THIS LAST MONTH feels like things have been closing in. The limits haven’t changed, just my ambition to challenge them. Not leaving the house isn’t a temporary situation any more; it’s now the normal state—things could be happening a block or two away without me ever realizing. (In fact, they are happening without me realizing: I hit up the local news websites to discover that a new bar is opening on Haight, just a stone’s […]
GROWING THINGS HAS NEVER been my forte. I’m great at starting out, and get very excited about beginnings. I can even handle endings pretty well, although that’s more from experience than desire. But I am somewhat less good at maintenance—the fuzzy middle of projects and ideas. But this weekend, as I picked my way through our lemon tree and grabbed another haul (our third or fourth this year) I realized that maybe I was looking […]
This guy and his enormous hair took part in a session put together by The Writer’s Co-op (listen to their podcast!) and Study Hall (join their community!) to discuss negotiation—one of the most terrifying things there is in the world of freelancing. I know the concept carries a lot of anxiety and baggage for people, but my experience—as a freelance writer, an editor, publisher and business owner—I find the mystique around negotiating a little odd. […]
“The Afrofuturist cannot tell you about the trajectory of an epidemic, predict the future of policing, or an election’s outcome. But it can say that, whatever our plights, a better world is possible. And more specifically, that an interaction with technology offers us a route to resistance.”—How Afrofuturism Can Help the World Mend, C Brandon Ogbunu, Wired
“Jill Abramson’s reason for not signing? “I thought it was part of an anti-wokeness campaign, backlash clothed as free speech,” the former New York Times executive editor said bluntly.” —The Harper’s ‘Letter,’ cancel culture and the summer that drove a lot of smart people mad, Sarah Ellison and Elahe Izadi, Washington Post
“Sicha has managed to widen the scope of Style without making it the junk drawer of the Times. Style is a place where experiments can be run and boundaries pushed. This is likely possible because Style is still seen as a less fraught area of the newsroom than, say, the Politics desk (not to mention Op-ed).”—How Choire Sicha Is Steering Style in a Crisis, Jessica Wakeman, Study Hall
“Digital computers are synonymous in the popular mind with precision processing of information. However, when it comes to the basic information processing task of keeping time, they often perform worse than expected. To see how bad computers can be, consider some things that are better at keeping time. The gold standard in timekeeping is the sundial, which is a perfect analog timekeeper. However, sundials are not very practical and are not used to keep time on […]
Anne Helen Petersen’s latest words resonated with me: I am not a parent. I am, however, a person who hears and sympathizes with so many of the struggles of managing to work and parent right now, and as Chloe Cooney put it all the way back in April, “the parents are not okay.” Not the parents who are essential workers. Not the parents who are taking care of infants, or toddlers, or elementary school age […]
JUST BOOKS THIS WEEK, otherwise I was offline more or less, no work. Two more Maigrets—The Carter of La Providence and The Hanged Man of St Pholien—along with A Burning by Megha Majumdar and Patrick Radden Keefe’s Chatter, his 2006 book on the NSA and Echelon. A lot’s changed in the years since that one came out, I can tell you.
They talk about living your values, of walking the walk. John Lewis did it, figuratively and literally. This morning I heard a Republican on the radio lauding Lewis for a life spent in service. The speaker noted, of course, Lewis’s leadership in civil rights, and specifically pointed out his dedication to non-violent protest and civil discourse. Given the moment, it was almost too easy to read between the lines, to catch a whiff of the […]
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