Links

Behind the Paywall: How New York Times Articles End | VF Daily | Vanity Fair

~ Mark

“Here is a list of popular endings to New York Times pieces. It’s totally free.” A few of my favorites… (via)

  • The apartment is really that small, and people really do live there, but somehow it just works for them.
  • The old restaurant/bar is unaffected by changes to its neighborhood.
  • Though restaurant’s use of sustainable ingredients attracts a young, creative clientele, buttoned-up, more conservative patrons will also enjoy the food.
  • The neighborhood’s recent gentrification has not always been a smooth cultural and economic transition for longtime residents.
  • The situation in that country you’ve been hearing about is even worse than you thought.
  • It’s not worth it to spend 36 hours in a place to which roundtrip airfare is $2,500.
  • Maureen Dowd disapproves.

Behind the Paywall: How New York Times Articles End | VF Daily | Vanity Fair

Ben Casnocha: The Blog: Las Vegas: Authentically Unauthentic

~ Mark

When you visit New York City, you worry about whether you are being a tourist, about whether you are doing as the locals do. Same with visiting Paris, Rome, London. But in Las Vegas, everybody is a tourist. Anybody who’s not a tourist works in the tourism/hospitality industry. There is no real thing. It’s fake all the way to the bottom. The very idea of a sprawling, water guzzling city that sits in the middle of barren desert is too absurd to take seriously.

See also Richard Thompson & Communicatrix on cultural neutrality.
Ben Casnocha: The Blog: Las Vegas: Authentically Unauthentic

Should you pursue mastery? | Penelope Trunk’s Brazen Careerist

~ Mark

At some point, all first dates become the same. The beginnings of relationships are all the same, but deeper connections require understanding more and more about yourself to keep going. That’s what I think of mastery. […] It occurs to me that mastery is irrational. Pursuing it makes life more difficult and more interesting than people really need life to be. But people who are driven to mastery can’t stop. It’s either charming or boorish. I’m not sure which.

Should you pursue mastery? | Penelope Trunk’s Brazen Careerist

Wine descriptors tell us more about a bottle’s price than its flavor. – By Coco Krumme – Slate Magazine

~ Mark

“Graphite. Black currant. Incense. And camphor?” This is a great read. You’ve probably read something similar about wine bullshit before, but this is probably better. Interesting that more expensive wines are described with more specific words.

When it comes to invoking elegance, foreign and complex words have a natural advantage. Cigars and truffle conjure up prestige and luxury. Meanwhile, a little-known berry or spice conveys the worldly sophistication of the critic, which the drinker can share. For a price.

Wine descriptors tell us more about a bottle’s price than its flavor. – By Coco Krumme – Slate Magazine

How to Behave in an Art Museum – Paper Monument

~ Mark

Intellectual conversations, as a woman I briefly dated once admonished me, are like public displays of affection—fun to be in, but mortifying to observe, and in a museum you know you’re being observed. But refusing to answer your friend’s questions is no solution either. You’re paralyzed. And you’re not even sure what you’re afraid of. You’re not sure whether your replies will make you look like a philistine or a snob. Which would be worse? Which are you more qualified to be?

How to Behave in an Art Museum – Paper Monument

Phonestheme – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

~ Mark

The word refers to the “systematic pairing of form and meaning in a language” where “a word with a phonestheme in it has other material in it that is not itself a morpheme.”

For example, the English phonestheme “gl-” occurs in a large number of words relating to light or vision, like “glitter”, “glisten”, “glow”, “gleam”, “glare”, “glint”, and so on

I love this stuff. Here’s a list of English phonesthemes.

  • /st/ is stable, stalwart, staunch, steadfast, steady, stolid, stout, and sturdy
  • /sk/ scuffles, skips, scuttles, scoots, scampers, scurries, and skedaddles
  • /dr/ drips, dribbles, drools, dredges, drizzles, drops, droops, and drags with the dross, dregs and the dreck

Phonestheme – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Confessions of a Prep School College Counselor – Magazine – The Atlantic

~ Mark

Certainly, I understood why students who had worked so hard and done so well would want to go to schools like Harvard and Princeton, but many places seem to be prestigious simply because student fads and crazes have made them hard to get into. Brazenly capitalizing on the whims and passions of teenagers seems a questionable practice for institutions dedicated, in part, to the well-being of young people.

Confessions of a Prep School College Counselor – Magazine – The Atlantic