “You used to defend the search engine, blaming users when they said it couldn’t find what they were looking for. Your friends called you the “Google wizard”. Now you can’t even find a simple news article you read last week, and you can’t help but feel deeply sad, realising the internet that shaped you has been destroyed piece by piece” (400 words)

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Reading Lolita In The Barracks

Sheon Han | Asterisk | 8th December 2025

A conscript describes his efforts at literary erudition during mandatory military service in South Korea. Privates were allowed two hours of voluntary study every day. Every base had a 연등실 (延燈室) or “Room Where the Lights Stay On”, where seats were highly coveted. To steal more reading hours, the author covered other people’s night shifts, reading Solzhenitsyn, Nabokov, Baldwin and Didion in this time (6,400 words)