The skinny on working in New York publishing
Ever wanted to know what it was like to work in publishing at the heart of the Big Apple? Daniel Menaker, the publisher of Primary Colours, Colum McCann and Elizabeth Strout, has written a juicily revealing memoir, extracted on Vulture. Includes anecdotes about being booted from the New Yorker by Tina Brown, offending the author of Seabiscuit (a good friend of Laura Bush) by dissing George W. Bush’s presidency, and editing Michael Eisner.
Doris Lessing tributes
Nobel Prize-winning author Doris Lessing died this week, unleashing a flood of tributes - including a lovely reflection by Margaret Atwood and a look at Lessing’s five best novels (she published over 50 books in her lifetime) in the Guardian.
Living in Walmart parking lots: A photographic essay
There’s a thriving culture of people living in Walmart parking lots in the US, thanks to the megastore’s rule allowing parking overnight. One photographer has documented a community in an Arizona Walmart lot, along with their various reasons for living there: some are out for adventure, while others are down on their luck. You can view it on Wired.
Bjork on TV: ‘You shouldn’t let poets lie to you’
In this delightfully bizarre short segment, Bjork describes how TV works … and how an Icelandic poet scared her when describing the workings of a television, so much she got headaches while watching it. Until she learned the scientific truth. Uh huh. ‘You shouldn’t let poets lie to you,’ she says.
Easy, breezy, beautiful: Photoshop
Someone has made a terrifically funny fake ad for Photoshop that satirises all those cosmetics commercials packed with pseudoscience and breezy affirmations. It really is the fix-all for all your beauty needs … so long as your image doesn’t stray from the screen.