Solid Food is for Closers, and Other Friday Stories
My sweethearts, would you believe me if I told you I had an actual editorial calendar for this week (GASP!) and was all ready to wow you with my planning prowess when at 3:30 am on Wednesday I was felled by a stomach flu / food poisoning / vengeance from Xenu unlike anything humans have ever experienced? And per usual when I’m sick, I could only use the computer to do this:
(no but seriously, it took me 40 hours in to be able to looks at screens - ANY screens - again.)
You know, us Millennials get a whole lotta shit for ruining things like napkins and casual dining chains like Chilli’s (and man, can I tell you that Business Insider is riding that “Millennials ruin…” SEO like the wind.) But as we in California watch as the middle class dissolves around us, can we all just step back and remember How the baby boomers — not millennials — screwed America. That’s right: a book entitled A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America argues that Boomers (in the words of Vox,) “have committed “generational plunder.” Like Jon Lovett, I look forward to Boomer hate mail, especially from my own family ;)
While Governor Jerry Brown was tweet-goading POTUS, his dog had a birthday and yes, she is goddamned marvelous (ht Stefana)
And on my reading list this weekend:
By Leslie Jamison: Does Recovery Kill Great Writing? OK, this is cheating a bit because I’ve already read it, but I’m probably going to read it again because parts of it had me crying so hard I couldn’t see the words on the screen. This is a beautiful meditation on the anxiety of sobriety, and what happens when you quit using that substance that distracts you from your own personal “tedium… claustrophobia and repetition." It’s devastatingly good.
By Andrew Marantz: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet. With a subhead of “How do we fix life online without limiting free speech?” you know this one’s going to be right up my rights-lovin’ but hoping women can exist in an online space where Nazis won’t harass them into deleting their accounts.
By Sam Dolnick: The Man Who Knew Too Little. Everyone’s already hate-read and think-pieced the shit out of this story of a human who consciously avoids the news, but there’s something to be said for not being at the beck and call of the never-ending news cycle. You know, like I am. After all, as Felix Salmon writes, Following The News Keeps You Informed, But It's Probably Bad For You.
And finally, this cow thinks it’s a dog and now I’m cry-laughing into my first coffee in 72 hours. Thank you Dan for today’s good good news.
I love you all. Be kind to one another.