trial & error

I'm Emily. This is my online commonplace book. Email: bookishemily (at) yahoo. My other blog: Thrifted Sisters.

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Looking for Laurie

Home for the holidays: a tribute to Laurie Colwin, whose graceful observations of food and family made her an icon.

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Nobody Owes You Fat Positivity: On Weight Loss Surgery as “Betrayal”

I’m tired.

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Opinion | Dear Abby, #MeToo

Before hashtags and callouts, there was just one public space where women could go to air their grievances: advice columns.

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The best books on finance and economics

A great book from the late Hans Rosling heads the list. The second in a series of farewell blogs

Let’s pretend I’m ever going to read any of these.

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The Collector Who Helped Build Dallas’s Texas-Sized Art Scene

As the Dallas Art Fair marks its 10th edition, Howard Rachofsky’s contemporary collection is fueling the city’s art boom—and will for the next generation, too.

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Ibram Kendi, one of the nation’s leading scholars of racism, says education and love are not the answer

It’s a Wednesday night at a bookstore in a well-off part of Washington, D.C., and every seat is taken. More than 100 people spill into the aisles or crowd the s…

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Opinion | The Misguided Drive to Measure ‘Learning Outcomes’

Colleges should stop trivializing the transmission of knowledge.

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I can finally say it – I think Quentin Tarantino and Woody Allen are rubbish anyway

For so long, I’ve been held back by the sexist male genius paradox.

I’ve been saying it for years. I don’t quite agree with every single point in this piece, but much of it resonates.

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Fear is why you do not have what you want. If you get over your fear, if you can embrace your fear, if you can lean into your fear, you can get the things you want. Here’s how you overcome it: 1. Do scary (but potentially rewarding) shit. 2. Repeat. There is no step 3. There is no 'One Weird Trick.' There is no profound aphorism. It is that simple. The key to making it work is trying it for the first time. And that’s what defeats us.

John Gorman, You’re Not Lazy

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Conscious consumerism is a lie. Here’s a better way to help save the world

Choosing fashion made from hemp or grilling the waiter about how your fish was caught is no substitute for systematic change.

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Chairman and Innovation Process Consultant Ed Harrington shares some innovation tips from an unusual source-The 10 Adopted Rules of Thumb.

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I Was A Skeptic Of Mindfulness … Until I Tried To Make My Case

The science behind mindfulness shows that the practice does have benefits -- though there's still plenty we don't know.

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I was adopted at 4 months old. I went back to Korea looking for answers.

Reaching across the gap of sea and language, trying to find yourself.

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'Our minds can be hijacked': the tech insiders who fear a smartphone dystopia

The Google, Apple and Facebook workers who helped make technology so addictive are disconnecting themselves from the internet. Paul Lewis reports on the Silicon Valley refuseniks who worry the race for human attention has created a world of perpetual distraction that could ultimately end in disaster

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Learning to Learn: You, Too, Can Rewire Your Brain

How an engineering professor who “flunked my way” through high school math and science went on to create the world’s most popular online course.

Here’s hoping.

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Perhaps, then, unlikeable characters, the ones who are the most human, are also the ones who are the most alive. Perhaps this intimacy makes us uncomfortable because we don't dare be so alive.

Roxane Gay, from her essay "Not Here To Make Friends" in Bad Feminist, which makes me want to recommend the movie Erasing Eden to the essayist. I wonder if she's seen it.

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People who are placed on pedestals are expected to pose, perfectly. Then they get knocked off when they fuck it up. I regularly fuck it up. Consider me already knocked off.

Roxane Gay, Bad Feminist (xi)