Zach Weinersmith:

He started as a young man, full of hope, like me. He wanted to be an architect. But then he saw that he could use his math skills to make more money in finance. Slowly but surely he became more acquisitive. He based more of his self image on wealth. The longer he stayed away from his passion, the more money he required to justify ( Read more... )

What will I make of them?

NPR:

But some of his most interesting work has to do with power dynamics. He says that by analyzing language you can easily tell who among two people has power in a relationship, and their relative social status. “It’s amazingly simple,” Pennebaker says, “Listen to the relative use of the word ‘I’.”

What you find is completely different from what ( Read more... )

Magician: “A moment of weakness.”
Assistant: “More like a lifetime of weakness revealed in a moment.”
- Steve Martin, Patter for the Floating Lady

Flammlachs. Unfortunately flames (of burning wood) are, as the name suggests, an essential ingredient in its preparation (= “open-fire salmon”), which consigns it to being a lamentably rare treat. It is pure bliss… nothing like fried or simmered, which tend to dry and harden… no, it cooks juicy and tender inside, melting when you bite, with a thin ( Read more... )

This is one temperamental beast to wrangle.

phunniemee, in a thread about Craigslist tips:

Oh god, and this is going to sound SO STUPID, but it works.

Do you have a nice bowl? Like a really nice bowl? One that you’d put fruit or something in if you had to pretend like you were a fancy person? Pull it out and fill it with brightly colored fruits (bananas, oranges, apples, etc) and put it in ( Read more... )

Damian Conway:

Arriving after dark in NYC is a fascinating experience for a small-continent lad like myself. Seeing the lights of urban development stretching unbroken to the horizon is not particularly unusual, until you remember you’re in an aircraft and that horizon is several hundred kilometers away.

It was early when I arrived, just opened, and empty. I had the choice of any table, so I took a large one and made it mine - set the other chairs aside and so on, made room for myself. I ate in quiet in a wide open space, to the distant chatter of the waiters. As I finished eating and got ready to work, the first guests started to trickle in. By ( Read more... )

I existed in suspension between train rides.