May 2013
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“Deadly giant snails have been found in Houston. Quick — saunter for your lives!”
– STEPHEN COLBERT, The Colbert Report (via inothernews)
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“It causes me a certain amount of pleasure today watching the New York Times...”
– Marc Andreessen, speaking at the Milken Institute Global Conference on Monday.
It was the same talk in which Peter Thiel predicted that Twitter would out-live the New York Times — which obviously had a lot of folks in the media industry up-in-arms. I’m sure the Times will continue to exist in some...
April 2013
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Junot Diaz on Men Who Write About Women
The Atlantic: It sounds like you're saying that literary "talent" doesn't inoculate a writer—especially a male writer—from making gross, false misjudgments about gender. You'd think being a great writer would give you empathy and the ability to understand people who are unlike you—whether we're talking about gender or another category. But that doesn't seem to be the case.
Junot Diaz: I think that unless you are actively, consciously working against the gravitational pull of the culture, you will predictably, thematically, create these sort of fucked-up representations. Without fail. The only way not to do them is to admit to yourself [that] you're fucked up, admit to yourself that you're not good at this shit, and to be conscious in the way that you create these characters. It's so funny what people call inspiration. I have so many young writers who're like, "Well I was inspired. This was my story." And I'm like, "OK. Sir, your inspiration for your stories is like every other male's inspiration for their stories: that the female is only in there to provide sexual service." There comes a time when this mythical inspiration is exposed for doing exactly what it's truthfully doing: to underscore and reinforce cultural structures, or I'd say, cultural asymmetry.
speak the truth
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evanfleischer: Those who are freely skating... →
evanfleischer:
Those who are freely skating towards over-the-top praise for Thatcher clearly aren’t aware of the history that exists or some of the things she did. While I know there’s a degree of base-line sympathy involved in any public figure dying — and this is a clause I know several left-leaning Britons…
ditto
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March 2013
13 posts
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“Let the record show: that you can be a United States senator for 21 years, you...”
– Rachel Maddow, discussing Senator Ted Cruz’s condescending lecture to Senator Dianne Feinstein during a Senate debate on gun control. March 14, 2013. (via mamaatheist)
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“Do what you feel in your heart to be right, for you’ll be criticized anyway.”
– -Eleanor Roosevelt, NYC native First Lady, who now has a monument dedicated to her in Riverside Park.
Share your quotes during Women’s History Month using the hashtag #NYCWomen.
(via nycgov)
true that
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February 2013
17 posts
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Maxistentialism: Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo: When... →
maxistentialist:
Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo:
When Josef Stalin was on his deathbed he called in two likely successors, to test which one of the two had a better knack for ruling the country. He ordered two birds to be brought in and presented one bird to each of the two candidates. He then instructed each of…
Not sure if it’s true, but a great story non the less.
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“During the act of reading engaging fiction, we can lose all sense of time. By...”
– New study by Dutch researchers confirms previous theories that reading fiction makes you a better person by expanding your capacity for empathy (via explore-blog)
Preach it.
January 2013
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