February 2012
42 posts
Play
Play
“American economic and cultural systems that work very well in terms of selling people products and keeping the economy thriving do not work as well when it comes to educating children or helping us help each other know how to live and to be happy—if that word means anything … clearly it means something different from, ‘whatever I want to do … I want to take this cup and throw it right now, I have every right to—I should.’ We see it with children; that’s not happiness, that feeling of having to obey every impulse and gratify every desire seems to me to be a strange kind of slavery.”
— David Foster Wallace
Play
0:00
“The problem is that we have these new capabilities (i.e., drones), and Obama and Bush have established the precedent of a “don’t ask, don’t tell” approach to warfare that keeps most of what we are doing in the dark. My fear is that future presidents are going to find those capabilities and that precedent very hard to resist. When hammers (drones?) are cheap, it’s tempting to buy a lot of them and you’ll tend to see a world full of nails. Drug lords in Mexico causing trouble? Let’s just take ‘em out. Tired of Hugo Chavez and his shenanigans? We’ve got an app for that.”
—Stephen Walt
Henry Miller's Writing Commandments →
listsofnote.com
- Work on one thing at a time until finished.
- Start no more new books, add no more new material to “Black Spring.”
- Don’t be nervous. Work calmly, joyously, recklessly on whatever is in hand.
- Work according to Program and not according to mood. Stop at the appointed time!
- When you can’t create you can work.
- Cement a little every day, rather than add new fertilizers.
- Keep human! See people, go places, drink if you feel like it.
- Don’t be a draught-horse! Work with pleasure only.
- Discard the Program when you feel like it—but go back to it next day. Concentrate. Narrow down. Exclude.
- Forget the books you want to write. Think only of the book you are writing.
- Write first and always. Painting, music, friends, cinema, all these come afterwards.
Play
Hey do you guys also make charts, or can you suggest someone who makes good ones? Thanks!
Yes and yes. Just let me know what kind of chart you are looking for.
“I am what is called a sex-positive feminist. Or maybe a radical feminist, or, wait–this one’s cool: an anarcha-feminist! Which is to say that I don’t give a f— about your labels, I just want to hear the true voices of women self-expressing–smart ones, stupid ones, ugly ones, beautiful ones, good ones, bad ones, fat ones, thin ones, all of it–until the profound silence that has resounded throughout history is filled with a healthy chorus coming from our side of the aisle.”
—Liz Phair on “Why Lana Del Rey Scares Rock’s Boys Club,” in this weekend’s Wall Street Journal Speakeasy column (via sarahspy)
“fecundity breeds familiarity”
—Amy Davidson, on children in politics
