100 greatest non-fiction books
The Guardian compiles their list of the 100 best non-fiction books ever written.
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kottke.org posts about lists
Seinfeld’s sneakers, a complete guide
Jerry Seinfeld seemingly wore a different pair of sneakers (mostly Nikes) on his TV show each week…here are 50 pages of analysis of Jerry’s shoe choices. For 90s athletic shoe and Seinfeld superfans only. (via @cory_arcangel)
Ten design lessons from Frederick Law Olmsted
Olmsted designed NYC’s Central Park and Prospect Park and was the father of American landscape architecture. 37signals recently collected some lessons from Olmsted’s approach to his work.
Olmsted believed the goal wasn’t to make viewers see his work. It was to make them unaware of it. To him, the art was to conceal art. And the way to do this was to remove distractions and demands on the conscious mind. Viewers weren’t supposed to examine or analyze parts of the scene. They were supposed to be unaware of everything that was working.
Ten modern movies that are better in black and white
Last month, Steven Soderbergh’s list of what he’s been watching and reading told us that the director watched Raiders of the Lost Ark in black & white three times in one week, presumably to emphasize the film’s structure and cinematography. Flavorwire’s Jason Bailey wondered what other films might be better in black & white and compiled a list of ten, with video examples and commentary of each. Included are Raiders, Fargo, and A Christmas Story.
For your reading list
Conor Friedersdorf, an associate editor of The Atlantic, has compiled his list of the best journalism of 2010. Sure, it comes six months after everyone else’s list, but this is a good one and annotated to boot.
Why don’t more people live in liveable cities?
Those lists of most liveable cities…why don’t any of the vibrant big cities of the world ever make the list? Because the lists don’t take into account many important reasons why people choose to live in a certain place.
I spoke to Joel Kotkin, a professor of urban development, and asked him about these surveys. “I’ve been to Copenhagen,” (Monocle’s Number 2) he tells me “and it’s cute. But frankly, on the second day, I was wondering what to do.” So, if the results aren’t to his liking, what does he suggest? “We need to ask, what makes a city great? If your idea of a great city is restful, orderly, clean, then that’s fine. You can go live in a gated community. These kinds of cities are what is called ‘productive resorts’. Descartes, writing about 17th-century Amsterdam, said that a great city should be ‘an inventory of the possible’. I like that description.”
Joel Garreau, the US urban academic and author, agrees. “These lists are journalistic catnip. Fun to read and look at the pictures but I find the liveable cities lists intellectually on a par with People magazine’s ‘sexiest people’ lists.”
Ricky Burdett, who founded the London School of Economics’ Cities Programme, says: “These surveys always come up with a list where no one would want to live. One wants to live in places which are large and complex, where you don’t know everyone and you don’t always know what’s going to happen next. Cities are places of opportunity but also of conflict, but where you can find safety in a crowd.
“We also have to acknowledge that these cities that come top of the polls also don’t have any poor people,” he adds. And that, it seems to me, touches on the big issue. Richard G Wilkinson and Kate Pickett’s hugely influential book The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better (2009) seems to present an obvious truth — that places where the differential in income between the wealthiest and the poorest is smallest tend to engender a sense of satisfaction and well-being. But while it may be socially desirable, that kind of comfort doesn’t necessarily make for vibrancy or dynamism. If everybody is where they want to be, no one is going anywhere.
(via stellar and many emails)
Update: That Decartes quote above? He never said it.
Soderbergh’s media diet
Steven Soderbergh recently shared a list of all the movies, books, TV shows, plays, and short stories he watched and read over the past year. Among the movies he watched were The Social Network (at least five times), Raiders of the Lost Ark (three times in one week), Network, Idiocracy, and both worthwhile Godfather films. (via studio 360)
How to steal like an artist
That’s the title of a talk given by Austin Kleon on how to do good creative work. Most of it is of the no-nonsense “don’t worry and just work” variety of which I am a big fan.
9. Be boring. It’s the only way to get work done.
As Flaubert said, “Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.”
I’m a boring guy with a 9-5 job who lives in a quiet neighborhood with his wife and his dog.
That whole romantic image of the bohemian artist doing drugs and running around and sleeping with everyone is played out. It’s for the superhuman and the people who want to die young.
The thing is: art takes a lot of energy to make. You don’t have that energy if you waste it on other stuff.
(via ★bryce)
Fifty books every child should read
From the UK newspaper, The Independent, a list of fifty books every eleven year old should read.
How to write a Twitter bio
Alex Blagg, social media 2.0 ideator, shares 15 top tips for crafting the perfect Twitter bio.
5. If you go out to bars like every night of the week, you’re not alcoholic. You’re a Foursquare Ambassador.
6. You can add “-ista” to the end of literally any word to make yourself sound approximately 47 times more stylish and savvy. (ex. Digitalista or Barista or Unemployista)
The Middle Way of social media
From Tricycle, a magazine about Buddhism, here are ten mindful ways to use social media.
9. Practice letting go. It may feel unkind to disregard certain updates or tweets, but we need downtime to be kind to ourselves. Give yourself permission to let yesterday’s stream go. This way you won’t need to “catch up” on updates that have passed but instead can be part of today’s conversation.
Nice SEO-friendly listicle headline there! (thx, zg)
Metagames
Andy Baio has compiled a listing of metagames…video games that are about video games.
Over the last few years, I’ve been collecting examples of metagames — not the strategy of metagaming, but playable games about videogames. Most of these, like Desert Bus or Quest for the Crown, are one-joke games for a quick laugh. Others, like Cow Clicker and Upgrade Complete, are playable critiques of game mechanics. Some are even (gasp!) fun.
The most loathsome Americans
Always a fun read: The Beast’s list of the 50 most loathsome Americans of 2010. The idiot Alaskan lady is a mere sixth on the list; #1 is “you”:
Your brain’s been cobbled together over millions of years of blind evolution and it shows. You’re clumsy, stupid, weak and motivated by the basest of urges. Your MO is both grotesquely selfish and unquestionably deferential to questionable authority. You’re not in control of your life. You wear your ignorance like a badge of honor and gleefully submit to oppression, malfeasance and kleptocracy. You will buy anything. You will believe anything. You believe that evolution is a matter of belief. You likely scrolled down to #1, without reading the rest, because you’re an impatient, semi-literate Philistine who’s either unable or unwilling to digest more than 140 characters at a time.
Five emotions invented by the internet
My favorite of the bunch is the first one: “A vague and gnawing pang of anxiety centered around an IM window that has lulled.”
During this time an individual feels unsure whether they have offended the IM recipient, committed a breach of IM etiquette, or have otherwise spoilt the presentation of themselves carefully crafted thus far thanks to the miracles of the textual medium. The individual must be at least vaguely aware that they are being vaguely paranoid, and must tell themselves things like ‘he probably just stepped away from the keyboard’ or ‘I know she is at work right now so perhaps she has stopped replying because she is busy.’
A possible sixth emotion might be “Unnecessary pagination irritation”, which emotion I experienced reading this otherwise fine article. :(
Quentin Tarantino’s favorite films of 2010
1. Toy Story 3
2. The Social Network
3. Animal Kingdom
4. I Am Love
5. Tangled
6. True Grit
7. The Town
8. Greenberg
9. Cyrus
10. Enter The Void
A year of learning
In 2010, Giles Turnbull learned one thing each day…here’s his list.
Jan 14. Carbon monoxide kills you by getting into your bloodstream and occupying the space inside red blood cells that would normally be filled with oxygen.
Jul 24. Every hour of every day, a billion tons of rain falls on the Earth. Much of it falls on Wales, the wettest place in Europe.
Nov 6. When your son asks “What is electricity?”, it’s wise to stop and think for a moment-or consult an encyclopedia-before launching into an answer that may grind to an unfortunate and, for the questioner, unsatisfying halt.
Best movie posters of 2010
Two very different lists of the best movie posters from last year: the more indie-oriented list from Mubi and the mainstream one from FirstShowing. The Mubi list is better but you may recognize more of the films from the FirstShowing list.
The best of 2010
The mega list of best of 2010 lists is up and running at Fimoculous. Prepare to lose yourself in this for several hours.
Songs of the years playlist
Patrick Filler took Ben Greenman’s New Yorker holiday party playlist (one song for each year from 1925 to 2010) and made a Rdio playlist out of it so that you can listen to the whole shebang online.
Pimp business plan
Items on this pimp’s handwritten business plan — aka “Keep It Pimpin’” — include:
- my word is my bond
- take my game to the next level (from the concrete streets to executive suites)
- take care my bitches more better
- minimize my budget (cash cars, houses, etc.)
- keep a good photographer
Songs of the years
For the New Yorker holiday party, Ben Greenman whipped up a music playlist containing one hit song from each year of the New Yorker’s history, from 1925 to 2010.
At the party, the mix worked like a charm. Jazz and blues greeted the early arrivals, and as the party picked up, the mood became romantic (thanks to the big-band and vocal recordings of the late thirties and forties), energetic (thanks to early rock and roll like Fats Domino and Jackie Brenston in the early fifties), funky (James Brown in 1973, Stevie Wonder in 1974), and kitschy (the eighties), after which it erupted into a bright riot of contemporary pop and hip-hop (Rihanna! Kanye! M.I.A.! Lil Jon!). It was rumored, though never proven, that party guests were leaving right around the songs that marked their birth years.
Where the hell is Hey Ya!? Oh, right. Crazy in Love.
A Year in Reading for 2010
The Millions annual Year in Reading mega-feature is back for 2010 and features contributions from Al Jaffee, Margaret Atwood, and Stephen Elliott.
For a seventh year, The Millions has reached out to some of our favorite writers, thinkers, and readers to name, from all the books they read this year, the one(s) that meant the most to them, regardless of publication date. Grouped together, these ruminations, cheers, squibs, and essays will be a chronicle of reading and good books from every era. We hope you find in them seeds that will help make your year in reading in 2011 a fruitful one.
How to edit a magazine
From The Atlantic, twelve timeless rules for making a good publication.
3. Don’t over-edit. You will often estrange an author by too elaborate a revision, and furthermore, take away from the magazine the variety of style that keeps it fresh.
7. A sound editor never has a three-months’ full supply in his cupboard. When you over-buy, you narrow your future choice.
Alphabetical list of Foursquare badges
…and how to get them.
Epic Swarm badge: Check in to a venue that has at least 1,000 people checked in. Yes, if you are number 950, you will get the badges when person number 1,000 checks in.
Greatest movie drug scenes
Without even looking, you could probably guess that scenes from Pulp Fiction and Requiem for a Dream would make a list of film’s greatest drug scenes. But there are 28 other worthy scenes on there as well.
Tips for the near future
Douglas Coupland’s list of 45 tips for the next 10 years is excellent; even the stuff that seems wrong makes you think. Some of my favorite bits:
In the same way you can never go backward to a slower computer, you can never go backward to a lessened state of connectedness.
You may well burn out on the effort of being an individual. You’ve become a notch in the Internet’s belt. Don’t try to delude yourself that you’re a romantic lone individual. To the new order, you’re just a node. There is no escape.
It will become harder to view your life as “a story”. The way we define our sense of self will continue to morph via new ways of socializing. The notion of your life needing to be a story will seem slightly corny and dated. Your life becomes however many friends you have online.
You’ll spend a lot of time shopping online from your jail cell. Over-criminalization of the populace, paired with the triumph of shopping as a dominant cultural activity, will create a world where the two poles of society are shopping and jail.
Much of this list seems Cowen-esque, particularly this for some reason: “musical appreciation will shed all age barriers”.
Essential skills you didn’t learn in college
Wired has a go at defining liberal arts 2.0.
It’s the 21st century. Knowing how to read a novel, craft an essay, and derive the slope of a tangent isn’t enough anymore. You need to know how to swing through the data deluge, optimize your prose for Twitter, and expose statistics that lie.
Food myths debunked
Kenji Lopez-Alt busts six stubborn food myths.
4. Searing “Locks In” Juices. This is the oldest one in the book, and still gets repeated-by many highly respected cookbook authors and chefs!-to this day. It’s been conclusively proven false many times, including in our own post on How to Cook a Perfect Prime Rib, where we found that when roasting a standing roast, it in fact lost 1.68% more juice if it was seared before roasting rather than after! The same is true for pork roasts, steaks, hamburgers, chicken cutlets, you name it.
Mad Men reading list
The NYPL blog has compiled a list of books ripped from the scenes of Mad Men.
Some of the titles are featured prominently in the series and others are mentioned in passing. Remember the book Sally read with her grandfather at bedtime? The book on Japanese culture the agency was told to read? The scandalous book the ladies passed between each other in secret? You can find all these and more!
(via mad men unbuttoned)
Tips for travelling with kids
A great list of tips, tricks, and advice for travelling with kids.
18. Don’t do too much BUT don’t do too little either. I think the biggest mistake parents traveling with kids make is doing too little not too much. Get out there. Enjoy. Experience. Wear the kids out and get them tired.
(thx, meg)
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