This past Friday evening, when I heard that the 195 nations represented at the COP21 climate meeting in Paris had reached a draft agreement, I was pleasantly surprised. On Saturday morning, when I saw the stronger-than-forecast draft text, I was shocked. And on Saturday afternoon, when the final agreement was signed—signed!—I was thrilled. The Paris agreement won’t singlehandedly head off the worst […]
Miscellaneous
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 […]
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: […]
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, […]
At 1:11 AM on Monday the 23rd, I woke up in my hotel room to the sound of my cell phone beeping softly. It had been a rough couple days. I was in Los Cabos, Mexico waiting for a weather window to take a research vessel out to a series of islands off the coast. […]
