“Journal excerpts by Roland Barthes about mourning his mother, Henriette, who died at eighty-four, in October, 1977.” It’s a real shame this one is behind a paywall. Favorite bits:

What I find utterly terrifying is mourning’s discontinuous character.

And:

Mourning: not a crushing oppression, a jamming (which would suppose a “refill”), but a painful availability: I am vigilant, expectant, awaiting the onset of a “sense of life”.

And also:

1st mourning
false liberty
2nd mourning
desolate liberty
deadly, without
worthy occupation

A Cruel Country by Roland Barthes : The New Yorker

This week’s issue has been pretty darn good so far. “The goal: to walk from the Empire State Building, on West Thirty-third Street, to Rockefeller Center, on West Forty-eighth, without ever setting foot on Fifth or Sixth Avenue.”

Trekking Midtown by Tad Friend : The New Yorker

On the recent Esquire pants-size exposé:

Retailers’ facilitating the illusion that we are thinner than we are is a by-product of their chief goal, which is to force us to try on every item of clothing we are considering buying and let the endowment effect work its behavioral magic. Trying something on invests us in completing the purchase to a much greater degree—we’ve gone to all that trouble already and want something to show for our effort—and it also habituates us to the idea that we already own the thing we put on, and to not buy it feels as though we have lost something or had something taken away from us. So the sizes are just very vague guidelines to help us know which items to take to the fitting rooms.

Come to think of it, the endowment effect is probably another reason smart parents tell kids not to touch anything when they go in the store.
Vanity sizing for men < PopMatters

Happiness and the right to pursue it are sometimes wildly unrealistic as ideals; and, because wildly unrealistic, unconsciously self-destructive.

Interesting essay with some good tidbits. This bit on pathologies could also apply, more mildly, to how we react to differing opinions:

We tend to pathologise the forms of happiness we cannot bear.

And on education:

There are, for example, only two reasons for children to go to school – apart, that is, from acquiring the werewithal to earn a living: to make friends, and to see if they can find something of absorbing interest to themselves.

Adam Phillips on the happiness myth | Books | The Guardian

What we call terrorism is always asymmetric warfare. You’re a small group with no reputation, and you start covertly blowing up or murdering the people of a big group, like a government or a nation-state or a whole race. And you can’t just do it and then go and do the next one. You have to do it, and then go and do your PR. “We just bombed your mall. It was us.” And then maybe you do it, and some other guys, these upstart assholes across town, are calling up the news and saying, “We did it! We bombed the mall!” So then you have to get your PR guy on the phone and say, “No, they’re full of shit. WE bombed the mall.” So it’s about branding to that extent.

Interview with William Gibson - Viceland Today

Why cities grow and why urban planning as we now practice it won’t really help the millions who are moving to mega-cities (read: slums) in other parts of the world.

Urban Legends - By Joel Kotkin | Foreign Policy

An interview with Maris Kreizman of Slaughterhouse 90210. (via)

Slaughterhouse 90210: Where high meets low | Jacket Copy | Los Angeles Times

Single-minded focus too soon can be a hindrance. Better to branch out and learn how to practice and fail well.

How To Raise A Superstar | Wired Science | Wired.com