“I’ll probably never know whether he left his gun in the car on accident or just didn’t wanna kill them. He told me he wanted a burger. What was I gonna say? MacLeary’s makes good burgers.
He must have held his own in there, whatever happened. The pub was wrecked. Shattered mugs, pool balls, and beer littered the floor between the remnants of a half dozen once-sturdy wooden bar stools. A splintered pool cue stuck out of the wall through an ancient, faded Cubs poster. And Marty, except for a few bruised knuckles, he walked out unscathed, burger in hand, with a big ‘ol shit-eating grin on his face. I knew there was something wrong when I saw that smile. Marty only smiles for one reason.”
Why was my traffic up yesterday? Oh, right. That article I wrote got published at Six Revisions.
“Social media distinguishes itself from less versatile interactive mediums of the past like print and traditional advertising by giving life to the Intelligent User.
This modern distinction is often misunderstood by web developers and under-appreciated by users because the power of choice is a novel distinction.
It didn’t exist in previous mediums. In marketing, for example, consumers are used to the old paradigm where they listen passively and marketers tell them what to think. The interaction only moves in one direction.
On the Internet, interaction is more involved and the Intelligent User — as the consequence of this new system — has overtaken the old paradigm.”
“The main thing we’re contributing back is the advancement of the idea of internet culture to more and more people … just the sheer growing acceptance of user submitted content and the fact that we can affect popular culture.”
“You laugh about this but we may be on the forefront of Internet culture becoming most dominant culture in the world … through the power of the internet and through the community.”
The Awl interviews Paul Ford, former editor of Harper’s. I can see where he’s coming from. I live for a good puzzle,
“[Paul:] I could have been a respected editor instead of a huge nerd. But all the editing in the world can’t compare to building little websites and mangling text and writing things and messing around in spreadsheets and figuring out what’s wrong with comments. I wake up thinking about how all the pieces fit together and I want to do more of it and with lots of people. I plan to be scared and exhausted most of the time. So far that’s working.”
Now, I haven’t got a clue what Alex Chilton or the Butthole Surfers has to do with Paul Ford resigning from Harper’s (typical Awl: off-topic yet entertaining), but don’t forget to read about the Butthole Surfers misbehaving in The Netherlands. If the Dutch can deal with alcohol-induced madness of that caliber — and ask for more — it proves beyond reasonable doubt that their culture is, in fact, more tolerant than most. That probably doesn’t come as a surprise to most of you, but it’s worth mentioning.
The word depression is used as a “catch-all” term to describe a “spectrum of symptoms.” I am wary of the medical standard which of late seems to prefer to medicate first and diagnose later, especially in children. Jonah Lehrer helps us to see that depression should not be dismissed so quickly:
“If depression didn’t exist — if we didn’t react to stress and trauma with endless ruminations — then we would be less likely to solve our predicaments. Wisdom isn’t cheap, and we pay for it with pain.”
A hefty price. However, it’s not always that simple, either:
“To say that depression has a purpose or that sadness makes us smarter says nothing about its awfulness. A fever, after all, might have benefits, but we still take pills to make it go away. This is the paradox of evolution: even if our pain is useful, the urge to escape from the pain remains the most powerful instinct of all.”
“Why do we look for recipes? Because we’re risk averse. If we fail, it’s because someone else gave us the wrong recipe. We get to skip on the blame, but can claim the success.”
I have always been vaguely disgusted by the multitude of how-to articles that roam around the blogging plains like empty-eyed, money-sniffing sheep. They are everywhere you look, yet they’re rarely worth the time it takes to read them. They revisit time and again the same tired topics. In a thousand words they will tell you nothing you don’t already know. One thing is sure, though: the sheep draw hungry stares.
“But, there’s money in recipes. If there’s a recipe, that means there’s a secret. And you can sell a silver bullet. The thing is, most people that are giving you a recipe are pandering to your fear. “What if things go wrong?” “
Fear sells, and reading more of those how-to articles won’t help you overcome it. Here’s a recipe that might be worth a penny: read Chimero’s no-nonsense truth, then put your head down and get your hands dirty.
You can read the first chapter of this book here at Scribd. To give you an idea:
As the conservative columnist George F. Will has written, today “we honor Jefferson, but live in Hamilton’s country.”
This is no cause for celebration. In fact, the triumph of Hamiltonianism has been mostly a curse on America. The political legacy of Alexander Hamilton reads like a catalog of the ills of modern government: an out-of-control, unaccountable, monopolistic beaurocracy in Washington, D.C.; the demise of the Constitution as a restraint on the federal government’s powers; the end of the idea that the citizens of the states should be the masters, rather than the servants, of the government;
And on and on. An eye-opening book which I simply cannot put down and which you absolutely must read if you have any interest in history, economics, politics, or the past, present, or future of the United States.
This is a short story by Wells Tower about bloodthirsty vikings and, strangely, the cost of love. Below is a colorful excerpt, or, if you found the title as interesting as I did, you can skip straight to reading here at Macmillan.
The clouds were spilling out low across the sky when we shoved off. Thirty of us on board, Gnut rowing with me at the bow and behind us a lot of other men I’d been in some shit with before. Some of their families came down to watch us go. ØrlStender fucked up the cadence waving to his son, who stood on the beach waving back. He was a tiny one, not four or five, standing there with no pants on, holding a baby pig on a hide leash. Some of the others on board weren’t a whole lot older, rash and violent children, so innocent about the world they would just as soon stick a knife in you as shake your hand.
All authors should have a website for this reason: I had never heard of Jim Butcher or The Dresden Files, and then I read a short story called The Restoration of Faith that is available for free on his website. Now I’ve bought and read the first book in the series (Storm Front) and the next couple are on top of my Christmas wishlist.
“I struggled to hold onto the yowling child while fumbling a quarter into the pay phone and jamming down the buttons to dial Nick’s mobile.” (read the rest of the story on butcher’s site)
Perhaps the most famous of H.P. Lovecraft’s chilling SciFi stories, The Call of Cthulhu (full text here) hooks you from the first line:
“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.”