longreads.com

My Absolutely Chaotic Adventures at Sea During the Summer of 1984

Printer wrestles with the person his chaotic childhood has trained him to be—and what pieces of himself he can salvage from the wreckage.

3quarksdaily.com

The Hardest Part Of History To Tell Is How It Felt

The tissue was just hanging there, loose and slack. My skin had seemingly doubled in size. It was drooping, deflated. I'd never seen anything like it, until I realized I had. It looked like the leg of my grandfather when he was 90 years old.

3quarksdaily.com

On the Joys of Collecting Junk

My friends, being my friends, invariably champion the necessity of objects piling up in my yard.

themarginalian.org

The Kiln and the Quantum of Relationships

Under the extreme pressures of expectation and the high heat of need, something reacts with something, impurities are exposed and bubbles burst, each person activating dormant potencies in the other, so that a distinct third entity comes alive — the dynamic reality of the relationship — incinerating the notion of the individual self as a set of inherent properties, hinting at the relational nature of reality itself.

noahpinion.blog

You are what you consume

But at the end of the day, it's consumption, not production, that defines you as an individual. That might sound like an odd thing to say, especially if you've grown up believing — as my liberal parents taught me — that advertising is a form of mind control that greedy corporations use to force you to consume things you don't really need.

longreads.com

Who Is Black Comedy For?

Black comedy's revolutionary potential is strongest when it ignores the other eyes upon it—or, as Collins puts it, "Black comedy that primarily serves Black audiences." Where Bennett errs, however, is in holding up the era of crossover appeal as the apex of Black comic achievement.

whyisthisinteresting

Friday send: The Wardrobe Edition

I want us to all build wardrobes that make us happy, last a long time, and help us feel more like ourselves.

platformer.news

Spotify takes on its doppelgänger problem

Increasingly, identity is a raw material that scammers, spammers, and even platforms can remix without your permission — unless you show up to claw it back.

jefftweedy

The Long Cut (solo acoustic)

Singing that felt a little bit like communicating with a much younger version of me who was concerned with being able to get better, being legitimate, and wanting to not feel shame about making mistakes. I feel like that song was written to me today, and I felt like I could answer back to that person, "Yeah, you were right to want this and want to try harder."

longreads.com

The Longreads Questionnaire, Featuring Julian Brave NoiseCat

I grew up in a very Indian California, and it was under almost constant siege by a society habituated to extraction, displacement, and dispossession. The Native Bay Area and California that raised me was pocked with these invisible enclaves of Indian community: filled with love and holding on by a thread.

honest-broker.com

The Real Story Behind 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance'

Before the electrodes were attached to his head he'd lost everything tangible: money, property, children; even his rights as a citizen had been taken away from him by order of the court…. What's left now is just fragments: debris, scattered notes, which can be pieced together but which leave huge areas unexplained.

honest-broker.com

The Real Story Behind 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance'

Before the electrodes were attached to his head he'd lost everything tangible: money, property, children; even his rights as a citizen had been taken away from him by order of the court…. I will never know all that was in his head at that time, nor will anyone else. What's left now is just fragments: debris, scattered notes, which can be pieced together but which leave huge areas unexplained.

honest-broker.com

The Real Story Behind 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance'

Before the electrodes were attached to his head he'd lost everything tangible: money, property, children; even his rights as a citizen had been taken away from him by order of the court…I will never know all that was in his head at that time, nor will anyone else.

themarginalian.org

Borges on How to Conquer Time

Time is the substance I am made of. Time is a river which sweeps me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger which destroys me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire which consumes me, but I am the fire.