multimedia journalist & creative storyteller

by Evgeny Morozov, Slate

Google’s urbanism, on the other hand, is that of someone who is trying to get to a shopping mall in their self-driving car. It’s profoundly utilitarian, even selfish in character, with little to no concern for how public space is experienced. In Google’s world, public space is just something that stands between your house and the well-reviewed restaurant that you are dying to get to. Since no one formally reviews public space or mentions it in their emails, it might as well disappear from Google’s highly personalized maps. And if the promotional videos for Google Glass are anything to judge by, we might not even notice it’s gone: For all we know, we might be walking through an urban desert, but Google Glass will still make it look exciting, masking the blighted reality.

Thought-provoking.

Drove through gorgeous #Zion National Park. Wish I had more time to hike! #SyrtoCA

Stayed in a Best Western with a lot of character last night. Note the “ho-made pies” sign. #Zion #Utah #SyrtoCA

Sunset on the road. We’re in Colorado now! #latergram #sunset #SyrtoCA

First glimpse of the gateway to the west! We made it. #SyrtoStL #arch #StLouis

I braved the Hurricane Deck at #Niagara #SyrtoStL

And there will come a time, you’ll see, with no more tears.
And love will not break your heart, but dismiss your fears.
Get over your hill and see what you find there,
With grace in your heart and flowers in your hair.

- “After The Storm,” Mumford & Sons

Whenever I listen to Mumford & Sons, I always think of Dad.

This song came on with perfect timing after I started crying.

100percentmen:

Every governor of New York State, every mayor of New York City and Albany, every president of the New York Fed, every president of Columbia and New York Universities. 

onaissues:

shortformblog:

Today in videos that will blow your mind: This is called a “Hyperlapse,” a time-lapse video built with a number of camera movements. This would be cool on its own (the process is generally very time-consuming), but the really awesome part is this: It was created using publicly-available Google Streetview data. There’s even a tool that helps you make your own. The results are rad in that way that few things are. I’m gonna stop talking now. Just watch.

Gorgeous use of publicly-available data!

tetw:

20 great articles, all free to read online

A huge collection of amazing articles by one of the world’s best journalists, and a brilliant teller of true stories.

From ‘Cuse to the Keys

“All her life, she subscribed to the belief that ‘everything is copy,’ a phrase her mother, Phoebe, used to say. In fact, when Phoebe was on her deathbed, she told my mother, ‘Take notes.’ She did. What both of them believed was that writing has the power to turn the bad things that happen to you into art (although ‘art’ was a word she hated). ‘When you slip on a banana peel, people laugh at you; but when you tell people you slipped on a banana peel, it’s your laugh,’ she wrote in her anthology ‘I Feel Bad About My Neck.’ ‘So you become the hero rather than the victim of the joke.’”

- Nora Ephron’s Final Act, by Jacob Bernstein

NYT March 6, 2013

onaissues:

Annual count of women’s bylines shows little progress | Poynter.

VIDA Women in Literary Arts has released their annual count of women’s bylines. The New Yorker is just one of many publications that they surveyed that continued to show a preference for men’s bylines. 

VIDA’s website has charts on the byline breakdown on a number of publications, including The Atlantic, The New Republic, Harper’s, Boston Review and more. 

“Alice in Wonderland” before VFX. Wow.

When I was learning to ride my bicycle without training wheels, Dad patiently walked alongside as I figured out how to keep my handlebars straight. Tom had already taken off down the street, and I badly wanted to ride after him and demonstrate that I too could ride my big new bike. I told Dad to let go, grit my teeth and leaned forward on the bike seat.

After only a few slow pedals, I felt the bike begin to wobble, and I came crashing down on the street. I let out a wail of frustration and pain, rubbing my scraped leg. Dad walked over, trying hard not to laugh, and helped me get to my feet and right my bike again.

“I’m never going to be able to do this,” I said.

“Don’t say that,” Dad responded. “Just give it another try.”

I sat on my bike again, and as Dad began to push, I began to pedal. I pedaled as hard as I could, and, feeling stronger, I yelled over my shoulder for Dad to let go. As I rode down the street, I looked over my shoulder and saw Dad smiling and clapping far behind me. “Go Ellie!” he called. Dad knew I would be able to ride my bike, and he let go when he saw that I was ready.

When I think of all the things that Dad did for me, I always come back to this memory. To me, it represents the qualities that I appreciated most about my dad: his patience, his support and, most of all, his unflagging belief in me. Even in graduate school, when I was by all accounts an adult living my own life, I would call Dad for advice on problems big and small. Car’s battery died? Forget AAA; the first person I called was Dad, who would calm me down and walk me through the steps I needed to take to solve my problem. Conflicted over what path I should take in my post-graduate career? Dad always had an answer, and he wasn’t afraid to tell me his opinion. But at the end of our conversations, Dad would let me know that it was my choice to make. Even as he did that, he told me what every daughter wants to hear from their dad: that it all would be OK, and that he loved me.

I won’t be able to call Dad anymore now, but in the moments when I’m yearning for his support, I remember when he taught me how to ride a bike. He gave me the help I needed, and then he stood back and watched me discover that I could do it on my own. Dad’s love was the steady foundation from which I leaped to accomplish my goals, and it continues to give me the strength I need to pedal on.

atavist:

explore-blog:

Gay Talese’s outline for the 1966 classic Frank Sinatra Has a Cold, one of the best long-form magazine pieces ever penned, written on a shirt board. 

(↬ The Paris Review)

Still not sure what a shirt board is…

shortformblog:

sportsnetny:

aarp_official • Instagram: Our gift to His Airness. May the next 50 be even more legendary. #BeLikeMike

This feels like fodder for a Space Jam sequel.

“Painted in bright reds, greens and blues with decorative window shutters and miniature gardens, they resemble the cottages of a quaint, sleepy village—the backdrop to a fantastical play about dukes and early European colonies. Perhaps the village in ‘Downton Abbey.’ Enclosed by a stone arch and iron gate at either end, the Walk caters to the fantasies of many passersby while simultaneously squashing them—the half-timbered houses are off-limits to anyone but residents.”

- “Downton Abbey on the Upper West Side,” The Atlantic 

So cool. I <3 NY.

(Image: Flickr/PilotGirl)