Author: Chad
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The point of coffee is to suffer
I can’t stop laughing at this comic: I started drinking coffee after college, and when I did I went straight to black, sometimes with sugar. It took me that long because my taste buds weren’t ready for the bitterness of black coffee. And yet when I did try to start drinking it regularly, it never…
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Magazine Mashups: Hunger after cyberattacks
Wired, January 2017 issue. (See more magazine mashups.)
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Jumping for Jordy
Sad to hear Jordy Nelson will no longer be a Packer. He’s been a highlight machine, connecting with Rodgers for a franchise-record 65 touchdowns over 10 years. It’s hard to pick a favorite Jordy play, but one fond memory of mine is of his toe-tapping, game-tying TD on 4th and goal against Atlanta in 2010.…
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Which movie changed you?
On Being—a top-5 podcast for me—has a new offshoot podcast called This Movie Changed Me, with “one fan talking about the transformative power of one movie.” So far they’ve featured Star Wars: A New Hope, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and You’ve Got Mail. It made me think about what mine would be. The quick and easy…
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Magazine Mashups: Google searches its fortune
My library has shelves of free discarded magazines, so I grabbed a few that looked visually interesting and thought I’d have some fun with collage. And I really did. These are all from the February 2017 issue of Fortune. (See more magazine mashups.)
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A Moomin and his typewriter
Life goals, courtesy of Moominpapa: (h/t Austin Kleon) Steve K has a nice write-up about the wide-carriage Olympia on display at Moomin World in Finland that’s meant to stand in for Moominpappa’s typewriter. It does look like a wide carriage in the above illustration, though in this one it’s of normal size:
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Dictionary on display
This morning I looked at my bookshelves and noticed my three volumes of Webster’s Third New International Dictionary. I haven’t cracked them open since I got them from Half Price Books a few months ago. I was so excited to get them so I’d have an accessible and thorough way to tap into the dictionary’s…
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Music of the Moment – International Women’s Day edition
An ongoing series on music I’ve encountered recently. Today, in honor of International Women’s Day, here’s an all-female list of music I’ve been really enjoying. “Ain’t That Fine” by I’m With Her, See You AroundThe soulful powers of Aoife O’Donovan, Sara Watkins, and Sarah Jarosz combined have become I’m With Her (which I’ve learned pre-dated Hillary’s presidential…
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Refer Madness: A String of Beeps
Refer Madness spotlights strange, intriguing, or otherwise noteworthy questions I encounter at the library reference desk. I was on the phone with a patron when I heard it: that incessant beep the copier makes when something goes wrong. Once I finished with the patron on the phone, I went over to see what was the matter. This time it was…
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A skeptic’s ‘Glance at the Public Libraries’ of 1928, from H.L. Mencken’s ‘American Mercury’
Watch out, world: we’ve got ourselves a 90-year-old hot take! In the June 1928 issue of The American Mercury, a periodical edited by the famous journalist H.L. Mencken, there’s an article by Fletcher Pratt called “A Glance At The Public Libraries”. I stumbled upon the issue while processing material at the Frances Willard House Museum.…
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Ace Ventura: Reader
“Fiction can be fun, but I find the reference section much more enlightening.” — Ace Ventura: Pet Detective I was into the Ace Ventura movies to an embarrassing degree as a tween. They entered my consciousness and comic sensibility at the perfect time. I quoted them often. There’s even home video of me doing a pretty good…
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Lincoln’s letter to Grant: ‘You were right, and I was wrong’
This letter from President Lincoln to Major General Ulysses Grant in July 1863 might be the last documented instance of a president apologizing for anything: My dear General I do not remember that you and I ever met personally. I write this now as a grateful acknowledgment for the almost inestimable service you have done…
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Reading serendipitously
In an interview, Sven Birkerts talks about how serendipity guides his reading: Any good book will, in the manner of a pool-table bumper, send you angling off to another, and that to another, on and on. The trails are not predictable, they really are serendipitous, but not in the manner of Pandora (“If you liked…
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Black Panther
So, did it meet my expectations? Definitely. I can’t believe writer-director Ryan Coogler is only 31, and that Michael B. Jordan (also 31) has been in so many great roles already. I couldn’t help noticing the similarities to Wonder Woman. Hotly anticipated origin stories of beloved but neglected characters, both featuring hidden utopias, badass bands of…
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Wendell Berry on education in the presence of fear
In a speech given right after September 11, Wendell Berry kept his focus on the long-term concerns of a society and the principles of a proper education: The complexity of our present trouble suggests as never before that we need to change our present concept of education. Education is not properly an industry, and its…
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Trump’s Razor
Trump is either hiding something so threatening to himself, or he’s criminally incompetent to be commander in chief. It is impossible yet to say which explanation for his behavior is true, but it seems highly likely that one of these scenarios explains Trump’s refusal to respond to Russia’s direct attack on our system — a…
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New font based on Lithuania’s Act of Independence
Eimantas Paškonis made a beautiful new font based on the manuscript of the Act of Independence of Lithuania, passed in 1918: The whole project took more than 6 months. First of all, a high-resolution scan of the Act of Independence of Lithuania had to be obtained from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Then the person who…
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1946 Olympia typewriter vs. 2012 iPad – who ya got?
Matt Thomas, via Submitted For Your Perusal, spotlights an interesting contrast between two New York Times stories in the same week. Exhibit #1, from a brief feature on Danielle Steel: After all these years, Steel continues to use the same 1946 Olympia typewriter she bought used when working on her first book. “I am utterly, totally and faithfully…
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At the corner of ‘84 Charing Cross Road’ and Typewriter Street
A stately British bookseller and an American writer exchange letters across the pond? Sounds like a cozy English romance novel to me. Turns out 84, Charing Cross Road is neither a novel nor a romance, but a collection of actual letters from over 20 years of correspondence, and it’s delightful. Frank Doel, one of the booksellers…