Sublime
An inspiration engine for ideas
Landlords were major players in distributing the spoils. They decided who got to live where. And their screening practices (or lack thereof) revealed why crime and gang activity or an area’s civic engagement and its spirit of neighborliness could vary drastically from one block to the next.
Matthew Desmond • Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
Sichuan province. I was posted to a city named Neijiang (Inner River), located on a bend of the Tuo River.
Michael Meyer • The Last Days of Old Beijing: Life in the Vanishing Backstreets of a City Transformed
If a request was rejected, it was worth trying a different office, a different cadre; in a country of such size, there were always other rivers.
Peter Hessler • Other Rivers
I had reason not to be optimistic.
John McPhee • Draft No. 4
Earlier in the century, most people lived on family farms that looked and smelled like rural factories. Survival was a matter of brutally hard labor and lots of kids. Houses were painted once when they were built, if at all; yards were full of garbage and foraging animals; soap was for clothes, not for people. Accelerating growth in the 1840s and 1
... See moreCharles R. Morris • The Tycoons: How Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Jay Gould, and J. P. Morgan Invented the American Supereconomy
You don’t know how lucky you are. You forget,” said the younger man, “I teach fifth grade. I see the fantasy leaching out of them little by little every day. Narrowing its focus. Losing its complexity. Fifth grade, that’s the last year for a lot of them.” He wiped his mouth with his napkin, the motion neat and almost dainty. Then he balled the napk
... See moreMichael Chabon • The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
I couldn’t easily summarize Vincent’s politics, other than to say that they were individualistic.