An Essay & 10 Failed Explorations of Logical Understanding:
Donald Trump is running for president because of your meme accounts. Your uncle got cancer because 30 years ago someone in Washington spilled coffee on some documents. In the words of Peter Pomerantsev, “A butterfly flaps its wings in China and a village in Birmingham goes unemployed”.
Interesting read with an experimental HTML layout.
Mary Norris breaks it down.
Taken from Jarrett Fuller’s, A Rough Sketch for a Video Essay as Design Criticism.
The quote attributed to various people, including Thelonius Monk.
via kottke
—taken from American Gods by Neil Gaiman
Where the aviation term “Roger Wilco” came from:
In 1927 “Roger” was the word chosen to represent the letter “R,” which is, of course, the first letter in the word “received.” In other words, a pilot would receive instructions, and to indicate he had received them, he’d say “Roger.” Why didn’t he just say “received”? Well, during WWII, not everyone spoke English, but “R” — or “Roger” — became the internationally accepted way of acknowledging receipt of instructions. (Of course, in 1957 the word “Roger” was replaced with the word “Romeo” but by that time, “Roger” and “received” were synonymous.)
So what about “Wilco”? Its story is even simpler: it’s an abbreviation of “will comply.” So when pilots say “Roger Wilco,” what they mean is “I received your instructions, and I will follow them.”
The full NATO list: Alfa, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo, Foxtrot, Golf, Hotel, India, Juliett, Kilo, Lima, Mike, November, Oscar, Papa, Quebec, Romeo, Sierra, Tango, Uniform, Victor, Whiskey, X-ray, Yankee, Zulu.
Noah Davis on what writers make in 2015:
In my own work, I’ve seen my average rate for my writing, which
includes print and digital combined, jump from thirty-seven cents per
word during the first half of 2013 to fifty cents per word in the
first six months of 2014, and fifty-three cents per word so far this
year. While that increase is partially due to my slowly rising
standing in the freelance writing ecosystem, a lot of it stems
directly from writing for flush sites. In general, each new digital
outlet I write for pays better than the previous ones; there’s money
out there if you know where to look.
Being an artist—painter, writer, musician—is hard.
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via The Awl
