May 2010
24 posts
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Great Moments in Executive Power
April, 1952: The United Steelworkers of America goes on strike against US Steel and nine other domestic manufacturers. President Truman, citing ammunition shortages in Korea and other industrial concerns related to the war effort, nationalizes the entire industry. After the Supreme Court rules this an unconstitutional overreach of executive power, Truman threatens to draft the steelworkers into...
i think u doth protest 2 much
For whatever reason I’ve got a lot to get off my chest about this Gawker/Tumblr/HRO polemic, and yet I don’t really feel comfortable opening my mouth, since despite the fact that it expresses a sentiment I always find pretty disagreeable—that of a dangerously self-congratulatory elitism—it’s also an indictment both of my own writing and that of no small number of my...
Ricky Van Veen, the co-founder of CollegeHumor,... →
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In Which I Pretend I'm Important Enough To Answer...
Name: Matthew A. Langer Age: 30 Neighborhood: Greenpoint Occupation: Engineer, d-list blogger, “aspiring writer”/failure
Who’s your favorite New Yorker, living or dead, real or fictional? Woody Allen, patron saint of Jewish neurotics.
What’s the best meal you’ve eaten in New York? The Double Down at the KFC/Taco Bell on McGuinness Blvd.
In one sentence, what do you...
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“btw you guys, i just solved the halting problem because if you really think abt...”
– truth bomb.
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Quiz: Stock symbol or Hipster Runoff?
goog
bro
alt
amappy
rlly
mee
blg
azn
kno
authentic nipple slip
dre
aapl
rlly
anco
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natashavc:
The battle lines fall in peculiar places for some people. Believe me when I say this with complete sincerity, if you believe Forrest Gump rightfully beat out Pulp Fiction for Best Picture in 1994 you are an enemy of mine. Second, if you, as an adult, have not accepted what a manipulative sham this movie is, it is time to face facts.
You know, I’ve spent a disproportionate...
Idea Bankruptcy: cont'd
Short Story Ideas I Had This Morning In The Shower (a continuing series):
a cultural history of the American south in the 1980s as told from the perspective of Hillary Clinton’s hair (via Joseph Heller’s Picture This)
the trial of two young lovers and their fated marriage, doomed on their wedding night after the slightly inebriated groom slipped momentarily out of character upon...
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Plenty of ink has already been spilled in this...
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How to Talk to the Ladies with Great Success (a...
Let me paint you a picture.
I’m out at a bar recently with a few friends and across the room I see a woman I only sort of vaguely know but one with whom I’m well enough acquainted to know that a.) she’s very intelligent, b.) she’s very attractive, and therefore c.) she’s an obvious candidate for the trademark LangerCrush™. And as anyone who has followed the history...
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“This is probably the craziest I’ve...
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So about this "new niceness".
Guys, I’m all in favor of a friendlier internet. I’m all in favor of a friendlier everywhere! But something just rubs me the wrong way about packaging good behavior with a label and congratulating ourselves for (finally) realizing that the internet is a Real Place with Real People who have Real Feelings.
The worry that keeps festering in the back of my mind is that this might be an...
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A mini-review of Emily Gould's "And the Heart Says...
Over time I’ve come to suspect that many (if not most) of the things in our lives that cause either great pain or great joy are these grand thematic universals (dysfunctional families, your twenties, falling in love, getting jobs, leaving jobs, moving, having kids [no experience with this one; just hypothesizing], etc.), and that our experiences of these themes only ever vary in their...
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This is a one-second audio sample of Stephen...