The always brilliant (and currently being interviewed by Nikki, btw!) Alexander Chee on the future of gay culture (lol i love the new TNR so muchhh):
I’ve lived through several of these moments. In 1995, for example, when highly active antiretroviral therapy, or what became known as the “AIDS cocktail,” was approved by the Food and Drug Administration, and then later entered the lives of my friends with HIV or AIDS, I went from worrying if they were going to live, to worrying that they still smoked too much now that they were going to live. Or in 2007, when my sister, who’s a teacher, invited me to speak to her high school’s Gay-Straight Alliance, and the students there asked me why I didn’t come out in high school. I had to explain that such an act was unimaginable for a boy from Maine in 1984—as was anything like a student Gay-Straight Alliance—and I could tell my past was as unimaginable to them as their present was to me.
AN INTERVIEW WITH CHRIS KIMBALL:
The next thing you have to do is figure out which things will destroy the recipe. So if someone used all-purpose flour instead of cake flour, or natural process cocoa versus Dutch process, or a sirloin roast instead of a top round roast or vice versa—if one of those things is really going to make the recipe not work, you need to say that explicitly: “Only make this recipe with sirloin steak tips, and by the way, most sirloin steak tips are really not the right cut at the supermarket, and here’s what it’s supposed to look like.” So we go through a process of trying to blow up the recipe to figure out the most lethal mistake you can make.
And I think the last thing is—to get more to your point—just the clarity of writing, which means trying not to use too many adjectives: less is more. Be very clear and not overly descriptive. Include just as much information as you need.
Lawrence Wright has a massive genius thing in The New Yorker about the families of ISIS hostages, which is hugely topical now that the US has decided they will no longer prosecute families who want to try to pay ransoms to get their loved ones back. I support the US’s decision not to pay ransoms to terrorists, it ultimately saves lives, but if my loved one was being held, there is no power on earth that could keep me from doing everything I could as a civilian, and I would cheerfully sit in federal custody for the rest of my life filing my nails if it brought my child (or my Mallory) back alive:
At the time, U.S. government policy was to keep information about hostages strictly secret, for privacy reasons; and yet Diane and Nancy were immensely relieved to learn of another family searching for a son in Syria. They traded information about avenues they had explored and people they had approached—N.G.O. workers, State Department officials, F.B.I. agents—and they rebuked themselves for not having set up emergency contacts for their sons, and for not getting their digital passwords. As each learned more about the other’s son, they saw how much the men had in common. What good friends they’ll be when this is all over, they often said.
the comments on Mallory and Carvell’s conversation about black forgiveness were priceless, I shall share just a mild sprinkling of the ensuing whitemansplaining fest:
(middle of comment not shared, then he ends strong by telling them what their discussion was supposed to be about)
fuck you, boromir can always get it:
this dude i can’t even:
