This Week - Nov 15, 2013

And perhaps this is why we also now confuse shiny happy hashtag journalism with actual real (and often harsh) journalism. Bourdain didn't set out to validate Detroit. He set out to tell the truth about it. And the truth is that a whole hell of a lot of it looks like a nuclear reactor melted and the city was abandoned overnight and left for the cockroaches. But that there are also people still living, still surviving despite that. And the vast overwhelming majority of them aren't white yuppie Brooklyn transplants funded by Detroit Venture Partners. There are black people barbecuing (yes, Anthony Bourdain came to Detroit and HUNG OUT WITH BLACK PEOPLE...which might actually be a national television first).

— [EID Rants] He had you until "Chernobyl:" Bourdain came into town and people lost their shit (Eat It Detroit)

You probably only have to interrupt someone a couple times a day before they're unable to work on hard problems at all.

— Good And Bad Procrastination (Paul Graham)

The key to being controversial is that people have to believe in the authenticity of a story that they could never tell. You can be as crazy (or, as Ye puts it, “genius”) as you want to be, but when it all comes out in the wash, the story must make sense. Charlie Sheen is a great example of a “crazy” dude who makes a whole lot of sense. Sheen, unlike Yeezy, doesn’t have to tell us his crazy is a form of genius, because I think most of would gladly offer up the compliment without provocation. Either Kanye West is trying too damn hard or he’s suffering from some sort of cognitive break. Either way, he’s achieving the opposite of controversy at this point.

— I’m Quitting Kanye (Felicia Megan Gordon)

...there’s always this feeling of wishing or hoping that you’ll eventually arrive somewhere. But, I don’t know anybody who’s ever arrived anywhere. Everybody I know with half a brain is always a little bit nervous about how long they’re going to be okay doing what they’re doing.

— Merlin Mann (The Great Discontent)