During quarantine, Maris Mann-Stadt, an environmental engineer in western Massachusetts, began using the dining room of her house as an office. She and her husband had previously entertained in the dining room a handful of times a year, but a workspace was a much better fit for the pandemic.
Month: October 2020
The Game That Ruins Friendships and Shapes Careers
In the absence of parties and happy hours and date nights, millions of Americans living under lockdown have regressed into pastimes like playing Animal Crossing, reading War and Peace, baking sourdough bread, or attempting to learn Romanian.
Wildflowers & All the Rest (Deluxe Edition)
Imagine the scene: It’s 1994 and Tom Petty is presenting his new solo album Wildflowers to the suits at Warner Bros. He’s been working on this music for two years with a new collaborator, producer Rick Rubin, and he is excited. He presses play.
A Profanity Filter Banned the Word ‘Bone’ at a Paleontology Conference
Participants in a virtual paleontology meeting were not permitted to use the words “bone,” “sexual,” or “Hell” in early digital Q&A sessions, sparking amusement and frustration from researchers attending the online conference.
Pandemic Silence
The pandemic’s horrors are well known to most, but there have been some silver linings. The emptiness of the streets, fewer people driving, and general lack of activity gave us the gift of silence. How silent were many parts of our society?
We love because we care
Here is a collection of posts from artist Amy Meissner — one of my favorite to follows on Instagram — advertising a mending and clothes repair workshop she helped run in Anchorage, Alaska before the pandemic. They all have the same caption: “Mend a thing.”
Miller’s Crossing at 30: the Coen brothers’ unknowable gangster drama
When Miller’s Crossing was released 30 years ago, there emerged two competing camps on the Coen brothers, who had previously written and directed the stylish 1984 neo-noir Blood Simple and the deliriously farcical 1987 comedy Raising Arizona.