The Land of Yogurt and Honey

Proposed Title: "Recipes for Disaster"

A series of personal vignettes and scenarios with food at a focal point, where something either goes, or is feared to go, terribly wrong. Anxiety gets the adrenaline pumping and keeps appetite down, but cravings still surface – sometimes for food, sometimes for a change in hairstyle, or wardrobe. All stories are experimental memoir, and rooted in real events. Stories are accompanied by unrelated illustrations of an original fictional character, Morton, who often poses with food.

Texts:

Vomit

Permanent

Everything's Going to Be Alright

Morton illustrations:

"Schizotricha"

"Happy Birthday Hotdog Cake"

"Ice Cream"

"Morton Jumps the Shark"

"Chef Boyarfriend"

Zappos CEO wants to run his company like a socialist utopia kind of. It's not working so great.

Interview with Karl Ove Knausgaard, author of the My Struggle series. Book 4's English translation comes out April 28.

The technical leg work that went into making sure Kim Kardashian's naked butt didn't crash PAPER Magazine's server.

Why every city needs playgrounds where kids can set fire to stuff...

... so as it might not be the skirt of an agender teen on Oakland's 57 bus.

Marilyn Manson?

10 things you need to know about Tapirs.

Strange combo of irritating NYT lifestyle journalism and a peek at the doula industry.

Why Fresh Off the Boat is actually great and significant.

A religion for the nonreligious from the remarkable WBW dude.

"Chicago: half of the price, two-thirds the culture!"

Morton jumps the shark, thanks to Illustrator (and the illustrator).

Issue #2, August 10, 2014

  Cats

Finally, LA might be getting its own Cat Cafe (via LAist) 

Platonic Sandwiches

How the "what is a sandwich?" debate teaches us the Socratic method (via Medium)

Are burritos sandwiches?

Depends. Related: Burrito Bracket (via FiveThirtyEight)

Snitchin'

Using potato chip bags to snitch on people (via MITNews)

Ghosts

The only way to ensure that your realtor is selling you a "ghost-free" home (via Nathan for You)

Human subjects

TLDR hosts dispute OKCupid's research methodology (via NPR)

Emoji

Smiley-poops are probably the next (successful) Esperanto (via Medium)

Boozy Gentrification

A very rigorous study of London's gentrification, by getting pissed (via Vice)

Selfies

Do monkey-selfies belong in the public domain? (via Quartz)

Autism

We still have really no idea what's happening (via The New York Times)

Brains

I wrote a thing about using brain-computer imagining in urbanism research (via Archinect)

GOOD NEWS, EVERYONE:

I'm starting a newsletter. "Square Meals" will contain a quick scan of notable pieces / podcasts that I've encountered recently.

Issue #1:

Cheating

Teachers and super intendants orchestrate totally bananas cheating scandal at one Atlanta school (The New Yorker)

Bugs

Syringing blood from lice to create a typhus vaccine, and how bees are sick and tired of our monoculture farming (Fresh Air podcasts)

Potato Salad

Old news by now, but it reached over $55K: Potato Salad kickstarter

Data

Data is great and all but journalists can still be dumb: data journalism needs to up its own standards (Nieman Lab)

Calvin & Hobbes

How Calvin peeing became a bootleg icon (Nieman Lab)

Denmark

Danish people think happiness doesn't mean what you think it means. (LA Review of Books) 

Wait But Why

Russia (Wait But Why)

Mental Health

Profile of genius whackjob comedian Maria Bamford (NYTimes Magazine)

LA

Skid Row is shrinking, one artisanal sausage restaurant at a time (LA Weekly)

Love

OK Cupid experiments on human beings (duh) (OK Cupid blog)

Cheers and happy reading.