GPOY

days late, dollars short

That moment when. Ben Franklin: getting shit done. Would a joke about the California penal system be inappropriate here? The wives and widows of ISIS. Why people love to hate Duke. Stuck playing Google Feud. Germanwings, Richard III and acts of God. Seven signs you might be clueless about income inequality .Haruki Murakami gives advice. Inside Adjuncting.  I followed my stolen phone to China: a story of globalism, friendship and Internet celebrity. Hire like Google. How a millionaire escort does money. (Incidentally, her TinyLetter is pretty damn decent, too). Tatiana Maslany is my shit. So is Toni Morrison. An ad praising you for your refusal to be swayed by other, lesser ads. The tiniest skateboarders in Kabul. Employment rights challenges to the on-demand economy. Chola fashion and folk feminism. Where are 1.5 million black men missing? From Ferguson, for one. Ladies in smart tweed suits. Gentlemen in smart tweed suits. Aviatrixes, and other unsuitable financial role models. Resume virtues vs. eulogy virtues. On being good and being great.

aaaaaaand


Tove Jansson draws a Moomin!

The Writer's Technique in Thirteen Theses

1. Anyone intending to embark on a major work should be lenient with himself and, having completed a stint, deny himself nothing that will not prejudice the next.
2. Talk about what you have written, by all means, but do not read from it while the work is in progress. Every gratification procured in this way will slacken your tempo. If this regime is followed, the growing desire to communicate will become in the end a motor for completion.
3. In your working conditions avoid everyday mediocrity. Semi-relaxation, to a background of insipid sounds, is degrading. On the other hand, accompaniment by an etude or a cacophony of voices can become as significant for work as the perceptible silence of the night. If the latter sharpens the inner ear, the former acts as a touchstone for a diction ample enough to bury even the most wayward sounds.
4. Avoid haphazard writing materials. A pedantic adherence to certain papers, pens, inks is beneficial. No luxury, but an abundance of these utensils is indispensable.
5. Let no thought pass incognito, and keep your notebook as strictly as the authorities keep their register of aliens.
6. Keep your pen aloof from inspiration, which it will then attract with magnetic power. The more circumspectly you delay writing down an idea, the more maturely developed it will be on surrendering itself. Speech conquers thought, but writing commands it.
7. Never stop writing because you have run out of ideas. Literary honour requires that one break off only at an appointed moment (a mealtime, a meeting) or at the end of the work.
8. Fill the lacunae of inspiration by tidily copying out what is already written. Intuition will awaken in the process.
9. Nulla dies sine linea -- but there may well be weeks.
10. Consider no work perfect over which you have not once sat from evening to broad daylight.
11. Do not write the conclusion of a work in your familiar study. You would not find the necessary courage there.
12. Stages of composition: ideas -- style -- writing. The value of the fair copy is that in producing it you confine attention to calligraphy. The idea kills inspiration, style fetters the idea, writing pays off style.
13. The work is the death mask of its conception.

Walter Benjamin -- 1928

Gonna Break my Rusty Cage and Run

Lost in immigration.  Confessions of a comma queen. Taking Dorothy Miller Richardson off the second shelf. Own your loser edit. Describing the shape of the manosphere. The fight for the soul of My Little Pony. Welcome to Shitphone. "Her game thrived as folk game, played by a constellation of left-wing intellectuals who began to start calling it 'the monopoly game.' " Rick Rubin annotates lyrics on RapGenius, notably the inestimable Johnny Cash. Similarly, Michael Chabon's thoughts on Kendrick Lamar are worth a scan. "In the West, there’s a tendency to approach censorship with a high-handedness that would seem inappropriate if applied to other issues of development, like poverty. There may in fact be more similarities than we realize." The talking heads behind climate change skepticism. "There is absolutely nothing in this world like the feeling of sucking at something and then improving at it. Everyone should do it every ten years or so."

Ten Satisfying Ways of Letting Your Enemy Know That You are Ignoring Her, While Still Ignoring Her.

It's not the quantity but the quality of our free time that's changing. The most unusual sound in the Swedish language. Chocolates that represent Japanese onomatopoetic words.The ineffable taste of Doris Lessing. Edible fruit stickers and the rise of the spornosexual. Sweating like a pig, feeling like a fox. 10 Things We'd Like to Hear Virginia Woolf Say to Jonathan Franzen. The slave who posed as a master. These bathing women seemed like goddesses to me. What They See. Chicago, the last great capital of cartography. We all have the ability to transition. It's just a question of what the person inside you will look like. Modern masculinities. The ultimate WikiGnome. O California. Zadie Smith does Key and Peele. Damage (long but WORTH IT). Meet Tink.

Hard Times Valentines

Fantastic article about homeless couples in New York City, how they met, how they stay together, what life and love looks like on the streets. (via)

The story of Ayotzinapa and the 43 disappeared students.

Life advice from Haruki Murakami.

Is marijuana withdrawal a real thing?

The enduring dystopia of the Handmaid's Tale.

Do we have to ask these questions simply to fall in love? Can't we ask them of all our friends, too?

Get rejected every day with Rejection Therapy!

Righteous anger - 100% men. Shine a light.

Life, love and parenting lessons from Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Debbie Harry in LA, 1977