Kelly Chapman is a culture writer based in Washington, DC. She writes under the pseudonym Audrey Horne on Substack.
No one in the DC political class is cool. For all our American spirit of independence, democracy still defers to the majority, and power compels even the most singular, Machiavellian mind to mold itself in the image of the people. Politics drains the blood out of the individual, replacing him or her with a bland
The first thing you learn as a young woman, without anyone telling you a word, is that men love sex. Men want to have sex with you and men want to have sex with every woman. They love sex so much they will do anything to get it. They will trick you into having sex
The X-native AI Grok exploded in popularity this weekend – as users discovered that its media tab was filled with requests to generate disrobed and scantily clad versions of images of women and children that people had posted publicly. “Put her in a bikini,” users asked the AI. Grok complied with these requests freely, with
The app has done more for the city’s social life than a decade of think-tank happy hours
My social life is meeting a different character every week
Each city serves Power while sacrificing meaning
I turned to film to re-enchant myself with the city in which I live
This is Washington’s particular joke, sharpened in the second Trump era: violence is never just local
No matter what you drink, someone is watching and drawing conclusions
Butterworth’s has been profiled more often than the new Pope
It takes the experience of eating an oyster and scales it up tenfold into an exercise in excess
What other food could be so eloquent? What other food could communicate so much with so little force?
The animatronic children of ‘It’s a Small World’ made me cry
