omniar:

Probably the biggest problem with cars in cities is that they require huge amounts of land for storage (a.k.a. parking). Here is a photo of Midtown Atlanta between 5th street and 12th street. This is one of the densest and most pedestrian-friendly ares in the entire state of Georgia. The red blocks indicate parcels of land that are 100% dedicated to car storage. (via Cars Kill Cities « Progressive Transit)

property prices aren’t exogenous. 

allthingseurope:

Munich, Germany (by Steve Daggar)

really excited to spend the next three days in munich.

It almost felt like gang warfare,” he said. “The nerdiest gang warfare ever, but still, gang warfare.

— on the group messaging wars of oh-11

(Source: The New York Times)

There are plenty of books to read, things to watch, and music to listen to. Indeed, the American consumer has never been better-entertained than she is today. The same digital frontier that’s created the piracy pseudo-problem has created whole new companies and made it infinitely easier for small operations to distribute their products. Digital technology has reduced the price we pay for new works and made them cheaper to create.

— Matt Yglesias on SOPA

billy’s instagram / the perpetual goal

The love I felt for her on that train ride had a capital and provinces, parishes and a Vatican, an orange planet and many sullen moons - it was systemic and it was complete

— Lenny Abramov, in Gary Shteyngart’s A Super Sad True Love Story, as relayed by Sana Rao (via entrepreneurdesigners)

Second Act

“I’m thirty-eight, single, wish I’d had kids — to a certain extent — but feel like I lost that choice because I got so tied to the idea of independence,” she said. “But you have to be. My parents’ way, the working-class-America way of raising your kids on a diet of ‘Hard work and industry will lead to success,’ is no longer available to us. Now it’s ‘Do what you can and apologize later.’” She smiled and waited for her marshmallows.

– From Talk of the Town in Jan 2 New Yorker

szymon:

Borabora, the Maldives, Haiti and the Bahamas, ask your pharmacist - by Kelvin Lumen

in love with things that glow

We are beginning to see ourselves not just from the inside, as an actor doing something on a daily basis, but from the outside — understanding what we look like to the world around us and developing a kind of hybrid identity.

— 

TimeHop in the NYTimes a few weeks ago (belated, yes)

part of the “we live in public” meme, which I’m trying to tease through these days

Harry Truman, late in life, caught his wife, Bess, burning their letters to each other. “What are you doing?” Truman implored. “Think of history.”

“Oh I have, ” she said, and went on adding to the pyre.

— Reviewing The Obamas in this week’s NYer