February 2012
2 posts
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January 2012
13 posts
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All the Cigarettes I Never Smoked
Photo: stevendepolo/Flickr
My friend Barry was seriously trying to give up his smoking habit, and contacted the New York City health department to apply for free nicotine patches from a program called NYC Quits. He had exhausted his supply of patches and asked me if I would apply for the program to get him another free package. I don’t smoke. Well, except for this one time a few months...
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Dudes Who Love Joan Didion
“The second reason [Stephen] Metcalf was left flat by this line of reasoning is that he isn’t a woman, and to really love Joan Didion—to have been blown over by things like the smell of jasmine and the packing list she kept by her suitcase—you have to be female.” — Caitlin Flanagan, The Atlantic, Jan. 10, 2012
Fellow Atlantic staff writer Conor Friedersdorf disagrees.
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“All the Single Ladies” belongs to a popular type of female journalism: carefully researched, sophisticated, subtly reactionary, each sentence so alluringly polished that you can almost forget it’s a 10,000-word article about how tough it is not to have a boyfriend. I’ve come to think of it as the What To Do About The Nanny genre.
I’m really glad Sady wrote this because I really did...
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December 2011
11 posts
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Longreads: Mike Dang: My Top 5 Longreads of 2011 →
longreads:
Mike Dang is editor of Bundle and managing editor for Longreads. See his longreads page here.
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I’ve read a lot of great longreads this year, but I know that a longread is truly special when I become its biggest cheerleader. I’ll casually slip the story into conversations, teasing…
Oh, I guess it’s my turn to point out things I’ve read and liked.
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Conversations with mom: Balk edition
Mom: Mike, your father and I are dying.
Me: WHAT!?
Mom: Oh, I mean, your father and I are are getting old. We're getting old and you don't visit us enough.
Me: *FACEPALM*
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Longreads: Sady Doyle: My Top 5 Longreads of 2011 →
longreads:
Sady Doyle is a writer and the proprietor of Tiger Beatdown.
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There is no slogan more misunderstood, or more widely abused, than “the personal is political.” This phrase was one of the most transformative ideas to emerge from second-wave feminism, or from the 20th century. It’s the…
This is a must-read.
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WatchDude.
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November 2011
15 posts
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The many deaths of Michael Dang
Logan came to visit me not too long ago, and after hours of catching up at my place, we sat silently on a crosstown bus on our way to meet a friend for dinner. “What are you thinking about, Mike?” she asked after some time. I shook away my thoughts and paused before deciding to tell her the actual thing that I was thinking about. Do people always tell the truth when asked such a...
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Longreads: Longreads Teams Up with Read It Later →
longreads:
Hi everybody. I wanted to share some quick personal news: In addition to my work on Longreads, I have joined Read It Later as an editorial advisor.
When I started Longreads two and a half years ago, one of the first people I met was a thoughtful, brilliant developer in San Francisco named…
When terrific things get terrific-ker.
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So, a few things. 1) There’s a difference between using an anonymous source and completely relying on them; this story would have been helped by the presence of at least one name. This obviously does not invalidate the story, but it does signal to me as a reader that I should proceed with caution.2) The reason you can, of course, get away with these anonymously-sourced attacks is that...
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October 2011
16 posts
“After learning how much Kardashian and Humphries were set to get paid for...”
– I think I’m becoming one of those birther people.
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“We should not have a system where you can essentially take out insurance on your...”
– me
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Conversations with mom: OWS edition
Mom: Hello, is this my son?
Me: Hey mom. Why do you always ask that when you call? You are calling my phone. If it picks up, I am the one picking it up.
Mom: Sometimes other people pick up other people's phones.
Me: Nobody does that. Only crazy people do that.
Mom: I do that. Does that make me crazy?
Me: I'm too smart to try to respond to that question. Pass!
Mom: I was just calling to say hi and to make sure you weren't occupying Wall Street.
Me: I'm not, but I did go down there to check it out.
Mom: Don't do that! The protesters will kill you!
Me: It's fine!
Mom: What if someone had a bomb?
Me: Um, they don't have bombs.
Mom: You sure? One hundred percent sure?
Me: Ninety-nine percent sure! (Beat. And then nothing from my mother.) I'm pretty sure these people don't have bombs. Most of them are probably just like me. And I don't have any bombs.
Mom: But what about terrorists? Detonating a bomb with so many people around is something a terrorist might do.
Me: That never even crossed my mind, and I can't believe you are imagining this nightmarish scenario.
Mom: That's what moms do. Create these scenarios so that you don't do things that will get you killed.