Two lengthy, extremely well written profiles worth your time if you’re the least bit interested in (1) North Korea and/or (2) marketing.
1. The Untold Story of Otto Warmbier, American Hostage. Unfunny throughout.
2. How Goop’s Haters Made Gwyneth Paltrow’s Company Worth $250 Million. Very funny in places.
My nephew, D.J. Byrnes, has left his job as an Ohio State football writer (ElevenWarriors.com) to run for the 80th District of the Ohio state legislature.
DJ is way more progressive than the district, so I suspect he’s a longshot, but I’m proud of him for giving it a go.
He’s a smart, sarcastic, humorous person who wants to make a difference in his neighbor’s lives. Win or lose, I trust he’ll find ways to do that.
Why I’m Running
Jul 15, 2018
I am running because people like me aren’t supposed to seek political office. No fancy degrees hang on my walls. No opulent suits hang in my closets. I have no connections with corporations, energy companies, or shadowy networks of deep-pocketed donors.
My friends say I must be crazy to run. The absurd toxicity has poisoned our political process and pushed capable, everyday people to the sidelines. But no longer.
This fight isn’t about Democrat vs. Republican, or Left vs. Right. It’s about regular people organizing to eradicate the plunderbund that seeks to strip us of our dignity, health care, and wages.
I plan to take my pro-worker message to every corner of the district—including ruby red Darke County. I am going to take it to churches, fast food restaurants, county fairs, and gun ranges. Only donations from individuals and labor unions will fuel this campaign.
As the last three decades have shown, new faces on old politics won’t solve our problems. It’s time for Ohio to operate for the many, not the few. I am the Swamp’s worst nightmare because I cannot be bought, sold, or traded. Lobbyists and corporate shills need not darken my doorstep if their business does not benefit the hard-working Ohioans that fuel the 80th district.
Together, we will end corporate tax giveaways and create new revenue streams to invest in our district and bring new industries and jobs.
In solidarity,
D.J. Byrnes
Apparently, from his picture, in addition to healthcare for all and guaranteed living wages, it looks like he’s going to bring mountains and mountain lakes to the district. How kickass is that?! D.J., be careful at the gun ranges and good luck come November. I’m pulling for you.
1. Jordan Spieth laughs off “very British” haircut. Dude seems totally unaffected by his fame. Personable and grounded. Now if he can just get the flat stick heated up again.
2. Don’t ban scooters. Redesign streets. Related, I want one of these (the Plus to be specific).
3. No more free food for Facebook employees. Hope they are alright.
4. They don’t own homes. They don’t have kids. Why Millennials are plant addicts.
“Everyone made fun of me because I was sleeping on an air mattress and buying plants. But having living things to care for soothed me.”
“They don’t come in and buy $300 pots unless they are actors. They buy a lot of succulents, hanging plants and airplants.”
5. 1 Hen, 76 Ducklings. Call me old fashioned, but I think if you’re going to have a baby, you should take care of it yourself.
Especially for seasoned citizens.
When you talk to Grandma and Papa and they hold the camera in between them but that means you’re just talking to a lamp 😂
And from twitter:
No, not about how to properly load the dishwasher, I’m very right about that.
I was wrong about the merits of Positive Psychology, a newish subfield of psychology dedicated to the study of happiness or “subjective well-being”. When I read the literature, I believed it was based upon solid social science. Ruth Whippman taught me otherwise.
As referenced in Michael Schien’s subtly titled Forbes piece, “Positive Psychology is Garbage”, Barbara Ehrenreich does the same in her book Bright-Sided: How Positive Thinking Is Undermining America.
Writing in Forbes, Schien explains Seligman’s success, the pseudo-intellectual founder of the movement:
“When describing his concepts, Seligman uses big words about statistics, mathematical equations, and empirical data. For most of us, this serves as the equivalent of a doctor’s white coat—it seems authoritative, so we don’t question it.”
Guilty as charged. Later, he adds:
“It’s a lesson you would do well to follow. When trying to get people to pay you for your ideas, present them in terms that have the whiff of science whenever possible. Equations. Data. Statistical analysis. Remember, it’s not that the science itself actually matters, it’s the appearance of science that counts.”
I’m left believing happiness is partly the result of being born to happy parents. Other things that tip the balance from despair to joy include a good night’s sleep, a few close friends, healthy food, sunshine, art, physical activity, and socially redeeming work.
But without equations, data, and statistical analysis, I don’t expect anyone to pay my list any attention.
1. Did you like The Brady Bunch? Do you have $1.885 million?
2. Attention drivers. Highway 1 is now open.
“After 17 months and more than $100 million replacing a damaged bridge and rebuilding the highway in two locations, drivers can once again skirt the western edge of the continent, forever burnished by wind, rain, waves and tide.”
Props to the much maligned public sector.
3. No PressingPauser would ever stereotype professional basketball players just because of their outward appearance, but just in case, there’s this.
4. If I ever suffer temporary insanity and pay $250 for a pair of running shoes, they damn well better make me (a lot) faster.
“Compared with typical training shoes, the Vaporflys are believed to wear out quickly: Some runners have said they lose their effectiveness after 100 miles or so.”
$2.50 per mile? As Millennials like to say, hahahahaha.
5. Forget a Fast Car, Creativity is the New Midlife Cure. Right on. I hope that means superficial, materialistic lowlifes like me can score a pre-owned Porsche for less.
Near the very end of Claire Cain Miller’s New York Times story, “When Wives Earn More than Husbands, Neither Partner Likes to Admit It”, there’s a powerful illustration of why academic writing often sucks.
Consider two of the last few sentences. First Cain Miller’s clear, specific, easily comprehensible one:
“. . . . Women who outearned their husbands were more likely to seek jobs beneath their potential, they found, and to do significantly more housework and child care than their husbands — perhaps to make their husbands feel less threatened.”
Immediately followed by Marianne Bertrand’s, a University of Chicago Business professor, attempting to communicate the exact same idea:
“‘When the gender norm is violated, there is some compensating behavior to try to undo some of the utility loss experienced by the husband.”
That contrast is the problem of academic writing in a nutshell.
Bertrand’s use of more sophisticated vocabulary, “gender norm is violated”, “compensating behavior”, and “utility loss” muddies more than it illuminate’s Cain Miller’s previous point. It would be nice if doctoral economics programs, no make that doctoral programs of all sorts, required a class in journalism.
Academics would be well advised to follow Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s advice to her writing students.
“She tells them to avoid inflated language—’never purchase when you can buy.'”
Amen to that.
For some reason, chauffeuring my daughters to the airport inspires very good conversations.
Recently, I mostly listened as Eldest talked about her work at a humanities library in Chicago. I’m proud of how well she is doing and how independent she has become on her modest salary. Even cooler is her emerging self confidence and ambition to take on more responsibilities to continue learning and growing.
She’s feeling more ambitious than ever before, not for status and money, but for influence at another non-profit or in a political campaign. To make the world a better place.
I emphasized knowing people who are known and liked by the hiring decision makers since that type of recommendation is often a tie-breaker. It has dawned on me though, while using the first few weeks of my sabbatical catching up on The New Yorker, that when it comes to professional success, there’s something much more fundamental than that.
A powerful template for professional success is found in these profiles of two of the more successful writers working today, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Otessa Moshfegh. In a few words, singleminded sacrifice, otherworldly discipline, a clear sense of life purpose.
Check this interview with Moshfegh. Specifically, 1 minute in.
Favourite holiday. . . “I don’t know if I’ve ever been on holiday.” If you didn’t write. . . “Trying to be a writer”.
Ngozi Adichie is married and has a daughter. Moshfegh is engaged. But they’re writers first, then partners, mothers, whatever else. If their marriages endure, their partners understand that and are okay with it. Both writers isolate themselves for extended periods and willingly make lots of other sacrifices for their art. Their sense of life purpose precludes any concern for “work-life balance”. Work is life.
Both are naturally talented, but at least equally important, they outwork all the other writers seeking their prestigious awards and book sales.
So when you dream about a challenging, consequential, and rewarding professional life, the best question isn’t who do you know, it’s what are you willing to sacrifice?
Both daughters looking pretty self-condifent
More on the dystopian novel we’re trapped in here.
“President Donald Trump said on Tuesday he meant the opposite when he said he didn’t see why Russia would have interfered in the 2016 U.S. elections. ‘The sentence should’ve been: ‘I don’t see any reason why it wouldn’t be Russia’.”
Cue the Twitter comedians:
• I obviously meant to shout “I DON’T OBJECT” sorry that I ruined your wedding.
• I mean, I might have ruined it, or I might not have. It was probably your fault for inviting me to the wedding. Both sides are to blame.
• I meant to say “It is NOT safe to cross” which I can see now might have made a big difference.
• I also meant I want to build a MALL between the US and Mexico.
John Gruber, at Daring Fireball, on what the Russians most likely have on Trump:
“I don’t think it’s the infamous pee tape because even if real, the pee tape might not sink Trump. I think it’s money — that Trump’s entire company, and therefore his personal wealth, is held afloat entirely by Russian money and Putin could pull the plug on it with a snap of his fingers. But whatever it is, it seems clear there’s something they’ve got on him.”
Gruber again:
“I’ve been thinking for a few months now that the most powerful person in the world isn’t Trump or Putin but Rupert Murdoch. If Fox News turned against Trump — not against Republicans, not against conservatives, but only against Trump and his family — it would sink Trump’s presidency within months. Politically, Trump couldn’t breathe without the support of Fox News. Rupert Murdoch could make that happen.”
Pressing Pause 