taking it in slowly

“The Web’s Inventor Regrets One Small Thing,” New York Times (via derrinyet) (via somethingchanged) (via jaredcardwell)

jordanreid:

I was served these delicious (and easy-to-make) Oreo truffles pretty much everywhere I went while visiting Kendrick’s relatives over Thanksgiving, and asked my mother-in-law to send me the recipe. Put them in a pretty tin, and they make a lovely, personal (and inexpensive) Christmas gift.

OREO TRUFFLES

What you need:

1 package Oreo cookies, finely crushed

1 8 oz package cream cheese (no reduced fat stuff, please…we’re talking truffles here)

2 packages (8 squares each) semi-sweet chocolate, melted (in the microwave is easiest)

What you do:

1. Mix 3 cups of the cookie crumbs with the cream cheese until well-blended.

2. Shape cookie/cream cheese mixture into 42 1” balls.

3. Dip balls in melted chocolate (use two forks and sort of roll them around until evenly coated; allow excess to drip off) and place on wax paper.

4. Sprinkle over remaining cookie crumbs and refrigerate at least one hour before serving. Store in a tightly covered container in the refrigerator.

Other decorating ideas: Adorn your truffles with sprinkles, colored sugar, or even edible glitter.

newsweek:

“Separated at birth, twin sisters born in China never doubted that they were somehow part of a pair. Four years, two continents, and a high-speed Internet connection later, they finally met their match.”—Susannah Meadows tells this story about as well as it can be told.

dihard:

Portraits of Power - New Yorker staff photographer, Platon, set up a tiny studio at the UN meeting this September and captured portraits of over 100 world leaders. It’s an interactive audio portfolio, and his account of each portrait is so interesting.

suitep:

French Law Proposed to Put Label on All Ads with Shopped Models

(via)

piedaterre:

highlow:

If you go to this web site, www.LetsSayThanks.com you can pick out a thank you card and Xerox will print it and it will be sent to a soldier that is currently serving in Iraq.

It is FREE and it only takes a second.

- Posted by 100 others, but I found it from lizlemon

The cards are drawn by kids across the U.S.  I chose this awesome one by Cydney (Age 10), Tamia (9), Raven (9) & Tinuke (10) who live in D.C. Mostly because it didn’t mention the G-man and because Tinuke has a stellar name.

recklessmelancholy:

sociallydriven:

jhnmyr:

I’ve been thinking of a way to say thank you for making Battle Studies such a huge success out of the gate… I’ve also been thinking of a way to use tumblr as a means of posting some more substantial stuff… So here’s a very raw, live solo version of “Edge of Desire” I just recorded in my apartment as a way to show my gratitude to you all for extending my time in this amazing career you’ve helped me build.

I think if you were kind enough to spent the 13 bucks, you should get some free music for the next good while.

So here it is. A song about late night longing recorded at 3am. iPhone dinging in the background and all…(that’s how I knew the take was going to be worth sticking with, as the best takes always get interrupted.)

Thank you.

More to come…

John

Download http://bit.ly/4Igzxc

this made my morning. beautiful.

musicforyourcoffee:

Lenka – The Show

suitep:

A sculpture installed in a water feature is pictured outside the congress centre, before the opening of the United Nations Climate Change Conference 2009 in Copenhagen December 7, 2009.

(via)

Paulo Coelho (via kari-shma)

poleris:

One of my bitterest misgivings is that I never quite figured out who I am or what I stand for. In some ways, I stand as a paragon of rationality: I carefully think through my lifestyle decisions to make sure they are coherent. But at the same time, I realize that in a larger sense I am not rational at all. Logical systems need frameworks of assumptions to have external purpose. No matter how efficiently I drive myself, it’s useless in the end unless I have a destination.

I am a very different person from when I was in high school, and yet, those ghosts still haunt my life. Paul Graham wrote that the best way to determine what you love to do is “to try to do things that would make your friends say wow.” I think this cuts to the heart of my problem: I am not good enough at being pressured by the rest of the world, by prestige.

Let me tell you a little bit about Exeter, the high school I attended. It sits on 619 acres of gorgeous wilderness — rivers, lakes, forests, plains — nestled next to a sleepy New Hampshire town. Autumns and winters are especially breathtaking: one constantly feels part of an elaborate landscape oil. Maybe one of the anonymous weekenders in Seurat’s famous Un dimanche après-midi à l’Île de la Grande Jatte:

Just as they observe time sail slowly by, one can’t help but begrudge a feeling that these might be the best years of my life. Not a constant reminder, but more of a background hum that sharply spikes on particularly winsome days. One moment you’ll be fading asleep against a languid spring sun, and the next you’ll feel a sudden chill as dusk presses overhead. The passing of seasons is particularly poignant in New England.

It was a collective feeling. I think the greatest gift Exeter gave us was not an education or a passing ticket into college — it was a glimpse into our own mortality. It was an unspoken thought that what we were journeying through was not some passing phase: it was a camera pinhole into our days in the wider world. Like that old Semisonic song: “time for you to go back to the places you will be from…”

Even years afterwards — years after I have last seen or heard from many, if not most, of them — when I think about what I want to do with my life, I recall their voices. What we had in common was a sense of our own urgency. That what we do with our lives is sacred, that it matters deeply. No where else begs that sense of sincerity.

Their voices tell me that I should try harder. Strive to make something of myself. Reach for power, the ability to make a difference. It doesn’t matter what you do so much as being unique while doing it. To rise up the corporate ladder is good but not enough. The important place is not the bottom-line: it is in the starry sky.

I’ve followed this exhausting compass for years. It has been with me through rough roads, calm skies, euphoric celebrations, abject failures. Ultimately, I believe it is a gift. To regard one’s own life as a noble undertaking is enough a reason to live it. But it is also a curse. Throwing away the mundane means foregoing pleasant commonalities and feeling every disappointment deep in your bones.

“Life would be so much easier to live if I hadn’t met you.” I’m sure the saints and martyrs had their own private moments of self-doubt. I’m no saint. I long for the familiar, for the easy. I wish life were a happier coincidence of moments. I wish my ambitions were smaller; I wish more things made me happy. Every lover has wondered is there a way to go back in time, to when things were simpler…

EMILY: I can’t. I can’t go on. It goes so fast. We don’t have time to look at one another.

She breaks down sobbing. The lights dim on the left half of the stage.

I didn’t realize. So all that was going on and we never noticed. Take me back—up the hill—to my grave. But first: Wait! One more look.
Good-by, Good-by, world. Good-by, Grover’s Corners. Mama and Papa. Good-by to clocks ticking… and Mama’s sunflowers. And food and coffee. And new-honed dresses and hot baths… and sleeping and waking up. Oh, earth, you’re too wonderful for anybody to realize you.

She looks toward the stage manager and asks abruptly, through her tears:

Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it-every. every minute.

STAGE MANAGER: No.

Pause.

The saints and poets, maybe— they do some.

meghanasha:

brit:

Really enjoying the new Times Skimmer by the New York Times - very simple and intuitive way to scan the paper.

Just from this tiny screenshot of the Times Skimmer, I can already easily locate two familiar articles:

• Glider: the Firefox Plug-in that organizes all the travel browsing you do on the web.
• A feature on Mint’s brilliant CEO Aaron Patzer

tissie:

someoneelsesequestrianboots:

maxistentialist:

I want your handwriting.

Have you ever considered how strange it is that handwriting fonts have come to convey a kind of folksy authenticity in the design lexicon of our age? It’s disingenuous. Handwriting fonts - especially the ones you see everywhere (Comic Sans, Papyrus, Lucida Handwriting) - are mechanically reproduced and manipulated into a kind of cloying, fake, plastic perfection.

Penmanship is mostly a lost art - it is (rightfully) taught less and less in school, and the opportunities for people to see your handwriting are few and far between. As a result, modern handwriting looks really cool. What’s authentic and charming and inviting about real handwriting are the little imperfections that prove it came from a real person.

SO - I have decided to become a collector of handwriting.

Here’s how it works:

• You reblog this or email/Facebook me
• I’ll arrange for you to pick up a template
• You’ll fill it out
• I will create a TrueType font from your handwriting and send it to you

As I collect handwriting, I will periodically post things rendered in the handwriting of the donor - things they have taught me, important aspects of our relationship, jokes they have told me… we’ll see.

Please donate today.

deja-vu:2arrs2ells:pablog:sarahspy:(via, via)

S.O.S, Rihanna (via kari-shma)