When I first started questioning my commitment to evangelical Christianity, it was because it didn’t make sense in my gut. It felt liberating to discover the philosophy of Universalism, which essentially promised that maybe everything would be okay for everybody in the end. After years of being warned about the…

It’s kind of unavoidable, but maybe we can choose how to relate with it. So when I say "technology," I mean: the physical and digital machines and utensils used to control our environment, or more simply: tools as applications of knowledge — it brings us to that age-old question: how…

hearts don’t break hearts don’t break, they tear. they stretch and then they tear. they jolt and start and jump and freeze and stop and pulse and sink and shrink and do everything that muscles do and don’t do.

Does the capacity to forgive oneself exist? For a lot of us raised in evangelical Christianity, that answer has been “no.” God could forgive us, and our peers could choose to forgive us, but we had no model of what it could look like for someone to forgive themselves. After…

Have you ever had to rescue a bird from inside a building? It’s an uncomfortable process. Sometimes, somehow, a sparrow finds its way inside but quickly gets disoriented and can’t find its way back out. The more it tries, the more it panics. You wish you could just tell the…

One of the most magical things I ever did was getting to a point where I now floss (nearly) every day. At my dentist’s office for a regular cleaning a few years ago, I realized that I was getting charged more based on how much plaque buildup there was to…

Making predictions is, or can be, really fun! I remain really proud of this little project. Making predictions can be hell! Probably the most difficult part of it for me is fusing hope with reality. Going through hell can have its place though (I’ll allow it). Just because I say…

I got my hands on an old Kepler College introduction to some old astrology (“old” as in Ancient Greek, ~330 BCE to ~1000 CE) and figured I might as well document my reflections as I work through it. It’s been a toss-up on whether to discard the astroviak persona or…

Before there was astroviak, there was ktslkpszk, two names on the same social media accounts. ktslkpszk (for Karissa Tesluk Piszko) was just as much into astrology, magic, technology, and wordplay as astroviak was, but astroviak was much less shy. If we met on social media, I’d like to say that I genuinely had a blast! I don’t think there was anyone that I didn’t value connecting with. Special thanks to those I learned with, collaborated with, volunteered with, to those who ordered astrology reports, and to those who collected my nfts.