Sublime
An inspiration engine for ideas
as Weygand writes, “the quintessential aristocrats of mendicancy” (a fancier-sounding and less racially loaded version, perhaps, of the contemporary image of the “welfare queen”).
Andrew Leland • The Country of the Blind: A Memoir at the End of Sight
It made for an unnerving work environment: a colleague might be there one day and gone the next and you had no idea why.
John Carreyrou • Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup
If Judy Blume was the Pied Piper, as the Christian Science Monitor wrote, then the Reagan administration and its champions were trying to barricade the gates to Hamelin. But they didn’t account for the fact that making a big show of locking her out only amplified her music.
Rachelle Bergstein • The Genius of Judy: How Judy Blume Rewrote Childhood for All of Us
Still, a rising tide of bullshit soils all boats.
David Graeber • Bullshit Jobs: A Theory
Angelenos nervously wondered who really ran their city: Mayor Bradley or the megalomaniac Chief of Police, Daryl Gates?
Robert Morrow • City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles (Essential Mike Davis)
In fact, it felt weird and empty when there wasn’t anyone to be furious about. The days between shamings felt like days picking at fingernails, treading water.” Web 2.0 had curdled; its organizing principle was shifting.
Jia Tolentino • Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion
Lumpenism: the childhood syndrome of intellectuals.