Category: Posts
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Päntsdrunk, baby box, Moomin, and Finland’s other official emojis
God bless Finland, my ancestral homeland. First, there’s the new book Pantsdrunk (Kalsarikanni): The Finnish Path to Relaxation (Drinking at Home Alone in your Underwear) by Miska Rantanen. From the publisher: Danes have hygge. Swedes have lagom. But the Finnish secret to contentment is faster and easier—”kalsarikänni” or pantsdrunk—drinking at home, alone, in your underwear.…
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Abolish the apostrophe!
I came out against irregular superlatives. I lobbied for the interrobang. Now throw this on my personal 2018 platform: Abolish the apostrophe. James Harbeck laid out the case against them a few years ago in an article that, to make his point, lacks apostrophes: Why are so many people so confused by apostrophes? Because they…
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Denver Crush Walls
Got to visit Denver for the second time this year for a friend’s wedding. While there another Denver friend brought me on a walking tour of the Crush Walls urban art festival in the RiNo neighborhood, where we saw some really cool graffiti:
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Media of the moment
An ongoing series on books, movies, and music I’ve encountered recently. Truman by David McCullough. I’m not saying some parts aren’t skimmable, but I am saying this 1,000-page book (not including endnotes and index) didn’t feel that long and indeed deserves the Pulitzer Prize for Biography it received. That’s a testament to both McCullough and Truman,…
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Go Pack Horse Librarians, Go!
One podcast that survived my recent purge is The Keepers, a series from The Kitchen Sisters and NPR. The series features: “stories of activist archivists, rogue librarians, curators, collectors and historians. Keepers of the culture and the cultures and collections they keep. Guardians of history, large and small, protectors of the free flow of information…
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The happiest typewriter on earth
My sister-in-law picked this up from a baby resale for me. And by me I mean my future child: I’ve trotted out my real typewriters for my nieces and nephew, but they are still too young to use them correctly. This will be a great gateway drug to the typist lifestyle. Next step: replace all…
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One nation under The Rock
Magazine mashups from GQ, June 2017. More here.
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The Opposition in the WCTU archives
The Frances Willard House Museum & Archives has an extensive collection of books, articles, reference material, and other educational media on topics of all kinds. I’ve looked through hundreds of books and boxes in the WCTU archives, which hold some material as old as Willard herself. Among these titles are subjects you’d expect: medical treatises,…
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Comello’s Kitchen
Here are four things I recommend to make your time in the kitchen better. Onion goggles. My wife and I laughed at these when we saw them in a store, because they are laughable. It took a few passes before we gave them a try, and now I’m mad at myself for all that pointless,…
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Lane Greene’s language litany
Lane Greene, from his forthcoming book Talk on the Wild Side: Language is not so much logical as it is useful. It is not composed; it is improvised. It is not well behaved; it is resourceful. It is not delicate; it is hardy. It is not always efficient, but its redundancy makes it robust. It…
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Bookception
I’m in the middle of David McCullough’s Truman, a 1,000-page biography (not including the end-matter). Given its girth I figured I’d have to take a break at some point. Sure enough, page 500 rolls around and I get a notification that Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind is finally ready for me at the library.…
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Grant me a Roosevelt biopic
Why didn’t anyone tell me there are Ulysses Grant and Theodore Roosevelt biopics in the works from Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese? And that Leonardo DiCaprio is attached to star in both of them? The Hollywood Reporter asked a bunch of historians whether Leo should play Grant or Roosevelt. Looking at their pictures above I’d…
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Psychedelics and the glow of truth
Michael Pollan’s The Botany of Desire, one of my favorite narrative nonfiction books, tells the story of four common plants and the human impulses they satisfy: the apple (sweetness), the tulip (beauty), marijuana (intoxication), and the potato (control). His new book is How to Change Your Mind: The New Science of Psychedelics. Probably because I’ve never done…