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Before the first Molotov cocktail reached us, before the crowd with knives and machetes and wooden clubs arrived, it was a large rock that invaded our lunch table. It went past my left ear and bounced on our table, spilling food all over before hitting the restaurant’s glass window in front of me. It happened so fast that I initially thought it was a bug, like a praying mantis that had buzzed past. But the sound of glass shattering, followed by the cries of the restaurant workers, made our hearts beat fast—what we had been avoiding the past few weeks was here. The riot was at our doorstep. Minti and I had decided to go off campus to the Easy Go departmental store for groceries, and as we headed back with our driver, Satpal, a young man in his late twenties, we stopped at a roadside dhaba owned by one of his friends. We were just so tired of eating at the campus eatery. With the curfew in place, and the violence happening outside the campus gates, we had been locked up inside the thirty-acre university campus for two weeks and spent the time mostly inside our apartments, waiting for normalcy to return. The spring break had been extended indefinitely, and the university had advised students not to return to campus until further notice.

It wasn’t my idea to go there for lunch. I wanted to get to safety immediately, but Minti said it should be fine; Satpal knew the owner, and the media, the university authorities, the University Campus Safety Office, and her colleagues had all assured her that the violence on the streets was controlled and law and order restored.

More rocks followed the first, arriving like hailstones. In seconds, the windshields of four cars shattered into pieces. Our own car stood intact a few feet away, and I looked at Minti helplessly—we might have to run. One nearby family, who had just started eating, dragged themselves toward their small car. The man hugged a bag, the woman shouted and flailed her arms, and the young teenage boy pulled at his sister, who seemed stupefied.

“Rohit, watch your head!” Minti screamed.

I immediately covered myself with a steel dish to protect myself from a flying rock, letting the rice scatter on the concrete floor of the restaurant’s courtyard. “Run!” I shouted, and we headed toward our car.

Then we heard the screaming. A rock had broken through the family’s rear windshield where the woman and little girl sat. Minti started toward them but stopped short when a bottle swished through the space left by the crumbled window and erupted into flames.

“Get some water!” Minti shouted, pointing toward the jug on our table, and ran toward it.

But the car took off, barreling away down the street as the smoke and the screams of the family mingled. I didn’t have time to think if they would make it, if their car would explode into flames in the middle of the road. I turned away, saw the abandoned shiny leather and pink duffel bags that belonged to the family, and felt something tug at my heart. Did they do the right thing? What was the right thing to do in this situation? Should we run to our car?

The sounds of the angry crowd were coming closer—as if an entire marketplace, shouting and bargaining, was marching toward us like a swarm of bees.

Satpal suddenly came rushing out of the building that housed the dhaba, yelling, “Madam, we have to go.”

“What happened, Satpal?” Minti stood next to our table holding a fork, a piece of chicken still hanging from it.

“I saw from the terrace! They are armed!”

Satpal dragged us back to the building through a heavy iron door, leading to a storage room, followed by four fleets of stairs, up to the terrace of the dhaba. It was full of broken chairs, clotheslines, and a rotting mattress leaning against the waist-high wall that marked the boundary of the terrace. Near the roof’s edge, there was a giant water tank. It looked like an enormous hippopotamus sitting verti-cally on the wall, defying gravity. A ladder leaned against it.

“Where will we hide?” I asked.

Persuaded by a weeping Satpal, we climbed into the water tank using the ladder. Then Satpal covered it with the massive concrete lid sending us into a darkness so black that I couldn’t see my palms. The first thing I felt was the ice-cold winter water. We were knee-deep and enveloped in an eerie, cool stillness. I didn’t know how long we were inside; it was hard to hear what was happen-ing on the streets and ground floor. I heard a noise from outside. But it was just din: the din of people panicked, worried, screaming for help. It felt as though all that din, all that cumulative din, was coming from far; very far away. As if the cold-water tank had trans-ported us to another dimension.

“Minti, are we going to die here?” I whispered. “Rohit, nothing will happen to us. We will be fine.”

We heard a male voice on the terrace. “Look there, under that rotting mattress!”

Minti covered my mouth. I pulled out my phone from my back pocket. In the dim light produced by the phone, I could see the whites of her eyes widen.

My legs ached from the icy water. They turned numb as if they had melted into the water, and I was just floating; it felt like nothing existed beyond my thighs. My legs started to burn. It was then I felt it: something warm, cutting through the icy water. Fresh water was entering the tank. Had one of the vandals entered the kitchen downstairs and switched on the motor? It felt so lovely. The warm freshwater was moving up inch by inch toward my thighs, then to my waist, then to my chin. My legs came back to life. The ache from the icy water was gone.

Is this how it feels to drown?

I shouldn’t have come back home. Everyone had told me to accept the job I was offered in rural Minnesota. But I would never have fallen in love if I had not returned to India. I had just started my life. And in turn, my heart had shattered. I deserved to get some time to mend it. I deserved to experience the heaviness of a broken heart.

Is this how a life ends?

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From How to Date a Fanatic by Aruni Kashyap and reprinted with permission from HarperVia, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. Copyright 2026.

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While all eyes are on Spider-Man: Brand New Day and Avengers: Doomsday coming later this year, it will be hard to top Simon Williams as the biggest breakout star of the MCU in 2026. Marvel stunned everyone with the release of the show-stopping Wonder Man on Disney+ back in January, not only reintroducing a character who has been a part of the company's comic history since the 1960s, but also using him for a satirical exploration of Hollywood and the process behind superhero movie-making. The meta-comedy series was an instant hit with both critics and audiences, earning a Season 2 renewal and the first acting Emmy nomination in five years for the MCU for Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as the lead. It'll be a while before Destin Daniel Cretton and Andrew Guest get Simon's next chapter to the screen , but fortunately, there's another story featuring the character that's just wrapping up.

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The fight continues against SpaceX's controversial South Texas land swap.

That deal, which the company made with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), gives SpaceX 727 acres (294 hectares) of public land that's currently part of the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge. In exchange, the company hands over 683 acres (276 hectares) of its territory in the area, not all of it contiguous, to the USFWS.

Last month, a coalition of conservation and tribal groups sued the USFWS over the swap , saying it degrades the refuge and violates multiple laws, including the National Wildlife Refuge System Improvement Act of 1997. And yesterday (July 20), those groups filed an emergency injunction, asking a federal judge to stop the exchange until the courts can rule on the ongoing case.

SpaceX's Starbase site sits amid wetlands with high biodiversity in South Texas. (Image credit: SpaceX) "Federal officials are racing to fork over America's public lands to one of wealthiest corporations on Earth before the courts can even weigh in," Laiken Jordahl, national public lands advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement yesterday (July 20) .

"This refuge is one of the last places left for the public to enjoy nature in the Rio Grande Valley," Jordahl added. "Why should Texans be forced to surrender even more of their public lands to a trillion-dollar corporation ? The court has to intervene now, because once these refuge lands are transferred to SpaceX, they’re gone forever."

The land set to be transferred to SpaceX is near Starbase, the manufacturing and launch hub for the company's Starship megarocket. SpaceX sees Starship as transformational; it's the biggest and most powerful launcher ever built, and it's designed to be fully and rapidly reusable.

Starship remains in the development-and-testing phase. It has flown 12 suborbital test flights to date, all of them from Starbase, and is gearing up for Flight 13 this Thursday (July 23).

These launches pose a threat to the wildlife that the 90,000-acre (36,420 hectares) refuge was established to protect, according to the Center for Biological Diversity, a conservation nonprofit based in Tucson, Arizona.

"A 2024 study found that, after one launch, every single monitored shorebird nest near the launch site suffered egg damage or loss," the organization said in yesterday's statement. "Instead of taking any enforcement actions or working with SpaceX to reduce or eliminate its harm to the refuge, the Service [USFWS] is now citing the resulting degradation as justification for handing the public land to SpaceX."

Some of the land being transferred to SpaceX is part of the Palmito Ranch Battlefield National Historic Landmark, where the final battle of the Civil War was fought. This means the swap also violates the National Historic Preservation Act, according to the Center or Biological Diversity.

The Center or Biological Diversity and its partners also take issue with how the land deal was made.

"The proposed land exchange was first made public in March, but records obtained under the Freedom of Information Act show internal agency planning began as early as April 2025," yesterday's statement reads. "In those discussions with the regional director of the Service, the agency developed 'the most expedited schedule possible' for completing a land transfer and recommended hiring additional staff to meet what they described as an 'optimum timeframe.'"

The plaintiffs in the lawsuit against the USFWS are the Center for Biological Diversity, Save RGV, the Carrizo/Comecrudo Nation of Texas, Inc., and the South Texas Environmental Justice Network.

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I have struggled to set goals for most of my life. I’ve wondered for a while what they actually do for me. When I was younger, my dad had us write down big, ambitious, long-term goals. I still have some of those handwritten notes.

Two of them were:

1. Earn a college scholarship for academics or athletics.

2. After college, get a job that I actually like instead of just worrying about money.

Both came true. So, here’s a reasonable question: Did they happen because I wrote them down? Or because I did the work to make them a reality?

The answer is yes.

Goals work as fuel for action, but the action is what makes it happen. This is a subtle but important distinction. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve drifted away from setting outcome-based goals and focused more on the process or a system. I began saying things like, “If I focus on the process, the outcome will take care of itself.” That philosophy became central to one of my previous books, The Score That Matters . (Written with Brook Cupps)

This philosophy served me well, until a conversation with lacrosse legend Paul Rabil forced me to confront a truth about my own relationship with ambition. Paul talked with me about setting big, ambitious outcome-related goals, and I realized something uncomfortable: maybe I’d stopped setting big goals because I was afraid.

As Paul told me, “Most people don’t set goals because the act alone is both a major and personal step in the direction of commitment, and it invites hope, fear, and the possibility of regret.”

That hit me hard. It’s much safer to focus solely on the process. When you do that, you have complete control. You get to decide how hard you work, how early you wake up, how dedicated you remain. But outcomes? Those involve the chaotic outside world, luck, timing, and a thousand variables you can’t control. And I like being in control.

Here’s what I’ve come to realize: focusing only on the process might be a sophisticated form of self-protection. It’s rational. It’s smart. But it might also be limiting. The most powerful human achievements often begin with someone setting an outlandish goal that makes them and everyone else uncomfortable. Not because the goal itself creates success, but because it forces a level of commitment that wouldn’t exist otherwise.

While I still believe deeply in the power of process, I think I might be limiting myself by avoiding outcome goals. By shying away from declaring what I really want to achieve, I’m protecting myself from potential disappointment but also capping my potential. What’s the harm in setting a massive outcome-related goal? I don’t hit it? Life goes on.

But the attempt itself might take me places I’d never go otherwise. Maybe the wisest approach isn’t choosing between process and outcomes but understanding how they work together. The big goals give us direction and force commitment; the process gives us the daily path forward. Neither works well without the other.

The big goals give us direction and force commitment; the process gives us the daily path forward. Neither works well without the other.

I want to challenge you to examine your own relationship with goal setting. Are you, like I was, hiding behind the safety of process-only thinking? Are there big things you’ve been afraid to name because it feels too vulnerable?

First, get honest about what you’re avoiding. What goal would fundamentally change your life if you achieved it? What do you want so badly that you’re afraid to admit? Write it down. Don’t edit it. Don’t make it realistic. Just write the truth.

Second, notice your resistance. Pay attention to the voice that explains why it’s impossible or impractical. That voice isn’t protecting you. It’s limiting you. Acknowledge it and set it aside.

Third, share your goal with someone you trust. Speaking it aloud transforms it from private fantasy into something real and accountable. Choose someone who will support your ambition rather than talk you out of it.

Next, take action toward that goal this week. It doesn’t have to be big, but it needs to be something you wouldn’t have done while playing it safe. For instance, if your goal is to start a side business, reach out to three potential clients this week, or if you want to switch careers, schedule informational interviews with people in your target field. This creates momentum and proves you’re serious.

The most impactful leaders are willing to set big, ambitious goals. They learned to live with the tension between what they want and where they are, using that gap as fuel rather than letting it paralyze them. Process versus outcome isn’t really a choice. It’s understanding how they work together. What goal have you been afraid to set? What would you attempt if failure weren’t permanent? The answer might reveal exactly what you need to pursue.

This article The goal-setting mistake you don’t know you’re making is featured on Big Think .