We were legitimately freaked out. And why wouldn’t we be? TIME published an ominous cover story with extra exclamation points. President Bill Clinton said not-at-all-reassuring things about Y2K like, “This is not one of the summer movies where you can close your eyes during the scary parts.” CNN suggested that readers prepare for Y2K by stockpiling powdered milk, canned juices, and “comfort food.” Apple produced this TV commercial, which still makes us want to hide under the bed.

Last summer, a secretive space company took up residence in a massive warehouse in the sun-soaked industrial neighborhood that surrounds Long Beach Airport. Reflections of turboprop planes flit across the building’s mirrored panes. Across the street a retro McDonnell Douglas sign perches above the aerospace giant’s former factory, and just around the corner Virgin Orbit is developing air-launched rockets.

Pim Techamuanvivit, the owner and chef of a few popular restaurants in San Francisco, was managing the floor at Kin Khao the other night when a call came in from someone asking about their delivery order. This was surprising to her, since her restaurant doesn’t do delivery - not even takeout. After hanging up the phone, she googled “Kin Khao delivery” and found something astonishing: a complete impersonation of their menu and brand, complete with delivery ordering, on Seamless, Grubhub and Yelp.

When Rebekah Paltrow showed up at Dechen Thurman’s 8 a.m. meditation class for the first time, Thurman saw someone a lot like himself. Her last name advertised shared lineage with an ultrafamous blonde movie star. She’d been born into enormous privilege and the expectations that accompanied that. She was a struggling actor who had taken the better part of three decades to figure out that what she was probably supposed to do with her life was teach yoga.

Autonomy and Freedom of choice are critical to our well being, and choice is critical to freedom and autonomy. Nonetheless, though modern Americans have more choice than any group of people ever has before, and thus, presumably, more freedom and autonomy, we don’t seem to be benefiting from it psychologically.

Mindfulness has gone mainstream, with celebrity endorsement from Oprah Winfrey and Goldie Hawn. Meditation coaches, monks and neuroscientists went to Davos to impart the finer points to CEOs attending the World Economic Forum. The founders of the mindfulness movement have grown evangelical. Prophesying that its hybrid of science and meditative discipline “has the potential to ignite a universal or global renaissance”, the inventor of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), Jon Kabat-Zinn, has bigger ambitions than conquering stress.