December 7 – 11, 2015 The week begins on a dark note. Bad things are governed by quantum entanglement, I maintain: one bad thing can set up a force field, out of which spring subsequent bad things. Update: the washing machine is making screaming sounds and the laptop’s cursor works intermittently. The dark note gets […]
Month: December 2015
I recently wrote a story for The Atlantic about a question that I have been obsessed with for a long time: How many photographs am I in, in the world? It’s something that has bugged me for years, and before you chalk this up to pure narcissism, here’s a fact: Facebook can now identify you […]
The very first blog post I wrote as an LWON regular, in August, 2013, was about singing in a group–how singers’ hearts speed up and slow down in unison, as we breathe in and slowly, tunefully, exhale. At the time I’d just sung on a recording that included the 16th-century motet “Haec Dies,” by William […]
It’s not my imagination. Even gmail is telling me that my email is out of control, threatening that if I don’t dump some of my tens of thousands of emails (or pay them money) I will be “unable to send or receive emails.” That’s starting to sound appealing. I’ve caught myself fantasizing about creating an auto reply: […]
A couple of weeks ago, my 20-year-old cousin put his father’s service revolver to his head and pulled the trigger. His parents and one of his brothers were home at the time. They heard the shot and ran to his room. His mother and brother tried to stop the bleeding while his father performed CPR. […]
My husband had surgery and complications and is recovering slowly, entailing a lot of medical appointments and difficult information and difficult decisions and long absences from home and office. Home and office have taken advantage of this to do bad things. You might think this increase in badness is due to psychology or coincidence; it’s […]
November 30 – December 4, 2015 Cassie provides a flashback for every parent, remembering the ultra-marathon that is early infancy. Christie marks her birthdays by exercising the privilege of a healthy body and honoring those who didn’t get to live this long. Erik is a father! His birth story involves bribing a cop and rushing through […]
This post was a response to a column called “Freelancing Sucks,” which was published just about a year ago. Well, freelancing still sucks—and we still need freelancers. Last month, Fast Company senior editor Reyhan Harmanci published a column called “Freelancing Sucks.” She wrote: Everyone knows this: the freelancers, who are forced to beg for months-late checks; the editors, […]