So this software problem was once solved, unsolved, and now re-solved in a worse way.

Brilliant Hardware in the Valley of the Software Slump

He could imagine the worst like no one else.

Larry Kramer Had the Courage to Act on His Fear

What a delight, I thought, what a joy, to know oneself so intimately. I thought of how people say, “How can you know you hate something when you’ve never even tried it?” and how, indeed, you absolutely do not have to try something to know that you hate it, if you truly know yourself.

The Joy of the Hate-Watch

in general, if a Wall Street bank comes to you out of the blue and says “hey we’ll pay you $50 to take some risk off our hands,” you should run away! Wall Street banks are not generally in the business of overpaying for protection that they do not need, and their derivative pricing models are probably better than yours.

It Doesn’t Pay to Be Too Ethical

I think the popularity of Bernie Sanders just has to do with his shouting, which people seem to mistake for some sort of intellectual energy. It drives me crazy.

Fran Lebowitz Is Never Leaving New York

But even when the lyrics aren’t jokes, the word that completes a couplet often does the work of a punch line, recontextualizing and clarifying what came before it. In “Someone to Love,” “Beth McKenzie got the job of her dreams” is immediately deflated by the mundanity of “retouching photos for a magazine” and then “aimed at teens.” The first rhyme is Wile E. Coyote hitting his head on every branch after he falls off a cliff; the second is the rock that lands on his head after he hits bottom.

Nobody will ever have a career like Adam Schlesinger’s again

“Which mistakes they are most likely to commit” is an underrated way of assessing political philosophies.

What libertarianism has become and will become — State Capacity Libertarianism

I don’t think about criticism in terms of authority. I think about it in terms of charm and persuasion, which anybody can possess. Your authority is in your sentences, in your lede, in how attractive your own prose is. To be a critic is to say, “Try sitting next to me.” That’s the conspiratorial nature of criticism. If you love particular critics, it always feels like they’re talking to you.

How I Get It Done: Parul Sehgal, Book Critic

In 2016, I saw a co-worker pour herself a bowl of cornflakes, add milk, and microwave it for 90 seconds. I’ll think about this until the day I die.

[…]

It’s not a crime to try to convince people that their favorite pancake accessory is a viable biohack, but the words have a scammy flavor. And that’s the closest I can come to a definition of garbage language that accounts for its eternal mutability: words with a scammy flavor.

Garbage Language – Why do corporations speak the way they do?

As the show went on, I began to want to feed C.K., telepathically, the different forms of storytelling he brought to his work when he was at the top of his game and unafraid of losing out on being loved.

Can Louis C.K. Spin His Troubles Into Art?