still working on that niche

Ayelet Waldman spoke with The Atlantic about her daily media diet, and in the process discussed how she uses Twitter to overcome procrastination:

It’s gotten so on days where I can’t work, or I’m just procrastinating — and I know it’s a bad day if I’m on a site looking at ugly dresses worn by celebrities — I will go and I’ll say to [neoconservative columnist] John Podhoretz, “okay, name your favorite charity, and if I don’t get a thousand words today I’ll donate a hundred bucks.” And he gleefully complies. Sometimes it’s Sarah Palin’s PAC or sometimes it’s some crazed right-wing West Bank settlers. I once stayed up till eleven o’clock because I had sworn to write two thousand words and if I didn’t finish them I was going to have to give Sarah Palin’s PAC a hundred and fifty bucks and there just was no way I was going to do that.

She also uses Freedom to cut her internet connection for set chunks of time. Smart.

The Netherlands is close to banning foreigners from buying pot:

Known as the “Weed Pass,” the measure will turn coffee shops into private clubs for Dutch citizens over the age of 18. The memberships will last for a minimum of a year, and each shop will have a capped number of members.

This is complicated issue for many reasons, but the fact that a Cabinet member boasted that outlawing the sale of weed to foreigners will push them to buy through illegal means in their own countries is problematic for so many reasons. The Dutch have worked hard for the past few years to downplay their reputation as a mecca of drugs and prostitution. I get why, but abandoning their country’s history of tolerance and freedom is a wrong-headed way to go about it.

via the morning news

Edith Zimmerman profiles future Captain America Chris Evans for GQ, gets drunk, passes out at his house, and doesn’t remember any of it:

Up until half an hour earlier, I hadn’t actually known what did happen. In fact, I had spent the week practicing breezy and reportorial-sounding questions like “For fact-checking purposes, can you give me like a one-or-two-sentence recap of what we did after the club last Saturday?” Except when I finally found myself alone with him in his reserved booth, what came out was more along the lines of: “Oh my God I was such a mess whaaat even happened whyyy am I always so drunk?”

He laughed. “You don’t remember?”

The whole profile is amazing. She barely mentions Captain America, but now I need to see it.

The Atlantic offers a comprehensive walkthrough –with photos! — of the new iOS 5 features demonstrated during last week’s WWDC keynote address.

Aaron Sorkin interviews David Carr for Interview Magazine:

SORKIN: What did you major in?

CARR: Um … Frisbee and smoking doobies … But I did double major in journalism and psychology at the University of Minnesota. I began working at a great little weekly that no longer exists called the Twin Cities Reader. My first story was about a friend of my father’s, an older white guy who had been beaten up by some cops when he intervened on the arrest of two black males who seemed fairly subdued. So I said to my dad, “Boy, somebody should do a story about that.” And my dad said, “I thought that’s what you were doing—that you were a journalist.” So that became my first story.

Grantland chronicles the rapid rise and fall of The National, an attempt at producing a national daily newspaper dedicated to sports that became infamous for spending money, shall we say, frivolously:

[Editor-in-Cheief Frank] Deford: Oh, Christ. John [Feinstein] was overseas. The French Open ends. It’s another three weeks before Wimbledon. He calls me up and says, “Listen. Can I come home? It’s cheaper for me to fly home — and not on the Concorde — than to stay over here. I haven’t been home for a month.” I said, “Sure.” Where that crap came from about the cats, that’s one of those great urban myths. No way in the world did he come home to feed his cat. That is so much bullshit: that he’d come home on the Concorde to feed his cats or because he missed his cats or because a cat died. The cats weren’t in the conversation. I can assure you.

The National began publishing when I was three years old, and ceased publication before I turned five. Also, someday, perhaps soon, I will stop linking repeatedly to Grantland. (It probably won’t be soon.)

Ian Ranking overreacts, at The Quietus, about not receiving Radiohead’s deluxe newspaper album on time:

Radiohead have tried to subvert the traditional system, to set themselves up as a cottage industry paid for by the fans and in tune with those fans. However, at a point in history when it has never seemed so important for b(r)ands to stay on friendly terms with their fanbase, Radiohead have turned the other way, courtesy of their own website’s uncomprehending and faceless blankness.

A remix version of The King of Limbs will be appearing soon. Trust me, I’ll be last in the queue. Radiohead are Radiodead to me now.

His package got lost in the mail, and was signed for by some mysterious stranger. Radiohead’s lack of human support is understandably frustrating, but his tale reveals someone who should be angry at DLH, not W.A.S.T.E.

Chuck Klosterman — in his inaugural column for Grantland — on the most memorable sporting event he’s ever witnessed:

Attending school at [United Tribes Technical College] is the polar opposite of idyllic. But that’s just how college life was (and still is) for so many Native American students — it’s just that nobody pays attention. No American minority is less represented in the national consciousness. This was a collegiate program where the basketball team could not afford to print the name of its school on the front of its jerseys.

“We didn’t even have warm-up clothes,” says former United Tribe coach Ken Hall. “And Bottineau had those tear-away sweat pants! Half their team was dunking during pregame, and I didn’t have one guy over 6-foot. But as anyone who ever played for me will tell you, everybody on our roster was in the best shape of his life. We could run all day.”

This is how five Native Americans — and then four, and then three — defeated a team that should have routed them by 30: They ran and they ran and they ran. And then they stopped.

Grantland is just getting started, but already the site has produced great material. Every article so far is — for me — a must read. Of course, that doesn’t mean everybody agrees. (And The Atlantic doesn’t even mention the site’s anemic RSS feed.)

John Jeremiah Sullivan on getting stoned at Disney World and so much more:

Now we were truly at Disney World. A person didn’t come here every day! What is the scene here? Hello, primary colors; hello, quickly fading microdramas of passing human faces, incessantly deciding whether to make eye contact; hello, repeating stalls and gift shops. We were walking on the balls of our feet. The surface of things had become porous and permitted of the potential for enjoyment. Where were our womenfolk and Lil’ Dog? Let’s find them. Let’s be good fathers. Tomorrow was Father’s Day. Oh, my God, I didn’t even remember that!

Steve Jobs presents Apple’s plans for their new campus to the Cupertino City Council:

An incredible vision of what a corporation can achieve when thought and care go into every decision.

via macrumors