Phoning it In

​​I'm cheating this week, because despite half a dozen failed starts, I have no more than a paragraph or two to say about anything this week. What I do have is a whole lot of links. We'll call this a break, but do dig in to what I've got compiled below, because there's some great stuff in there, including several long reads.

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Stuff I'm Digging This Week
Roomba Pong
This is the Time When Artists Go to Work | Toni Morrison, The Nation, March 2015
I, Racist
While I remain so, so thankful to finally have a sunny outside place of our own, I'm also so, so thankful that when the dog days come around I can close the curtains and crank the air conditioning until the sun goes over the roof and we finally have some shade again. Modernity has its perks.
I chatted with this guy on Saturday, and only afterward did a friend ask me if I'd ever heard his TEDx talk. I hadn't, but I looked it up when I got home, and it's worth the 15 minutes for the perspective. Mark Henick: Why We Choose Suicide | TEDx Toronto 2013
I'm endlessly fascinated by birds of prey (one of my life goals is to get a falconry license and a kestrel). This falcon is gorgeous.
I think it's brave to try to be happy. Also I need to do a rewatch of Pushing Daisies because it's such a lovely show.
I've never seen a thing with a Kardashian in it, mostly because we don't have cable, but I've been reading some really excellent, thoughtful commentary on their whole deal that serves as a rebuttal to the (definitely sexist) idea that they're all just vapid and trashy. This piece by Caity Weaver at GQ is fascinating and smart and definitely NSFW.
Similarly I've come across some some really great stuff lately about how people need to STFU about how Kanye is arrogant, because being an openly arrogant black man is a radical act. I don't have any links, but after Muhammad Ali's funeral (another openly arrogant black man who took a lot of flack at the time), they talked briefly about it on Another Round.
I often feel like my French learning is plodding and slow because Spanish came to me so, so easily, but it's reached a point where I can tell I'm learning something especially when I remember that when we moved to Canada I knew how to count to 3 and say hello, how are you? and I'm tired and that was really it, so I've definitely come a long way. Also, my pronunciation has improved by miles and miles and miles.
"The secret to satiation, to satisfaction, was not to meet or even acknowledge your needs, but to curtail them. We learn the same lesson about our emotional hunger: Want less, and you will always have enough." Hunger Makes Me | Jess Zimmerman for Hazlitt
Facts you should know about whales
This piece at Racked about beauty product naming.