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All this in search of pleasure and escape! Instead of delivering shelter from the storm of too-late-stage capitalism, the anonymizing maw of the delivery apps brought the storm home. Rather than bringing us together—the restaurant’s nominal function—the delivery economy encouraged us to move furthe…

When I eventually made it there a few years later, Carbone was exactly as advertised: an exercise in pure kitsch, a kind of theater restaurant offering the food, decor, and waiterly patter of an Italian American dining hall of the 1960s, only at many times the price and with none of the neighborly …

I was 12 and accustomed to being at the mercy of adults and their judgment. I had no power over my own person, no autonomy. Custody had outsourced the matter of where to be, what to eat, when to sleep, what to watch, whom to see, and where to settle. If this aspect of childhood felt tolerable, it w…