Anyone who is vaguely familiar with World War II and the events that led up to it has almost certainly heard Nazi Germany referred to as "the Third Reich." The term is a literal translation of "das dritte Reich," the term the Nazis themselves coined to describe their administration of Germany. In this context, the word "Reich" is almost never translated into English, which I've always found really interesting. We know that there have to be at least three of them, but "Reich" is a word that has no intuitive or immediately obvious English equivalent. So what exactly is a Reich, and if the Nazis controlled the third one, what happened to the first two?

When the word "Reich" is used in non-Nazi contexts, it's usually translated as "Empire." The best-known example of this would be what we in English now call the Holy Roman Empire, which is rendered in German as das Heiliges Römisches Reich. This term is itself a translation of the Latin…

In my dream, I am explaining to you why we will never meet in person.

I tell you that I can see the future, and I know what will happen.

There's a restaurant that, from the outside, looks like the restaurant that looked like a gleaming art deco train station all filled with booths side by side like the world was rushing by even when it was standing still where my father used to take me for Shirley Temples when I was small,…

i’m lost - spinning out -
shitposting my manic episode
from the handicap stall
in the loudest bar in the neighborhood

i’ve passed out on the couch again
with your smile and despair
battling for dominance behind my eyes -

the only thing dominating is exhaustion
set in my bones when i wake up the next morning
no longer drunk but still the mania persists,
still I'm…