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Paris Review - The Art of Memoir No. 1, Mary Karr

Mary Karr in 2001. For a writer who has shared herself with the public in three memoirs, Mary Karr is an extraordinarily elusive interview subject. Nearly two years passed between our initial contact, in July of 2007, and our first session. There were numerous reasons for this—she was traveling; she…

Nov 29, 2015

The Unlikely True International Story of the Man Called Orange Brother

gawker.com

Li Hongjun did not usually take selfies. But out in the orange grove, he was not in his usual state of mind. It was early February, and the lunar New Year was approaching. It’s considered good luck to set out a bowl of oranges during the Chinese holiday, so Li, figuring he could use some luck,…

Nov 28, 2015

High-Performance Marketing: An Interview with Nike’s Phil Knight

hbr.org

Nike is a champion brand builder. Its advertising slogans—“Bo Knows,” “Just Do It,” “There Is No Finish Line”—have moved beyond advertising into popular expression. Its athletic footwear and clothing have become a piece of Americana. Its brand name is as well-known around the world as IBM and Coke.…

Nov 24, 2015

Nathan For You’s star confronts the A.V. Club mom who scorned him

avclub.com

The third season of Nathan For You premieres on Comedy Central tonight as star Nathan Fielder returns to “help” struggling businesses with elaborate money-making schemes that double as experiments in human nature. The comedian responsible for brilliant hoaxes like Dumb Starbucks and the East Los…

Nov 24, 2015

The Burning Man of Birding: Inside Iceland's Puffin Festival

audubon.org

Climate Threatens Birds Worldwide See how the Red-crowned Crane and thousands of other species worldwide are at risk from climate change. Read the Report Let’s just get this out of the way: No, it does not taste like chicken. Soaked in salt water, smoked with wood chips and dried sheep dung, then…

Nov 21, 2015

Brooklyn’s Booming Firewood Industry

thedailybeast.com

The smell of campfire hangs in the air above the axman—30-year-old Brooklynite Alex Hiller. With a lot of forethought, he wields an 8-pound maul through timber. “I need this tank top to keep my arms unencumbered, I need this bandana to keep the sweat out of my eyes, I need these boots to protect my…

Nov 21, 2015

Why is so much of design school a waste of time? — Dear Design Student — Medium

deardesignstudent.com

Why is so much of design school a waste of time? Q: My teacher hates everything I make, even though I spend all this time working on it, and gets mad even when I follow his advice. Sometimes designers who are working come to talk to us, but they never get what I’m trying to do. There’s all this…

Nov 17, 2015

How the Motorcycle Jacket Lost Its Cool and Found It Again

nytimes.com

Photo illustration by Mauricio Alejo Out at dinner one recent night, I watched the couple at the next table drift into a moment of ultralight petting. She had on a black leather motorcycle jacket, and he was toying, not quite idly, with the zipper at the cuff of its tapered right sleeve. The chain…

Oct 29, 2015

My Writing Education: A Time Line - The New Yorker

newyorker.com

George Saunders and his wife, Paula, in 1986. February 1986 Tobias Wolff calls my parents’ house in Amarillo, Texas, leaves a message: I’ve been admitted to the Syracuse Creative Writing Program. I call back, holding Back in the World in my hands. For what seems, in chagrined memory, like eighteen…

Oct 27, 2015

Paul Shaw Letter Design » Move Over, Helvetica. Here Comes Trajan.

paulshawletterdesign.com

Move Over, Helvetica. Here Comes Trajan. Note: This text was originally written for the Huffington Post website at their request last February. For some unexplained reason they have never run it. Thus, I am posting it here. Eros (Summer 1962). Cover design by Herb Lubalin. Lettering by Tom Carnase.…

Oct 26, 2015

Break It Open - The Los Angeles Review of Books

lareviewofbooks.org

OCTOBER 17, 2015 The following is a feature article from the summer issue of the Los Angeles Review of Books: Magazine . Click here to get your subscription today. “MY BRAIN IS OPEN,” Paul Erdős announced from a colleague’s doorstep. Five foot six, frail with white hair, a gray jacket, and thick…

Oct 19, 2015

Lars Dalgaard: Build Trust by Daring to Show That You’re Human

nytimes.com

Lars Dalgaard, general partner at the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. Earl Wilson/The New York Times This interview with Lars Dalgaard, general partner at the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz , was conducted and condensed by Adam Bryant. Q. Were you in leadership roles or doing…

Oct 19, 2015

A Very Revealing Conversation With Rihanna

nytimes.com

I DRESSED VERY CAREFULLY for her, the way I would for a good friend, thinking hard about what she likes. What I think she likes. I ordered Uber Black — the highest level of Uber I’ve ridden. The driver said it would be about an hour and a half to Malibu, a long time to resist telling him where I was…

Oct 14, 2015

Why Are Today’s Critics So Defensive?

vulture.com

Photo: Steven Errico/Getty Images I’m always puzzled when people strike a posture of defensiveness about their own taste. It’s reasonable when a book or film or artwork you admire is under attack, but lately we seem to be in an age of ambient anxiety about what it means to enjoy things and whether…

Oct 13, 2015

“I was killed when I was 27”: the curious afterlife of Terence Trent D’Arby

newstatesman.com

Imagine this. You’re 25 years old and your debut album of perfectly polished soul-rock-pop-funk sells one million copies in the first three days of release. It delivers three Top Ten hits, winning you numerous platinum gongs and a Grammy Award, and parachutes you right into the arena of the 1980s…

Oct 10, 2015

My Paradoxical Quest to Build a Personal Brand | The New Republic

newrepublic.com

Illustration by Eric Petersen In 2013, I traveled to Alaska to give a talk to a group of local reporters. The conference organizers had asked me to speak about how journalists can create a “personal brand,” and tantalized by a subsidized vacation in the Alaskan wilderness, I quickly agreed. On the…

Oct 10, 2015

Get AMP’d: Here’s what publishers need to know about Google’s new plan to speed up your website » Nieman Journalism Lab

niemanlab.org

Google unveiled its new plan to speed up the mobile web today — Accelerated Mobile Pages , or AMP — and it’s the latest attempt by a technology company to deal with the problem of the slow mobile web. Facebook has its Instant Articles to make certain news stories load more quickly in an app; Apple…

Oct 9, 2015

The Lonely Efforts to Counteract ISIS’s Mastery of Social Media | MIT Technology Review

technologyreview.com

The two men pecked out messages on opposite sides of the country. “Yes the Islamic State was a fantasy in 2004, now look at it. The U.S. was a fantasy in 1776, now look at it,” the man in Virginia wrote in a Twitter direct message to an online friend in Oregon. The Virginian, who went by various…

Sep 30, 2015

Playing 20 Questions with the Mind: Collaborative Problem Solving by Humans Using a Brain-to-Brain Interface. - PubMed - NCBI

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

NCBI Resources All Resources BioSystems PubChem BioAssay PubChem Compound PubChem Structure Search PubChem Substance All Chemicals & Bioassays Resources... BLAST (Basic Local Alignment Search Tool) BLAST (Stand-alone) E-Utilities GenBank GenBank: BankIt GenBank: Sequin GenBank: tbl2asn Genome…

Sep 29, 2015

The Magic of Untidiness | The Point Magazine

thepointmag.com

I am unpacking my library. The initial author of that line, Walter Benjamin, understood that a book collector’s passion “borders on the chaos of memories.” Had I stuck with Benjamin, I might have gotten on with the long-deferred task of shepherding my books from their basement bunker to the places…

Sep 29, 2015

What Life Is Like for Wives of Trans Women -- The Cut

nymag.com

My Husband Is Now My Wife The spouses of transgender people face their own dramatic transformations—only no one celebrates them. Photographs by Brigitte Lacombe Elizabeth and Diana. Photo: Brigitte Lacombe Elizabeth Miller sat in her living room with her wedding album in her lap. It had been a long…

Sep 27, 2015

Alexandra Lange on craft, making and gender

dezeen.com

Opinion: an exhibition at New York's Museum of Arts and Design about women's role in postwar Modernism highlights the uneasy gender imbalance between craft and industrial design, says Alexandra Lange. The journalists, artists and curators at the press preview for the Museum of Arts and Design's new…

Sep 24, 2015

The World According To Cintra Wilson

thehairpin.com

The World According To Cintra Wilson “Fashion is contagious,” Cintra Wilson said at one point during our phone conversation yesterday, and I paused to write it down because I instinctively agreed even though I was unsure why. Fashion is contagious, but like so many people who think critically about…

Sep 23, 2015

It's not my job to absolve white friends of racism, but it can seem that way | AD Carson

theguardian.com

Our society claims that there is a need to address racism while disavowing that almost anyone is a racist.Photograph: John Moore/Getty Images I t starts like this: in a conversation, in an email, in a private Facebook message or tagged in a Facebook thread, a white friend or acquaintance lays out a…

Sep 22, 2015