Links according to Julie

I’ve been offline a lot in July, but here is some recommended reading:

“I was seven when I discovered that you were fat, ugly and horrible.” I wanted to blog about this open letter from Kasey Edwards to her mother who called herself fat. But it all felt too personal and weird, so just read Edwards’ writing instead. And then maybe read this other blog post I wrote about when our bodies make us feel fat, ugly and horrible.

16 exclusive perks of being a teenager around the mid-2000s This post made me think about how my media habits have been shaped by having experienced the evolution of social media.

Do you see blue I the way I do? This is the qualia problem, explained in cartoon form in Rookie.

The rich have less leisure time than the poor. This article in The Economist was part of what made me commit to getting more sleep.

This interview with a couple who have been long-distance for 3,5 years really put my own ten months of LDR into perspective. I also just found a recently-started blog chronicling a long-distance relationship. I love the blog title “Dancing long distance.”

Yes, you can even. The internet is changing our language.

The image in this post is from picjumbo, where you can get free high-res photos that you can use for your blog, presentation, website etc. Thanks, Viktor!

Links according to Julie

Things I read and enjoyed online in the month of November:

Nurse reveals the top 5 regrets people have on their deathbeds.

My favorite contribution to the “having-it-all” debate so far, written by Stephen Marche (yes, a man):

The solution to the work-life conundrum is not “enlisting men” (as Slaughter puts it) in the domestic sphere. The solution is establishing social supports that allow families to function. The fact is, men can’t have it all, for the same reason women can’t: whether or not the load is being shared 50-50 doesn’t matter if the load is still unbearable.

How to live in London for under 5 pounds a day

Bad excuses for stealing photos on the internet

Business cards are old-fashioned. I once laughed in a guy’s face because he gave me his business card in a bar, confirming that he was too old for me (this was about four years ago). More recently, I have just told guys my full name and suggested they figure the rest out on their own (you’ll find 20 different ways to contact me if you Google my name). Even more recently, I’ve gotten actual business cards, that I only use in client meetings, to show I am an adult and people should listen to me.

Using Google glass for all the things you shouldn’t do with Google glass, like cheating.

People already think I’m angry all the time, because I don’t use enough of these: Now my reputation as an angry person will get worse, because I also end my sentences with periods.

This blog post explains my writing is an addiction I’m glad to have. I wrote something very similar a while back.

Source for candle and laptop image and source for quote-image.

Links according to Julie

My online favorites in the month of October:

Massage therapist Dale Favier about what people really look like (naked).

Alli Read for Cracked on The 5 weirdest side effects of moving to a new country.

Maggie Mason – aka “Mighty Girl” – wrote about her definition of friendship – the comments have plenty of suggestions for what “friend” means.

Rachel Hills on rich people financing “cool” people:

This dynamic between rich people and less-wealthy-but-rich-in-youth-and-cultural-capital people isn’t anything new. Until the last century or so, patronage was one of the few ways artists and intellectuals could make a living. Nor is it necessarily sexual – at least, not always in a direct sense. My friend’s sixty-something multi-millionaire friend, by all accounts, didn’t try to have sex with her. He just wanted to be around her; to experience the ego-boost of being at a table surrounded by young women.

Someone found a secret surprise dungeon under their new apartment.

And a useful guide to saying no to “everything ever” by Alexandra Franzen.

You can buy the image as a print.

Links according to Julie

I’ve had a very busy September – I can tell when my list of things I’ve read online is this short:

What if we treated every illness like mental illness? The cartoon below is from Buzzfeed’s surprisingly thoughtful collection of cartoons about depression. Cartoon by Susie Campbell.

You might have heard of the Stanford Prison Experiment, in which students were divided into “guards” and “prisoners” to see how they would treat each other. The experiment had to be stopped early when it got out of hand. This website has the whole story.

Quora, where I procrastinate when I want to learn something, has a list of amazing knots/coincidences/events in the Harry Potter universe.

Ministry of Sound sued Spotify to stop people making playlists similar to Ministry of Sound releases. Is it time to stop expecting people to pay for playlists? If Ministry of Sound albums can’t give you anything more than what a Spotify user can, then maybe they’re not providing a good product. On the other hand, my boyfriend gets paid to play his Spotify playlists at dance venues, so that is definitely possible.

Slate-writer Amy Webb doesn’t post anything about her kid online – and neither should you:

“Knowing what we do about how digital content and data are being cataloged, my husband and I made an important choice before our daughter was born. We decided that we would never post any photos or other personally identifying information about her online. Instead, we created a digital trust fund.”

More internet recommendations here

Links according to Julie (delayed August edition)

This is a selection of things I read in August and wanted to share with you. Since I haven’t had much downtime since the end of August, and some of these articles were read in July, they’re starting to get old. But they don’t feel old, and that’s the point.

Oliver Sacks’ thoughts on turning 80, in The joy of old age (no kidding), are also the reasons I hope to live for a very long time:

One has seen grand theories rise, only to be toppled by stubborn facts. One is more conscious of transience and, perhaps, of beauty. At 80, one can take a long view and have a vivid, lived sense of history not possible at an earlier age. I can imagine, feel in my bones, what a century is like, which I could not do when I was 40 or 60.

Jane Catherine Lotter wrote her own obituary:

One of the few advantages of dying from Grade 3, Stage IIIC endometrial cancer, recurrent and metastasized to the liver and abdomen, is that you have time to write your own obituary. (…) I was given the gift of life, and now I have to give it back. This is hard.

… and Michael Winerip in The New York Times wrote about her.

It turns out the world is getting better – this is almost too good to believe.

Tech and teens have pushed the English language forward, and now Twerk, Selfie, Bitcoin, and more have been added to an Oxford Dictionary. (I realize it is now even harder for some of you to believe the world is improving.)

The hashtag # was first suggested for use in Twitter in this blog post. This August, the hashtag turned six years old.

Sarah Koppelkam wrote about how to talk to young girls about their bodies. Step 1: Don’t!

I really enjoyed this cartoon about what teachers make, this randomly beautiful literature in a Craigslist missed connection, and this French sign:

Source: La Vie Est Belle

More links according to Julie

Links according to Julie

Favorite online reads from the month of July:

Tim Kreider in The New York Times: I know what you think of me

Hearing other people’s uncensored opinions of you is an unpleasant reminder that you’re just another person in the world, and everyone else does not always view you in the forgiving light that you hope they do, making all allowances, always on your side. There’s something existentially alarming about finding out how little room we occupy, and how little allegiance we command, in other people’s heads.

Rachel Hill, in her blog Musings of an inappropriate woman: Wherever you go, there you are

But really, what had affronted me most was the possibility that he might be right. That I did watch from the sidelines instead of participating. That people didn’t want me in the action. That I was small and easy to ignore.

Lindy West for Jezebel: How to be an atheist: without being a dick about it

If faith is what certain people need to feel okay, then who the fuck am I to tell them otherwise? As soon as that faith translates into any action that oppresses others, it’s fair game for criticism.

Ann Friedman in NY Mag: Parties we should be having instead of weddings:

The Graduation Shower: It makes no sense that we let newly married adults in their 30s, most of whom purchased their first area rug or KitchenAid mixer years ago, run amok with a barcode scanner in Crate and Barrel while most members of the Thought Catalog generation are adrift with barely an Ikea bookshelf to their name. We know that kids these days are graduating into one of the toughest economies in generations. Why not give them a boost with a graduation shower?

Josh Constine for TechCrunch: Why do we endlessly retweet tragedy?

Our brains are not wired for the modern age and the incredibly powerful tools we’ve built to transmit information. A few thousand years ago, literal word of mouth was all we had. If you heard something bad was happening, it probably directly affected you. “There’s a sabretooth tiger coming! Run!”

And why nerds should dance

Links according to Julie

 

Justin Jackson wrote those words. He is right, and you should read the whole thing. I work in the field of communications/PR because I want to work with words. I work with digital media because the internet is a great way to distribute words to lots of people.

So have a great month of July. Here’s a collection of good online reads from the month of June:

 

Thomas Beller in The New Yorker: The ongoing story: Twitter and writing

It used to be a radical cri de coeur to claim, “We live in public.” Like many mantras of the cyber-nineties, this turns out to be mostly true, but misses an even larger truth: more and more, we think in public.

 

Mr. London Street: Four pints

A theologian, an environmental engineer, a sports physiotherapist and a lawyer walk into a bar: it sounded like the start of a joke. Maybe in a way it was: a joke about how we all spend three years studying these things and then go and get jobs which bear no relation to them.

 

Graeme Wood in NYMag: Scrubbed

Metal Rabbit Media, he said, was a boutique shop for the online reputations of very wealthy people. He worked by mining the client’s history of publication and philanthropy, then pumping up the volume to drown out all else. Basic service costs $10,000 a month, Tom said, which could make Phin’s total bill, running from the first website in December 2010, nearly $300,000.

 

Anna Latimer in XOJane: In defense of being a pretentious little shit

My 29-year-old friend Rose, an Oxford graduate, wrote to me of how she sometimes tears up thinking of the passionate writer she used to be. “Maybe what I would write now is better for being more self conscious and tempered and aware of others. But I think there’s definitely something sad about the loss of that intensity and passion.”

 

Latine Fatale: How to talk to little girls

Not once did we discuss clothes or hair or bodies or who was pretty. It’s surprising how hard it is to stay away from those topics with little girls, but I’m stubborn.

 

Mat Honan in Wired: Inside Digg Reader’s race to build the new Google Reader

In fact, it could be a perfect fit with the rest of the Betaworks puzzle–Chartbeat could point out stories that are being read all the way through; Bit.ly could give insight into what people are linking to; and Instapaper could even show which stories people may want to read but don’t have time to, right now. Its own reader would give Betaworks a way bigger piece of the fast. But the only sure way to grab that fast was to tie its fate to the exodus of passionate Google Reader fans.

Links according to Julie

In the month of May…

WordPress turned 10 years old! I still recommend this platform to any blogger who asks me.

The Tumblr “Get off my slot” was started, giving all you non-dancers some insight into how being a West Coast Swing dancer feels – really, what my life is like.

Parents of Reddit exchanged sometimes terrifying stories of creepy things their children do.

The French finally came up with a word for what we call French kissing.

I found this list of words that are almost (but not quite) forgotten. They are totally Englishable (or possibly Norwegianable).

Emma Coats, previously Pixar’s story artist shared some useful story-writing tips.

This blog post inspired me to say certain things more often.

With one month to go before I lose Google Reader, I bought a Premium subscription to NewsBlur. So far, I’m happy about that.

I signed up for Instagram. I know, I know, better late than never. Still don’t know if I’ll really find any good use for this, but I need to know how it works beyond just reading about it. Feel free to follow me. Just like on Twitter, I’m called julierandersen

 

Norskspråklig bonus:

Min kollega Marius Parmann blogget om hvordan en god kommunikasjonskampanje har reddet mange liv.

Du trenger ikke svare på om du er gravid bare fordi du ikke drikker på fest.

Iphone har dårlig dekning.

Og husk at du er offentlig i sosiale medier. Bare aksepter det.

Image source