Newsletter 1031
Best of the Moment
Advice From The Worst Dad On Earth
Drew Magary | Deadspin | 12th June 2013
It was only a matter of time before Drew Magary wrote the best parenting piece ever. Here it is. "Single people are pathetically naive. They don't know what it's like to spend fourteen consecutive hours with a child. They don't understand how that massive span of time allows for every single possible human emotion to be bared: anger, fear, jealousy, love, all of it. More to the point, they don't realize what little assholes kids can be"
You Ain’t Never Seen Trouble Till You Lose A Youngun
James Agee & Walker Evans | Slate | 12th June 2013
Extract from Cotton Tenants, rediscovered precursor to Agee and Evans's Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, on the lives of poor farmers in Depression-era Alabama. "Of the seven children the Tingles have lost, one lived to be four, and pulled a kettle of scalding water over on him. One lived to be five and ate some bad bologna sausage one night and was dead before morning. The rest died within their first year"
FAQs About FAQs
Jay Martel | New Yorker | 12th June 2013
"Q: Why do I often find my question missing from the F.A.Q.s?" "A: By their very definition, lists of frequently asked questions strive to include all questions that are frequently asked. If you don’t find your particular question, the most likely reason is that it isn’t frequently asked"
Rock And Roll, Economics, And The Middle Class
Alan Krueger | White House | 12th June 2013
Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors discusses music industry as model of "winner-take-all" economy, microcosm of national economy. Top 1% of performers take 56% of ticket revenues, up from 26% in 1982. Ticket prices have quadrupled, pushed up by top performers to compensate for falling revenues from recorded music. Success brings its own returns: listeners like a song more when told it is already popular
Rogue State Kansas
Mark Binelli | Rolling Stone | 12th June 2013
Remember Sam Brownback — who tried briefly for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008? As governor of Kansas he has turned the state into a laboratory for Tea-Party policies — gutting spending on social services and education, privatising Medicaid, cutting taxes, and aiming to abolish state income tax entirely. After which he might make another run for president. Rolling Stone disapproves, at length
Interview: Leon Wieseltier
Malcolm Thorndike Nicholson | Prospect | 12th June 2013
On philosophy, technology, Isaiah Berlin, blogging, and the New Republic. Interesting throughout. "I decided many years ago I was an old-fashioned liberal. Meaning that I believe in the use of American power for good purposes abroad — the weakening of tyranny and the spread of democracy. I believe in the use of American prosperity at home for the creation of a more equal and just society"
Video of the day: Your Third Life Partner
Thought for the day:
"What you write will generally be pretty awful, especially when you are young. And, for the most part, this does not change as you age"— Ta-Nehisi Coates