PolyArchive

A few days ago, I finally finished Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains. The fact that it took me so long to read a book about typewriters, the internet, psychology, and other things I love probably proves Carr’s point better than anything I can write here. So here are […]

i can read. There are some things I miss about my old job, such as the awesome schedule and some great colleagues. I miss the concise emails signed only “gs” and the trips across the street to the basement where a very cool crew of a former navy seal, an artist/fashionista, and an independent scholar/former […]

    Photo by George Berkentin / Conde Nast Archive myvintagevogue.

They Might Be Hipsters.    

How To Steal Like An Artist And 9 Other Things Nobody Told Me – Austin Kleon. Wow. Lovely. Concise. Visual–or rather, graphic, in the good sense. Some common-sense tried-and-truisms, for sure, but he’s tried them. It’s funny, I have The Happiness Project blog in my reader, and I want to delete it every time I […]

It started, as many things do, with Metafilter. Someone posted a link to a story which quickly engaged me (at one of those thesis-work moments during which I want nothing more than to be distracted), about a blogger facing down her stalker. It was a gripping and well-written story–I read every part in one sitting. […]

131 – US States Renamed For Countries With Similar GDPs | Strange Maps | Big Think. There are some amazing cultural juxtapositions there…

Introduction to Collected Poems (1938) E.E. Cummings (wrenched from a geocities site in the depths of the Wayback Machine) I N T R O D U C T I O N The poems to come are for you and for me and are not for mostpeople– it’s no use trying to pretend that mostpeople and […]

Flagler videos capture a side of Wal-Mart we all suspected was there: Among the revealing moments: A former executive vice president and board member challenges store managers in 2004 to continue his work opposing unionization. Male managers in drag lead thousands of co-workers in the company’s corporate cheer. In another meeting, managers mock foolish or […]

Have You Ever Tried to Sell a Diamond? – The Atlantic (February 1982) sheds light on just how much harm the diamond industry has done overseas. If this much was known in 1982, why did it take so long to get a dialogue going with such works as Blood Diamond?

http://garfieldminusgarfield.net/ The site description: Who would have guessed that when you remove Garfield from the Garfield comic strips, the result is an even better comic about schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and the empty desperation of modern life? Friends, meet Jon Arbuckle. Let’s laugh and learn with him on a journey deep into the tortured mind of […]

THE BALL POEM
John Berryman

What is the boy now, who has lost his ball,
What, what is he to do? I saw it go
Merrily bouncing, down the street, and then
Merrily over–there it is in the water!
No use to say ‘O there are other balls’:
An ultimate shaking grief fixes the boy