Death Stars
Last year was wrenching by any measure–so much so that 2016 began to take on the qualities of an object, some monstrous living entity. A total greater than the sum of its parts and something greater even than that. A thing that may only be added to, but not subject to withdrawals. The year seemed to devour every event that momentarily emerged from it. Like a black-hole: it is what it devours.
Jeff Wood considers the galactic significance of an uncommon year, 2016, in the first part of his two-part essay for the magazine