May 2013
14 posts
3 tags
“Morozov writes:
“… Silicon Valley innovators […] are the same...”
– I am going to admit that I skimmed this piece by Maria Bustillos in The Awl, for lack of time, though by the time this queued post publishes on my blog I likely will have returned to it. But it seems worth reading in full just for these paragraphs, where she neatly thrusts a dagger directly into the...
4 tags
1 tag
4 tags
4 tags
4 tags
4 tags
There are always worse things you could do.:... →
amariefox:
walterblakeknoblock:
If you’re deciding about going to college, I implore you to consider the consequences of accruing tens of thousands of dollars of debt. There’s nothing poetic about not being able to sleep because you’ve got $500 less than is needed at the end of the month. Remember that the typical college…
As much as I agree that not everyone should necessarily...
1 tag
Whenever anyone on Tumblr says, “don’t reblog my posts,” I sit back and I wonder what my life would be like if my idea of security was storing classified documents in the Xerox tray.
C’mon. People. There is such a thing as inviting trouble.
Every time I look at my girlfriend I find some new way that she’s gorgeous beyond compare.
No moral or anything. That’s all.
2 tags
2 tags
2 tags
2 tags
April 2013
11 posts
1 tag
Various Phrases My Girlfriend Has Shouted at Me in...
“ALSO I THINK SHE’S REALLY COOL AND I HAVE A GIRL CRUSH ON HER AND I WANT TO TALK TO HER ABOUT GENERAL THINGS” — some blog
“SERIOUSLY THOUGH HE’S MARRIED TO THE LUNATIC IN THE ATTIC AND YOU STILL MARRY HIM” — Jane Eyre
“SO TANGY AND DELICIOUS” — a bowl of noodles
“SO BAD” — Jane Eyre
“TAKE MY HAND AND WE’LL MAKE IT I SWEAR” — a cold I had one week ago
“NO I DID NOT JUST...
3 tags
A response to Angela’s reblog of this post.
amariefox:
What are your solutions then for that argument? How do we differentiate between people? Everyone wants an identity, seeks to have some kind of word to describe who they are. One word.
Hell, even if they AREN’T a serious writer, but want to be called one, because they have wet dreams about Hemingway… what do you do then?...
4 tags
In Which I, Frothing and Raving, Despise All...
Can we just revoke the term “writer” for now? You know, let’s talk specifics: you’re a blogger, a critic, a diarist. Or if you’re actually published? An author, a poet, a lyricist, a novelist. But even these terms are idiotic, inadequate: they force an activity as simple as eating and breathing into a cultural mold that barely begins to express it.
It bothers me when...
You call it cultural appropriation, I call it cultural assimilation. We become the old trope, that melting pot. What was once confined to a narrow street now accumulates many new meanings in the public square. And why shouldn’t this be a good thing? Is memory confined to blood? Or can the heritage of any people be shared, divided, distributed? We talk about division, but the history of...
1 tag
My God, they included an advertisement for themselves in the link post I just created, without even asking me.
1 tag
What is with this huge, green, hideous box around... →
Post anything (from anywhere!), customize everything, and find and follow what you love. Create your own Tumblr blog today.
When did this happen? Who decided it was necessary?
3 tags
Nuclear power is unnatural? Think again →
A natural nuclear fission reactor is a uranium deposit where self-sustaining nuclear chain reactions have occurred. This can be examined by analysis of isotope ratios. The existence of this phenomenon was discovered in 1972 at Oklo in Gabon, Africa, by French physicist Francis Perrin. The conditions under which a natural nuclear reactor could exist had been predicted in 1956 by Paul Kazuo...
1 tag
Finally got around to setting up my own domain and all that. This blog is now hosted off of barretta.cc; the specific subdomain is read.barretta.cc. You shouldn’t see any changes at your end, but drop me a line if anything seems off.
3 tags
1 tag
1 tag
March 2013
18 posts
3 tags
1 tag
2 tags
Sometimes when I read my Tumblr dashboard I get the vision of a thousand single girls in tiny apartments, drinking wine and watching Netflix and being not liked by boys about whom they have complicated feelings, it’s not that simple, he is emotionally damaged.
A thousand, a million, keyboards clattering with a million half-finished drafts of articles called “If You Don’t Love My...
3 tags
2 tags
1 tag
2 tags
2 tags
1 tag
1 tag
It seems increasingly clear to me that in order to be truly applicable to the everyday workforce, the core curricula of any liberal arts degree should include at least a nominal introduction to Web and traditional desktop programming. Not just computer use, you understand, but a hands-on primer that ends with every English, History, Art and Music major knowing the rudiments of building and...
3 tags
“There are a thousand unnoticed openings, continued my father, which let a...”
– Laurence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman.
It’s been a hell of a day.
2 tags
“Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death...”
– Today is a classicist’s holiday! In its honor, this is one of my (and everyone’s) favorite bits of Julius Caesar. Beware; the ides of March have come—but not yet gone.
2 tags
3 tags
So what are some young, “hip” Internet publications that accept short stories I’d want to check out? I’m not up on the “scene” for “literary” fiction.
2 tags
I can’t help but be angry whenever I see someone giving a young person advice about how “necessary” or “useful” a bachelor’s degree is. This may be advice largely applicable to Americans (I can’t speak to Europe but I strongly suspect the same), but here, if you have the choice to get an undergraduate degree, and you want to work in any white-collar field,...
A note on the previous post: if we’ve never interacted before, on Tumblr or elsewhere, certainly you can still take a look and send me your email, but please feel free to introduce yourself!
1 tag
I’ve finished a pretty rough draft of a story I’ve been working on. It could use another five to ten pages, and I’m probably going to change some of the background, but if anyone would like to take a look and submit comments, I’d appreciate it.
If you would, drop me your email addresses in my ask box and I’ll fire it to you later today.
February 2013
11 posts
People who continue to like and reblog posts I made years ago only reinforce the fact that my blog will never be as good as it used to be.
Oh well! Time to burn this shit down!
3 tags
“How anybody expects a man to stay in business with every two-bit wowser in the...”
– Robert Heinlein, The Man Who Sold the Moon.
1 tag
2 tags
1 tag
3 tags
“For purity of heart was to will one thing.”
– Søren Kierkegaard, Purity of Heart Is to Will One Thing. 