By the time I had a few thousand followers on Twitter, people began to refer to me as a “public figure.” While mine was a paltry fame compared to literally thousands of cishet white men in the industry, that type of visibility for women is far rarer due to sexism, misogyny, online harassment, the way […]
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Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
The True Story of the G.I. Bill
Three months later, on October 27, 1943, Roosevelt turned his idea into a concrete proposal, formally asking Congress to enact legislation that would finance one year of educational or vocational training for all who served in World War II. Those deemed to have academic potential would be eligible for support for four years. “For many, […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
The Pros and Cons of Praising Children
At Aeon, Carlin Flora looks at the pros and cons of praising children and what psychologists say to avoid: Over-praising children (You’re amazing!) can make them feel your standards are very high, causing the fear that they won’t be able to keep living up to them, say the psychologists Jennifer Henderlong Corpus of Reed College […]
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Anxiety, Depression and OCD: Inside America's Zoos
Zoos contact Virga when animals develop difficulties that vets and keepers cannot address, and he is expected to produce tangible, observable results. Often, the animals suffer from afflictions that haven’t been documented in the wild and appear uncomfortably close to our own: He has treated severely depressed snow leopards, brown bears with obsessive-compulsive disorder and […]
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Trust Us: The Ethics of Our Automated Future
“You should presume that someday, we will be able to make machines that can reason, think and do things better than we can,” Google co-founder Sergey Brin said in a conversation with Khosla Ventures founder Vinod Khosla. To someone as smart as Brin, that comment is as normal as sipping on his super-green juice, but […]
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Does Writer's Block Exist?
At Pacific Standard, Ted Scheinman talks to his favorite writers about how they deal with writer’s block. Some step away from their work and return to it later, while others look to their favorite writers for inspiration. One of the most interesting responses came from The Awl’s Choire Sicha, who says he hasn’t had to […]
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On the Mistakes We Make as New Writers
In the upcoming Sunday Book Review, Anna Holmes discusses some of the rookie mistakes she made as a new writer: I regret many things, including, but not limited to: Inserting myself into reported narratives where I didn’t belong. Crafting long, complex sentences that I thought made me sound intelligent and sophisticated. Assuming that aggressive, masculine-sounding […]
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The Pre-Internet Small Town
Mary Karr, in The Paris Review, on her small-town roots.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
The Power of 'Confessional' Writing
Leslie Jamison, author of The Empathy Exams, a book of essays, writes in the Guardian about the power of confessional writing: Confession doesn’t just allow – it incites. Someone tweeted about my essays: “After reading this book, I want to write about my hidden pain until my fingers bleed, and then I want to write […]
Posted inNonfiction, Reading List
Taylor Swift Is a Music Business Genius: A Reading List
Taylor Swift has done it again, this time getting Apple to change its streaming deal with artists. Here’s a collection of stories on how the pop star runs the music industry. * * * 1. The Future of Music Is a Love Story (Taylor Swift, Wall Street Journal) In an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, […]