Vice (translated into 5 languages)

What It’s Like To Be a Quadruplet

Our lives began in the Colombian capital of Bogotá simultaneously, my heart beating to the same rhythm as three others. The media celebrated the birth of my brothers and me in 1994 as if it were a miracle. It's weird to receive praise for just being born, but newspapers and magazines printed the news as such: ​"The first quadruplets safely delivered in 30 years."

The Revealer

The Churches of Artificial Intelligence

Although artificial intelligence may seem on its way to omnipotence today, it was in 2015 that former Google executive Anthony Levandowski became the first to promote AI as God and file the paperwork to register the church. He founded Way of the Future as a nonprofit religious corporation in California, with the mission to “develop and promote the realization of a Godhead based on artificial intelligence, and through understanding and worship of the Godhead, contribute to the betterment of socie...

Eaten Magazine (print)

The Evolution and Democratization of Food Criticism

No matter where you look online, opinions about food, the places serving it, and eating it are unavoidable. Yet, the line between expertise and criticism has become increasingly blurred, if not erased.

Observer

What’s Next for ‘The Traitors’?

All hell has broken loose in Alan Cumming’s castle, and America is here for it. The Traitors has been praised as the best thing to happen in reality TV since the crossover genre revolutionized the billion-dollar industry. With the recently wrapped third season setting viewer records for Peacock, it’s clear why the concept has become a global hit, originating in the Netherlands and replicated in more than 20 territories: The viewers love a bad guy almost as much as we enjoy catching them, and the...

Midwest Design (inaugural print issue)

What Does a $100,000 Kitchen Look Like?

No two humble (or not-so-humble) abodes are created equal. For homeowners tackling the most luxurious remodeling project of all—the kitchen—luxury encapsulates a daily feeling shaped by your tastes, wants, and needs, along with that certain je ne sais quoi that distinguishes a space executed with the finest materials and impeccable craftsmanship. Of course, this brings us to money—the only vehicle that can deliver the ubiquitous promise of your dream kitchen. We asked local experts where a $100,000 budget stands in today’s market and what clients can expect for a kitchen remodel that’s one zero shy of a million.

Penguin Random House UK

Gay sex in literature didn’t just make me a reader – it humanised my desire

As American teenagers, my friends and I hung out at the mall on weekends doing what older teens with driving licenses called 'loser laps' – walking around aimlessly until we’d meandered around most of the shops, then walking around them again. One day, my mom was late to pick me up, so I lingered in a bookshop. I browsed books to pas

Metro.co.uk (print)

I was a luxury proposal planner. I felt more like the secret service than cupid

‘You don’t think a scavenger hunt is romantic?’ asked my client Michael*. He’d just suggested sending his girlfriend on a wild goose chase across Manhattan, retrieving clues from his exes in the order he’d dated them – I was horrified.

But as a proposal planner, my role was to focus on logistics rather than acting as a gatekeeper of perceived ‘romance’.

Luckily, most men (and a few women) who came to my company for help weren’t married to their own ideas and I was usually able to provide them

Reader's Digest UK (print)

Disease in Multiple Twins: Do Twins Have the Same Health Problems?

As children, my quadruplet brothers and I had a knack for getting collectively sick whenever one person would fall ill. Germs travelled at the speed of light because, whenever the words left someone’s mouth, the rest would immediately identify with the same symptoms. Who knew exhaustion or headaches were so contagious?

Fast Company

The Met Gala celebrated flowers. It forgot about the environment

Considering that tickets cost more than a down payment on a house, it was understandable why people were disgruntled last year when climate protesters temporarily delayed the entrance of several celebrities. And yet, this year’s dress code—The Garden of Time, to accompany the museum’s exhibition “Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion”—seemed like an opportunity for sustainable fashion to permeate the red carpet. There was the usual sprinkle of celebrities who slipped on vintage gowns or vocaliz

Vice

Grieving Without God: How Atheists Deal with Death

As part of an unabashedly Catholic family, I was shaped and moulded for a life of guilt from a young age. My Colombian grandmother, who was taught by nuns, lived by reminding us to give thanks to Jesus and avoid all sin. Just to play it safe, she often Our Fathered herself to sleep. It seemed everything ordinary deserved gratitude, and whatever I desired required penance.

The Revealer

The Evolution of Pope Francis’s Stance on LGBTQ Rights (added to the syllabus of a course in the NYU Department of Religious Studies)

Pope Francis acknowledges my gay identity more than my own grandmother – a surprising contrast, considering they are both devout Catholics of the same generation. Somehow, a childless monarch of the Vatican City State has been more accepting than a woman who helped raise me.

My grandmother loves me unconditionally but never utters the word “gay.” I’ve always interpreted her silence on the matter as a casualty of faith. Catholicism’s condemnation of homosexuality feels deeply ingrained in histor

Fast Company

How these LGBT executives broke the ‘gay glass ceiling’—and how they’re helping future leaders

In 1995, WPP US Public Affairs Lead Brian Ellner was a summer associate at his first law firm, taking a bus to a company golf outing. When he’d come out as gay in law school, he’d resolved not to hide his sexuality for the sake of his career, but surrounded by his predominantly straight coworkers, he didn’t feel so brave.

The i Paper

‘You could feel the energy like an earthquake’: Argentina’s World Cup win offers welcome optimism for visitors

During the World Cup, you could hear the screams of Argentines from every block in Buenos Aires on match days. You didn’t need to watch Argentina play to keep track of the score.

I am not a sports person – what felt to me like mob mentality, rooting for your colour, has never appealed. But my Porteño (Buenos Aires local) friends threatened to exile me if I didn’t participate in what I hadn’t grasped was history in the making.

The first time Argentina were declared World Champions was in 1978 o

Observer

The Everlasting Appeal of The Real Housewives

I used to be cynical about watching The Real Housewives until I unexpectedly found myself inside New York’s Sonja Morgan’s hotel room for her Halloween party at the Kimpton in 2018. Her hairstylist invited me, as Morgan embraced a more-the-merrier mentality for gays.

I was shirtless, and Morgan quipped about my nipples, managing to partake in several conversations simultaneously. Production made every extraneous person sign a release waiver before a crew member yelled, “Action!” Countess Luan d

The Daily Beast

Is It Time for Bravo to Cast Its First Gay Male ‘Real Housewife’?

What gay man hasn’t seen themself in one of the eccentric, fearlessly bedazzled women that have brought international acclaim (and criticism) to the Bravo franchise? One could argue there has been more visibility of gay culture among the Housewives themselves than in the glimpses of gay men tokenized in sporadic episodes, like the next must-have accessory.

Men's Journal

This Malbec Is the Best Wine for Dinner Parties—and It's Just $10

Your friend invites you to a dinner party, which sounds fun until the burden of bringing something dawns on you. Bringing alcohol is part of the sacred ritual of social etiquette for going to someone's home, even if BYOB isn't specified on the invite.

But when you're faced with overwhelming aisles of wines, whiskeys, and tequilas, anxiety creeps in. You don't want to arrive e

Xtra Magazine

Love at first lust: A young writer explores a lasting love denied… or is that deferred?

Jared’s profile read 34 years old, six foot one, and muscular. As he opened the door, I saw an honest person. I didn’t fall in love with him immediately, but every visual detail indicated that I could. He looked beautiful in the most masculine ways: broad shoulders, full hair, a confident presence, immaculate posture and a seductive half-smile. At 19, I didn’t understand love—I usually hid from it—but I could still pick it out of a lineup. “He’s the one,” I thought immediately.

WIRED

In Praise of AI-Generated Pickup Lines

We're at the height of a global technological revolution, and yet this is the modern state of dating: You swipe left, swipe left again, and again, and again—in fact, you mind-numbingly swipe left so many times that when the app finally lands on a person you deem worthy of swiping right, you accidentally swipe left on them, too. You continue swiping.

My thumbs are bloody with disappointment that dating apps, once the face of innovation, have become relics of the status quo. But I've seen the lig

Business Insider

My childhood friend invited me to their destination wedding. I turned it down because I wasn't given a plus-one.

When I was invited to a friend's three-day wedding celebration in Colombia, I was ready to book my flights. We'd met in high school more than a decade ago, and though we weren't as close as we once were because of time and distance, I felt like I wouldn't miss it for the world. As I looked into the logistics, I was more hesitant, but still on board. It would cost me more than $2,000 for flights from the Midwest to Colombia and back, plus hotel accommodations. I changed my mind, however, once...

Fodors Travel Guide

How Bravo’s Real Housewives Transformed Desert Travel Into a Luxury Trend

The desert is not your typical dream vacation; its dry, barren landscape evokes a focus on survival rather than luxury. At least it used to. Enter the Housewives—who are not your typical women—who have collectively reimagined what desert travel can be. Although the franchise has thrived since 2010 on a pedestal of wealth, friendship, and drama, one more subtle theme has played a significant role in its success: the regular cast trips featured in...

Business Insider

My mom had me at 22. Having a young mother has helped us become close friends in adulthood.

My mom gave birth to me and my three brothers at 22. She spent her early 20s raising quadruplet sons.During an era that was supposed to be for taking risks and self-exploration, my single mom carpooled us to extracurricular activities, lectured about homework, and mapped out our futures while placing hers as the foundation for ours to flourish.On the contrary, I cherished my 20s as a shamelessly selfish period for personal growth and discerning my values, ambitions, and social sphere.Having rece...

Metro.co.uk

I'm a quadruplet - my brothers and I couldn't be more different

‘Bro, you’re just using being a quadruplet to get your five minutes of fame,’ Pablo complained.
‘And three days of luxury in a chateau!’ I added quickly.
It was May 2024 and I’d been trying to convince my three brothers that appearing on the Vanderpump Rules spin-off, Vanderpump Villa, was indeed a good thing.
I argued we’d be ‘guests of honour’, mere spectators to any drama in the show – unlike the hotel staff who were on the payroll for the plot – and that it was an obvious opportunity.
‘I sug...

Business Insider

I met a fellow writer on a trip, and we decided to take a bath together.

The energy exuding from our bodies wasn't sexual but embodied the innocence of children running naked in a field holding hands. I connected with Kayla on a deeper level because we shared such an intimate setting together.

GayCities

Finding power in (small) numbers at St. Croix Pride

While snorkeling on Buck Island in St. Croix, I followed a school of blue fish, propelling my body toward their sphere, but I couldn’t infiltrate it.

Having never snorkeled before, I faced the wrath of the red-faced, blonde female captain of Caribbean Sea Adventures, who scolded me for not disclosing my inexperience before it was time to don the gear and plunge into the turquoise sea. I bit my sassy tongue, determined not to spoil my first encounter with a woman at the helm of a boat.

I was pl