All posts tagged: Good Time

Seven Books for When Words Aren’t Enough

Seven Books for When Words Aren’t Enough

Published by skeptic

The very first stories humans ever recorded were built not of words, but of images: drawn in caves, mapped out in constellations, rendered through sculpture. Even after the development of written language, storytelling with images remained crucial. This focus on the visual can be seen in the early days of bookmaking, for example, in illuminated manuscripts and ornately painted religious texts. Today’s graphic novels look back to this early lineage. They create a dialogue between text and image; in the best examples, the mediums cooperate and overlap to create a fuller, richer work. Many modern illustrated books, such as mainstream superhero comics and manga, are created in partnerships and teams, with the story and drawings done by different people. But here I’ve focused on books that come from a single mind and hand, which is to me where the form is most exciting. The seven books below represent a wide range of writing and art styles—outlandish caricature and precise, realistic line work; satirical prose and devastating narratives; fiction and nonfiction. But each depends on a …

The Great American Aversion Toward Renting

The Great American Aversion Toward Renting

Published by skeptic

When the Federal Reserve began jacking up interest rates in 2022, home sales cratered almost overnight; inventory dried up; the housing market “froze.” People who have mortgages with interest rates below 4 percent—which is more than 60 percent of homeowners—aren’t going anywhere. They’re not selling their houses. They’re staying put. The current availability of homes for sale is about 36 percent lower than before the pandemic; this past October, home sales dropped to their lowest level in more than 13 years, and in November, the share of homebuyers looking to relocate to a different metro area was at its lowest level in 18 months. People who own homes have become so reluctant to move that they’re likely to pass up job offers in other cities, one study found. If swapping a low mortgage for a much higher one is plainly undesirable, the way out of the problem—and into a new space—seems plainly obvious: renting. Now is a terrible time to buy a home, but renting would allow more Americans to relocate without becoming “house poor” …

The DeSantis-campaign implosion was inevitable

The DeSantis-campaign implosion was inevitable

Published by skeptic

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis suspended his campaign. His loss was inevitable, because Republican voters want Donald Trump. First, here are three new stories from The Atlantic: Trump’s for the Asking I wrote back in May that the Republican primary would be over before they really began. Too many of the candidates were featherweights or no-hopers, and even the more substantial challengers couldn’t bring themselves to go after Donald Trump, despite flaming indictments falling from the skies and covering him in a layer of dirty ash. My prediction is one step closer to fulfillment now that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has bowed out, leaving Nikki Haley as the last alternative standing. The reality, however, is that the 2024 GOP primary was never going to end any other way. When the former speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy rehabilitated Trump, and …

The Books Briefing: The Case for a Credits Section in Books

The Books Briefing: The Case for a Credits Section in Books

Published by skeptic

This is an edition of the Books Briefing, our editors’ weekly guide to the best in books. Sign up for it here. My fondness for the acknowledgments section of books runs very deep. Sometimes I flip to them first, though I try to hold off on this guilty pleasure. I love the way they can reveal a writer’s true, gushy self beneath the veneer of authorial control and style, reminding us of the human being who struggled to bring these pages into existence. But acknowledgments also do something else: They show us what a collaborative act it is to produce a book, if only because we get to hear about the writer’s mom, long-suffering spouse, and loyal dog. And, occasionally, an author reveals the identity of some other important but unseen people: agents, editors, publicists, book-cover designers, fact-checkers. In an essay this week on Dan Sinykin’s book about publishing, Big Fiction, Josh Lambert evokes this wider workforce. Sinykin’s book sets out to show how conglomeration among publishing houses has affected the kinds of novels we …

A New Threat to Diversity at Elite Colleges

A New Threat to Diversity at Elite Colleges

Published by skeptic

All eyes have been on the end of affirmative action, but an emerging bipartisan bill would bar wealthy colleges from accepting federal student loans, with major consequences. David L. Ryan / The Boston Globe / Getty December 15, 2023, 7:23 AM ET The Supreme Court’s June decision to curtail the use of race in admissions shook American higher education. Absent affirmative action, Black and Latino enrollments drop, and highly selective campuses become less diverse. But a new threat to diversity at these colleges emerged this week—one that could deal just as damaging a blow to their socioeconomic and racial compositions. On Tuesday, members of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce met to discuss a bill that would expand short-term Pell Grants. But deep inside that bill was language that would have a far more dramatic effect on higher education: It would ban students who attend Harvard, Yale, Princeton, or any of the roughly 50 other wealthy, private colleges subject to a tax on their endowment from taking out federal student loans. America’s reliance …

How to Be the Ideal Center of the Party

How to Be the Ideal Center of the Party

Published by skeptic

Last March, the Stanford computer-science student Bryan Chiang posted a video on Twitter (now called X) of a project he called “rizzGPT,” which intended to provide “real-time charisma.” Essentially, it combines an augmented-reality device and ChatGPT to listen to your conversations and display what you should say next. The idea was to outsource charisma—that alluring, mysterious, stubbornly human trait that draws people to you. The prototype’s inability to say anything charming in the video demonstration emphasized just how elusive true magnetism can be. Still, the project was only the latest in a lineage of attempts to distill charisma for an individual’s benefit—perhaps as a tool to win people’s attention, vote, or money. In the 1920s, the German sociologist Max Weber’s posthumous writings introduced our modern understanding of charisma as authority based on exceptionalism, a quality that distinguishes popular politicians. In 1936, Dale Carnegie published his seminal self-help book, How to Win Friends and Influence People, a guide to being liked and listened to; a professional-development program based on his teachings persists to this day. Now …

The Seven Stories to Read Today

The Seven Stories to Read Today

Published by skeptic

Plus: A deliciously deceptive movie about liars Illustration by Matteo Giuseppe Pani. Source: Getty. December 3, 2023, 8 AM ET This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. The holiday season is upon us—but before you power through your to-do list, decompress with these seven stories, selected by our editors. A Sunday Reading List Some of the below stories have narrated versions, if you prefer to listen to them; just click the link and scroll to the audio player below the image. The Plight of the Eldest Daughter By Sarah Sloat Women are expected to be nurturers. Firstborns are expected to be exemplars. Being both is exhausting. It Will Never Be a Good Time to Buy a House By Annie Lowrey Life Really Is Better Without the Internet By Chris Moody What happened after my wife and I removed Wi-Fi from our home Have You Listened Lately …

The Persistent Myth That Most Americans Are Miserable at Work

The Persistent Myth That Most Americans Are Miserable at Work

Published by skeptic

This is Work in Progress, a newsletter about work, technology, and how to solve some of America’s biggest problems. Sign up here. The typical career is about 80,000 hours long, or one-sixth of the average person’s waking life. One would love to be deliriously happy for all 80,000 hours. But, alas, we’re not. And the economic-news industry loves nothing more than to remind us of it. In fact, for the past three years, finance media have become so desperate to explain the state of workplace misery to their audience that they’ve often ignored facts, logic, or basic common sense. In 2021, finance journalism couldn’t stop talking about the “Great Resignation.” Judging by the ample coverage, it appeared that workers everywhere were smashing their laptops and machines in a bacchanal of joblessness. This was all hooey. In reality, more Americans were just breaking up with their old employers to get higher-paying jobs. In professional sports, when star athletes sign larger contracts with different teams in the offseason, ESPN doesn’t call it a “great resignation”; it calls …

Jeff Tweedy: The Songs That Shaped My Life

Jeff Tweedy: The Songs That Shaped My Life

Published by skeptic

I love other people’s songs. How much they’ve taught me about being human—how to think about myself and others. And, most important, how they absorb our experiences and store our memories. No matter how many people hear the Beatles’ “A Day in the Life,” there’s only one version that belongs to you. Our appraisals might align, but I doubt your version includes a memory of waiting for the doors to open at an all-ages Jodie Foster’s Army concert on Laclede’s Landing, in St. Louis, as a flooding Mississippi River rages down Wharf Street and heaves up onto the steps of the Gateway Arch. Your mind melting down on mushrooms, watching a husband-and-wife street-performing duo sing “A Day in the Life” while their toddler does laps around you keeping shockingly good time on a tambourine. This article has been adapted from Tweedy’s new book. It’d be cool if we could see the worlds within the songs inside one another’s heads. But I also love how impenetrable it all is. I love that what’s mine can’t be …