Mid-week Links

It seems like every time I’ve been posting recently it’s been prefaced by an apology about my lack of consistency.  I’m here again and again with another excuse- you would think being homebound with a bad ankle would lead to more posting rather than less, but instead I’ve just generally been very off my game for the last week.  Thankfully I’m starting to shape up and am more or less ready to rejoin the land of the living/productive, which is good because we’ve got some family trips lined up which I would never for the life of me be missing.
But that does also mean I’m unlikely to be posting consistently for another week and a half.  The boondocks of PA doesn’t even have phone connection, much less WiFi.
See you on the other side!

In the meantime, I’ve amassed a hideous army of motley links from around the interwebs.

Why so many posts about Instagram?

• Intimidatingly stylish Insta-kids. I do not follow these small people but I do have to say that Jayde Robinson looks like the cutest thing ever.
• Is ‘personal taste’ being replaced by an algorithm?
• The Call Me By Your Name x Monet mashup you didn’t know you needed. Summer vibe.
• Some pretty art photos.

Peace and Acceptance:

• “It’s two years after Pulse and too little has changed.”
• On Polyamorous relationships.
• 7 LGBTQIA stories to celebrate Pride

On Films:

• The trouble with Hollywood’s gender flips: “These reboots require women to relive men’s stories instead of fashioning their own. And they’re subtly expected to fix these old films, to neutralize their sexism and infuse them with feminism, to rebuild them into good movies with good politics, too. They have to do everything the men did, except backwards and with ideals.”
• The Pop Culture Detective strikes again! The topic: Abduction as Romance.
• The Hate U Give. This looks pretty great.
• What is Cinemascore?

Miscellaneous:

• Real men smell like flowers.
• Testing the new Glossier cloud paints on different skin tones. Dawn looks pretty amazing on darker skin, IMO.
• My personal kama sutra.
• There’s a garden on top of Fenway (how did I miss this?!) and the truth about New Haven’s masked boombox man.

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Links and Things

After a short hiatus that coincided with finals period and stress and projects, I am back in the US of A and home in Boston where there are cats and vegan food and gardens that need working it.

And a smallish backlog of links.

• All about the three-person committee that approves (and rejects) baby names in Iceland.
• “When you’re feeling frisky, try slow dancing in your kitchen with a healthy twenty centimeters of clearance in between your torsos.” and other sex advice from a woman in a Cialis commercial.
• The Problem with “Not Caring” about Pop Culture: relevant, revolutionary stories can come from anywhere — even a makeover show.
• Insert Millennial joke about Etat Libre d’Orange making a fragrance specifically for me [here].
• Yale University advancing the science of smell.
• This short story made me tear up… nice to be given back some faith in humanity.
• Very extra background extras– even better than Part 1.
• Just over here learning about The Dutch Angle.
• The story tellers who read aloud to Cuban cigar rollers. Wow.
• The story of the pilot who landed the Southwest Airlines flight.
• Cardi B is changing how black women are pregnant in public.
• Eight decades of royal British corgis are at an end.
• An analysis of The Simpsons and the Problem with Apu. Just jump right in here at Part 2.
• And a whole lot of exciting trailers: Solo, The Meg, The Incredibles 2, Mary Shelley, Hot Summer Nights (Heyyy, Timothee Chalamet!), Hereditary, Three Identical Strangers.

Links 4/07

I hope you had a lovely Saturday. I took a forty minute detour to claim a vegan cinnamon roll, visited the Louvre’s special Delacroix exhibition, and ate a pizza (also vegan).
Keep an eye open for an upcoming ‘best vegan pizzas in Paris’ post. The sequel to the Boston edition- we’ve relocated.

So here’s what’s happening on the interwebs, carefully avoiding the trend for snorting condoms.

• The city of lights from the sky
• I’m fantasizing less about these outfits and more about the swoon worthy descriptions of spring weather
• Body glitter is now the only appropriate use for the Kira Kira filter. I am entranced.
• What happens when you add illustrations to those random snippets of overheard conversations
• I would stay here– books and beds are the only things I need in life
• For it to really be Paris he would have an accordion
• Infernal Affairs and The Departed– for me The Departed wins because Boston, but I have yet to see Infernal Affairs (it’s been on my list SO LONG) so that’s not worth much. It does look excellent, doesn’t it?
• If you’re a Royal Wedding fan, maybe you want to enter this social media contest to suggest its defining ice cream flavor?
• The unstoppable rise of veganism, about which I have mixed feelings (more people want to eat my cinnamon bun but more places sell vegan pizza).
• The benefits of a plant-based diet for health and the environment.
• Congrats to Yale and congrats to Nathan Chen.
• An interview with my favorite makeup artist
• A follow up on the Orientalism inherent in Wes Anderson’s Isle of Dogs, and in the broader world of American cinema (with a very interesting segment on 2015’s Met Gala theme).
  “It’s Japan purely as an aesthetic — and another piece of art that treats the East not as a living, breathing half of the planet but as a mirror for the Western imagination.” And perhaps the only thing that will lead to a more fair, just, and equal portrayal of Asians in cinema and pop culture is the spending power of that huge sector of the world population.
• Turkish Rondo in finger snaps
• Molly Ringwald reflects on the problematic legacy of John Hughes movies in the era of #MeToo

Links not Words

Look at me doing two posts two days in a row like I don’t currently have 134 raw materials to study and an illness to recover from! 😀

No excuses, I have reaped enough links from the inter webs now to share them and I’m missing sharing my thoughts more often, so I’m going to work on making time for this blog/diary/list compendium more of a priority.
For the children, you know.

• Pixar’s released a TEASER TRAILER FOR INCREDIBLES 2! I’ve been waiting so long. And I am so ready for destructive apocalyptic Jack Jack and stay-at-home Mr. Incredible. (And Edna Mode. Please, Edna Mode).
• One of my favorite makeup artists (Violette, check out her youtube channel) has released a trio of lip colors with Estee Lauder. I’m sorely tempted.
• A scholarly discussion of Rankin & Bass Christmas specials; the good, the bad, and the ugly. Finally convinced me to finally watch Jack Frost, which I had somehow missed during all of my childhood ABC Family’s 25 Days of Christmas. Here are some highlights.
• A program to help you find the word that’s just on the tip of your tongue.
• Guys, there’s a new horse movie coming out, Lean on Pete.
• The American Film Institute has released their list of top 10 films of 2017. It’s a pretty good list. I’ve seen 4/10 so far, time to get cracking.
• Yale’s released a new admissions video, “That’s Why I Toured Yale”, replacing cult icon “That’s Why I Chose Yale”. The weirdest thing? I recognize people in the video. (I see you at 9:26-9:33, ballroom team!)
• NPR’s guide to the best books of 2017. Be right back, adding about 20 to my list. have you read any?
• New York Times film critics on the best movie performances of 2017. So much agreement and so much anticipation for films I haven’t seen yet (like Ladybird, The Shape of Water, and Call Me By Your Name).
• The magic of big cities, an illustration.

Sunday Links 10/29

Lily and I are in the north of France!

• Pierre Dinand, the man behind some of the world’s most iconic perfume bottles.
• I really relate to this illustration.
• Favorite vanilla perfumes? I’d like to add Memoirs of a Trespasser by Imaginary Authors.
• Perfumer Christophe Laudamiel is offering an interactive experience in NYC inspired by Suskind’s book “Perfume: The Story of a Murderer”. Sounds super cool. Also super cool? I met Christophe a few weeks ago. He’s great and he has a great dog.
• I want to see this ballet but I can’t figure out yet how to buy tickets. It also looks like Giselle and Coppelia are coming next year, both of which I’m super interested on.
• Sex and love on the streets of New York- introducing the Love Map project.
• The economics of consent: “Weinstein was a gatekeeper who could give actresses a career that would sustain their lives and the livelihood of their families. He could also give them fame, which is one of few ways for women to gain some semblance of power and voice inside a patriarchal world. They knew it. He knew it. Weinstein could also ensure that these women would never work again if they humiliated him.”
• Super into the trailer for Phantom Thread. Daniel Day-Lewis is the bomb dot com.
• The joy of not wearing a bra.
• Reading Jane Eyre while black.
• Teen Vogue on #FreeMelecio. So glad to see the Yale student body uniting behind this.
• Today is the end of Asexual Awareness Week.
• Harvey Weinstein, Hollywood Beauty Standards, and Abuse: “We need also to recognize that many wealthy and powerful moguls who dehumanize women in private, treating them like consumable goods to be used for their pleasure — like products — are the very same people responsible for the commodified images of womanhood that bombard us everywhere.”
• Seeing (and smelling) a blooming corpse flower is on my bucket list.
• Have you heard about this popular new Amazon service?

Friday Links 10/20

It may not be Friday where you are- hell, it’s hardly Friday here- but I’m starting a new (and long) day and will try to get this out of the gate before it becomes impossible. And if this is posted on Saturday, then you will know it was, actually, impossible.

• “It’s time for their to be roles in the ballet where two men can fall in love”. YES!
• Still trying to scrounge up and SNL skits I can find. Here’s Kellyanne Conway as Pennywise the Clown.
• A friend of mine who is also a Yale professor but who was not my professor and who is an amazing, lovely, inspiring woman wrote about her experience at a ten-day silent Vispassana meditation retreat.
• You already know my (very long and involved) feelings on the #MeToo campaign. From Reductress: Woman posts another Facebook status in hopes that men will learn to be human beings.
• A bunch of exhibitions coming up in Paris! What should I go to?
• Are box stalls really the best option for your horse’s health and happiness, or are they designed to reflect what human beings would want, were they horses?
• Is this feminist poem really by a third grader? “I am a church bell, gonging out wrongs and rights and normal nights.”
• A whole new way for me to be antisocial: Are you an introvert, an extrovert, or a Victorian ghost with unfinished business?
• This is so well-written and so funny: Will pumpkin spice destroy us all?
• Instead of saying, “Do not go around lighting people on fire,” we are telling women, “Don’t be flammable.” Men of the world, you are not the weather.

Homesickness in Five Senses

Much as I’m loving living in France, there are some things that just aren’t the same and that give me a little ache when I think about them. This variety of homesickness is a lot less all-encompassing than the kind I had to deal with when I turned up at Yale four years ago (couldn’t tell you why), but for whatever reason this transition has felt much easier.

I do of course have thoughts about why, but that’s a topic for another day.
In the meantime, I’ve been finding it interesting to consider what it is I miss most about home (not necessarily America, but my own life there) and how there are some senses that are missing America more than others. Oddly, I feel like what I’m missing most are specific sounds, more than sights or smells or even tastes (though taste is a close second).

Sights:

• Autumn color. Take it from an entitled North East girl who has spent all of her autumns surrounded by yellows and golds and oranges and reds. You definitely miss it. Leaves turn yellow and brown here- which is quite pretty- and you get the snow-like leaf shedding in the wind that I love so much, but the wonderland created by the other colors is just missing. Sighing for maples.
• Giant supermarkets. Don’t get me wrong. I’ll choose France’s small stores and open air markets over a Costco or Stop&Shop any day, but there is something oddly compelling (and reassuring) about that almost inappropriate abundance.

Sounds:

• Canada geese
• Sirens. The sirens here sound different and much more musical. I miss our sinister alarms.
• Blasting reggaeton. There are not enough people blasting reggaeton from car windows here. Though mercifully there are more than none.
• English. Hearing people speaking your own language as you walk around. You don’t realize how subconsciously comforting it is until everyone around you is speaking French.

Textures:

• There isn’t anything tactile at home that I can’t as easily palpate in Versailles, except maybe my bed. It’s very easy to miss your bed.

Smells:

• Not anything really. The thing about perfume school is that your nose gets plenty of exercise and novelty.

Tastes:

• Good lord home-cooked food. I miss it so much. I am cooking for myself here, but not any of the larger and more time-consuming recipes I would undertake at home. Partly because I’m sharing a kitchen with a host family. Partly because vegan ingredients are harder to find in these parts. Like the French don’t do vegan cheese. Why would they? Their cheese is a national treasure.  But Dad’s pizza? My banana bread? Chickpea cutlets? Cornbread? So many foods.

And of course I didn’t list anything relating to the people and animals I miss. Beings are amalgamations of so many senses. The feeling of a hug or of soft cat fur. Every person and animal’s individual smell and the sound of their voice…

Friday Links 10/6

I forgot to show you my October desktop last time!

• Ungrateful as the new ‘Uppity’, some thoughts from The New Yorker on African American civil rights protest and taking a knee.
• A love story on the train.
• Empathy for the Privileged: A YDN article that’s pissing me off.
• An interesting sociological study: Are you the big spoon or the little spoon?
• Pissed off by this Anorexia sweatshirt on Amazon.
• Definition of a meet-cute: NYPD horse meets French bulldog.
• Sam Heughan is hot.
• Getting in the Halloween spirit: What is the creepiest urban legend in your state? Honestly disappointed by MA. Not scary.
• Designing a water-marbled scarf. What a beautiful process.
• ALLLLL these films.

Saturday Links July 22

It’s a Saturday edition of the regular Friday links post, which you could look at as a very exciting new development or just sad evidence of my disorganization.
Truthfully, it’s neither: I’m visiting Lily this weekend and we were very wrapped up in seeing each other again (it’s been two whole months, which is a lot when you’ve just been living with someone for four years!) and the rediscovery of the film, A Bug’s Life.

A Bug’s Life was the first movie I ever saw in a theater, but watching it as an adult (for the first time!) has had a lot of unanticipated results. 1) I can’t help but recognize how far computer animation has come. It’s much more detailed now. 2)A Bug’s Life is basically a mashup of Aesop’s Fable (The Ant and the Grasshopper) and the classic film The Seven Samurai. Who knew? (Not three year old me).

Friday Fun Links 5/26

Rest in peace, Roger Moore, who passed away this week. I don’t generally talk about the personages the world loses, but this was such a lovely story I wanted to share it. He sounds like a wonderful man.