Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
Robert Carter for The Washington Post On a sleepless night last winter — insomnia being an intelligent response to the condition of our country — I turned on the television and found “The Deer Hunter.” As I watched the extraordinary first hour of the film — the steel mill and its fiery floor; the homely…
As you might imagine, a porn star takes her lingerie drawer very seriously. “This is the working lingerie desk,” says Stoya, gesturing to a vintage-looking writing desk in her Brooklyn apartment. “It’s for sets that are special for me but haven’t been shot, things I haven’t worn on-camera. They live here.” Up the staircase…
Photo Credit Paul Rogers Christopher Beemer, a 75-year-old Brooklynite, is impressed with how well his wife, Carol, maintains friendships with other women and wonders why this valuable benefit to health and longevity “doesn’t come so easily to men.” Among various studies linking friendships to well-being in one’s later years, the 2005 Australian Longitudinal Study of…
On polling day, last Thursday, a horde of sunburnt, smiling Labour Party volunteers hit the streets of Plymouth, our medium-sized coastal city near the southwestern tip of Britain. We knocked on door after door and made the case for the United Kingdom to remain in the European Union. Knocking on doors in the weeks leading up…
The superiority of experiences has become our era’s reigning banality. Consider last year’s Time profile of American anti-stuff advocates: “Minimalists like to say that they’re living more meaningfully, more deliberately, that getting rid of most material possessions in their lives allows them to focus on what’s important: friends, hobbies, travel, experiences.” We hear much the…
British artist Jessica Harrison tackles and unpacks assumptions about the female body with her cleverly embellished figurines. The found ceramics are selected for their silly poses, onto which Harrison adds her own flourishes: an anatomical overhaul spiked with tongue-in-cheek humor. As Harrison puts it, “the re-worked ceramic makes the figure a participant in their own…
How does drinking affect your dating life? Slo Down Wines pulls back the covers to find out. Does your date become more attractive after a little (or a lot) of booze? Does a glass of wine make you want to take your pants off and dim the lights? Does getting buzzed prevent you from getting…
Tire drag tracks, by Richard Misrach. Near Calexico, California, 2014. To track migrants, Border Patrol agents use an old Native American tracking technique called “sign cutting” or “cutting for sign.” They drag tires behind trucks to smooth out the dirt and desert sand, making it easy to see footprints or other signs of life….
Is there any good place to live? A few years back I went to San Francisco to visit a friend. San Francisco is abjectly awful. You’d be hard pressed to find a place where the contrast between the poor and the rich is as sad and stark. But like any good gentrified city, there is…
Here are 16 babies, six short of our sperm donor’s full count.Thinkstock Never has a subject been more deserving of New York Post coverage than Ari Nagel, the Brooklyn man who graced the cover of the tabloid over the weekend with the headline “Great Balls of Sire: NY prof donates free sperm in public…