Alex Burns

It would make sense to say that, despite appearances, third-order vanity ratchets up the neuroticism, rather than quiets it down. But what I find most interesting about third-order vanity is that often its most prolific purveyors seem so lost in their role that they’re almost unaware they’re performing at all.

It felt like proof of something I’ve often sensed but have been unable to express, which is that trying too hard to control people’s impression of you is an insult to both your humanity and theirs.

“We live in an age of discovery,” Adams’s sister wrote to her, “One of our acquaintances discovered that a full grown child may be produced in less than five months!”

She goes on to explain that the husband of the new mother in question was out of town nine months earlier ... suggesting this baby is not, in fact, a miracle of the age of discovery... See more

Whether it be sex with exes, dirty rhyme schemes, or being hot, a clown, or the other woman, Carpenter’s surprisingly long career has been seriously devoted to never taking things too seriously. With an SNL appearance on the horizon, and her airy track looking to be the inescapable song of summer — on Friday, May 17, Carpenter released an “Espresso... See more

one of my favorite Ken Liushort stories reflects on the narrator’s attempt to remember his departed wife. He writes:

I can’t remember the dress she wore or what she had bought; I can’t remember what we did for the rest of that afternoon; I can’t re-create the exact timbre of her voice or the precise shapes of her features, the lines at the corners

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Whenever you can in life, optimize for independence rather than pay. If you have independence and you’re accountable on your output, as opposed to your input—that’s the dream.