Preparing for your eventual demise is a gift your loved ones will appreciate even as they mourn your loss — and it will give you peace of mind in the present, too. Most people have thought about setting up a will and doing other estate planning, but you should also arm your family with the most essential information they’ll need in the immediate days and weeks after you’re gone, preferably in one easy-to-access place. Here’s how to set up a digital version of Myrna’s “little black book” for simple and secure information sharing with family members and trusted friends.

Deciding whether to rent or buy is a big decision that requires serious “Where am I now?” and “Where am I going?” sorts of questions. It might be best to keep renting if you want to maintain maximum flexibility for personal or professional reasons, or if jumping into more debt right now takes you out of your comfort zone. Maybe you’re just not ready to face the responsibilities of homeownership: repairs, upgrades, maintenance, yard work and all the rest. Even thinking about the difference between cleaning an 800-square-foot apartment and a 2,400-square-foot house can make you want to take a seat and a deep breath. Your local housing market could be working against you, as well. If you live in a hot market with eager house hunters chasing too few properties, it might be best to bide your time until a better buying opportunity presents itself.

Should you rent or buy a home? Use our simple rent vs buy calculator to find out which option is best for you.

In some parts of the world they are revered and protected; in other places they are captured and eaten for dinner. One thing is certain: They’re everywhere.

This is absolutely brutal. His friends, mostly female, told him he was refreshingly attentive and trustworthy for a boy. Meanwhile he is grateful for the knowledge that female was best used as an adjective, that sexism harms men too (though not nearly to the extent that it harms women), and that certain men pretend to be feminists just to get laid.

The red bird falls from the tree, lands on its head, rolls right back up on its feet. Hello, spring. Hello, sanity. Hello, trashfire century. Hello, wilted leaves and gothic vines. How are you doing today? I will water the thyme. I will make miniature succulents out of clay. I will bake you the most beautiful loaf of bread, eat half of it, and give the other half to whatever nothing I can find, pretend you are mine. Oh, how are you doing?

The core divergence in these worldviews is in their beliefs about the nature of contemporary political and economic institutions. The difference here is not “how quickly these institutions should change,” but whether changes to them should be fundamental structural changes or not. The leftist sees capitalism as a horror, and believes that so long as money and profit rule the earth, human beings will be made miserable and will destroy themselves. The liberal does not actually believe this. Rather, the liberal believes that while there are problems with capitalism, it can be salvaged if given a few tweaks here and there. As Nancy Pelosi said of the present Democratic party: “We’re capitalist.” When Bernie Sanders is asked if he is a capitalist, he answers flatly: “No.” Sanders is a socialist, and socialism is not capitalism, and there is no possibility of healing the ideological rift between the two. Liberals believe that the economic and political system is a machine that has broken down and needs fixing. Leftists believe that the machine is not “broken.” Rather, it is working perfectly well; the problem is that it is a death machine designed to chew up human lives. You don’t fix the death machine, you smash it to bits. […] The liberal sees the conservative patriot wearing a flag pin and says: “A flag pin isn’t what makes you a patriot.” The leftist says: “Patriotism is an incoherent and chauvinistic notion.” The liberal says, “We’re the real ones who love America,” while the leftist says, “What is America?” or “I don’t see what it would mean to love or hate a meaningless conceptual entity.” […] Does this mean that anti-Trump forces are doomed to political infighting on everything? No, I don’t think so. Because even if you ultimately cannot reconcile your values with someone else’s, you can still forge temporary alliances for the purposes of achieving common political goals. Pelosi and Sanders share the goal of ridding the world of Trump, and it is possible to collaborate based on what we do have in common. That’s why Bernie Sanders endorsed Hillary Clinton and told his followers to vote for her. The fact that, at the end of the day, the liberal/left conflict is real and intractable does not preclude a liberal/left coalition in undermining the Trump agenda. It just means that this coalition is ultimately destined to be temporary.

Washed Out, Neon Indian, Toro y Moi, and what happened after the genre’s bedroom pop sounds hit the indie mainstream.

Twenty-five years after its release, the iconic rap group’s biggest hit remains deeply misunderstood. --- If Deck’s life, at the ripe old age of 22, felt no different inside or outside of prison, Meth’s cries to “get the money” are utterly meaningless. They sound less like a rallying call and more like desperate pleas of escape shouted into a void. Chasing cash, by whatever means available, is the only option for survival, as it rules everything around us—but should it? Should a lack of money make one’s life indistinguishable from prison? These are questions that arise if we’re listening to the song as a whole, but pop success alters the way music is heard. As such, “C.R.E.A.M.” has been stripped for parts: The only aspects of real interest to a mass audience are the use of “cream” as slang for money and the repetition of the hook as an admonishment to work harder, longer, and more ruthlessly in the pursuit of it. The song has become a tool of the unscrupulous system it was meant to expose. By 2014, Drake and JAY-Z were interpolating the hook into their opulent collaboration “Pound Cake” without any semblance of the struggle Wu was rapping about, while Financial Times was using “Cash Rules Everything Around Me” as a headline for a story detailing a select few rappers’ immense wealth. At this point, there’s even a nerdy YouTube tutorial that borrows the acronym to extol the virtues of Google Instant Buy. In this way, “C.R.E.A.M.” has become something like the hip-hop equivalent of Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A.” Right out the gate, Springsteen’s hit was being co-opted into a bland patriotism. After attending one of his concerts in 1984, the conservative columnist George Will wrote: “I have not got a clue about Springsteen’s politics, if any, but flags get waved at his concerts while he sings songs about hard times. He is no whiner, and the recitation of closed factories and other problems always seems punctuated by a grand, cheerful affirmation: ‘Born in the U.S.A.!’”

Pixel artist supreme.

Just a bunch of cool/interesting/funny/thought-provoking websites from 2000–2019.

The engine of internet culture is chugging along, changed. ​​​​ --- While porn creators belonged to tightly connected subgroups, they were linked to the rest of Tumblr’s network “with a very high number of ties,” and their productions “spread widely across the whole social graph.” In other words, they weren’t quarantined in some illicit corner of the site—they were woven into its basic fabric: The average Tumblr user in the sample followed 51 blogs, two or three of which tended to be specifically pornographic, and another two of which tended to be “bridge” blogs, run by users who were particularly likely to reblog porn. […] Plenty of new, younger fandoms sprung up on Tumblr this year, according to Brennan, but it’s notable how much of what showed up on the year-end list for what has always been the most creative and arguably the most important platform on the web was regurgitated from other sites—or bland continuations of aesthetically unchallenging trends that have been popular for years. (Like the biggest pop star in the world.) Tumblr can still be funny and strange, and there is still no better place on the internet to be a fan of something, explore a social or sexual identity, or reblog a convoluted joke about being young and online.

Jia Tolentino speaks with the mysterious administrator of the Cursed Images Twitter account, and considers what makes the images there so creepy. --- Knowing the stories behind the cursed images does not always make them less creepy. “Cursed image 1783,” showing a woman encased in medical equipment with balloons wreathing her face, is from an Associated Press story about a woman in Memphis who died after a power failure shut off the iron lung she’d lived inside for almost sixty years. “Cursed image 1627,” showing a terrible plasticine figure in a waste-green pool, is from a Daily Beast story about a seventy-year-old man named Robert whose pastime is dressing up as a life-size doll. These images hew to the Freudian description of the uncanny: a sense that something once familiar has become terribly strange. Seeing a flock of flamingos crammed into a dirty public bathroom is uncomfortable, whether you know that the photo was taken at the Miami Zoo during Hurricane Andrew or not.

Jia Tolentino writes on the uptick in uncanny or unpleasant things being described on Twitter, Reddit, and other social-media platforms as having “cursed energy,” a phrase that has come to signify anxiety and malaise. --- These are quite obviously cursed times: Donald Trump is somehow still the President; more than a quarter of the birds in North America have disappeared since 1970; and children keep having to take to the streets to plead with our lawmakers to protect their lives. But it is hard—given the sheer extent of what is crumbling around us, and also the natural limits of our individual scopes of vision—to take in the fullness of contemporary cursedness all at once. It’s easier, perhaps, to see dread in individual objects: an eBay listing for a Sonic costume photographed on a child-size mannequin; a drawing of Mickey Mouse with a flesh-colored skull, holding a black, ear-shaped cap; a photo of a brick of ramen being cooked in Mountain Dew.

The dominance of single-family zoning has caused large areas of the city to be out of reach for Portlanders of color. In 1970, the Black homeownership rate in Portland was 46.9%. By 2017, it had dropped to 28.4%. And today, there is not a single neighborhood in the city where a Black or Latino family earning an average income can afford to buy a home. Preserving the current zoning rules reserves most of the city for only those who can afford to live in a single-family home.

I made this (with Bisquick, but following the instructions otherwise) and it turned out perfectly. This enormous pancake is made in a rice cooker! No need to stand over the stove and flip individual pancakes. Instead, just pour in the batter and let the rice cooker do the work.

“Complaints about people hopping on board without paying are among the most common we get,” the agency wrote Tuesday in the first of a series of four posts. “Starting this week, we’ll have nine new dedicated fare inspectors out on our system,” the agency’s posts continued. “They’ll be checking fares, helping riders, and making sure our system stays a safe place that is welcoming to all.” Right away, the news drew an avalanche of sarcasm-tinged public condemnation, and calls for a return to “Fareless Square”—the erstwhile free light rail and streetcar rides through downtown to the Lloyd District in Northeast Portland, gone since 2012—or even an entirely fare-free system. The Twittersphere also strongly suggested that if history is any guide, fare inspections would focus on people of color and the homeless, and other historically underserved populations. Portland mayoral candidate Sarah Iannarone waded into the mix, too, reminding TriMet that a Multnomah County judge in 2018 ruled that it was illegal to arbitrarily stop passengers on the MAX and request proof of fare.

Volunteers from the group Free Hot Soup are intending on taking the City of Portland to court over attempts to restrict their ability to serve meals to the houseless of Portland, according to a press release by the Oregon Justice Resource Center. There are a dozen plaintiffs suing the city according to the press release. The release states, “a group of Portland volunteers is suing the City of Portland to protect the rights of people to provide vital free food services and other necessities for people who are houseless or otherwise food insecure. Their lawsuit asks the courts to block and declare unconstitutional a proposed new policy from Parks & Recreation that would place unfair restrictions and burdens on voluntary groups who provide food to people at city parks.” […] Advocates and activists going against the City of Portland for the way they treat they houseless here have been saying that the city government is unduly influenced by the Portland Business Alliance. The email exchange and actions by Fish suggest these concerns may be semi-valid. Research by a graduate student at Portland State University named Kaitlyn Dey shows how the Portland Business Alliance runs the downtown business district as a Business Improvement District and advocates aggressively for anti-houselessness policies downtown like no sit or lay regulations.

Multnomah County is experiencing a spike in chronic homelessness, according to figures presented to local elected officials Tuesday. As part of his annual presentation to commissioners from Portland and Multnomah County, Marc Jolin, the director of the Joint Office of Homeless Services, warned that the number of people who report being homeless for more than a year has grown — even as the county’s overall homeless population continues to hover around 4,000. The most recent point in time count showed 1,770 people were chronically homeless, a 37% increase from two years ago. Half reported having a mental illness. Half reported a substance abuse disorder. A little less than one-third reported both. Jolin said the office already knows what the solution is. “The fact that we don’t have supporting housing is why we’re seeing a persistent increase in the chronically homeless over time,” he said.

An essay about mental health by musician James Blake, from ‘It’s Not OK to Feel Blue (And other lies).’ When the delusional mental force field of whiteness finally popped (the ‘psychosis’ of whiteness, as Kehinde Andrews puts it, which most white people are still experiencing – I was still able to reap the now obvious benefits of being white, straight and male but without the subconscious ability to ignore my responsibility to the marginalized), I started having the uncomfortable but rational thought that my struggle was actually comparatively tiny, and that any person of colour or member of the LGBTQ+ community could feasibly have been through exactly the same thing and then much, much more on top of that. A plate stacked until it was almost unmanageable. For me it became embarrassing to mention my child’s portion of trauma and sadness. Combining that thought with the normalized stigmatization of male musicians’ emotional expression in the media, I felt like I must be the ‘Sadboy Prince and the Pea’. But my girlfriend verbally slapped some sense into me, saying it does not help anybody, least of all oneself, to compare pain. And that was good advice to hear from someone who’d been through what she has. I can only imagine how frustrating it was for this Pakistani woman to watch me – with all my advantages in life – self-sabotage and complain like I have. Fuck. […] I believe it is psychologically dangerous for our egos to be built up as much as they are; for the importance of success to be so great; for the world to open its doors more to us than to others (most of us wilfully ignore that those advantages exist, though we feel them deep down, and subconsciously know that it is unfair and that we must capitalize on them). […] I believe we’re entitled to no more than anybody else, which at this point requires a lot of listening and rebalancing. I also believe everybody is entitled to pain, no matter how perceptibly or relatively small that pain is. I don’t want the shame around depression and anxiety in privileged people to become worse any more than I want it for the marginalized. Because without addressing that pain we end up with more cis-gendered white male egomaniacs who bleed their shit on to everybody (and some of them will write albums about it).

Trump, a man who has repeatedly said that he only responds to consequences, has faced none. His lies meet with no institutional resistance. Quite the contrary. His decision to say outrageous, incorrect, inflammatory things has paid off handsomely: His supporters believe them, and those in power will not acknowledge that he has said anything at all. The combined effect has rendered him immune to every standard we, as a country, once shared. […] The word hypocrisy bobs up in these discussions, but the issue—as many have pointed out—is not hypocrisy, because those who are failing us do not aspire to intellectual or moral consistency in the first place. There is no negotiating with, or appeasing, or even engaging a party that feels no responsibility to the truth. Lying is more than “uncivil.” It corrodes relationships and trust, and the damage it does it permanent. I know it’s fashionable these days to wear one’s cynicism on one’s sleeve: We predict every promise will be broken because expecting honesty is laughably naïve. This makes reality easier to live with and joke about. But it’s a symptom of national rot. Being lied to, constantly, is not the price of being governed. That we have naturalized this—that we expect nothing less, in fact—shows how far we’ve already gone down a bad, bad road. This was already an unhealthy country in many ways. But at least lies were still resented. Now they are celebrated. […] The good-faith ideological battle some thought right and left were waging turned out to be no such thing: Modern conservatism was never about small government. Or personal liberty—for women and people of color, anyway. It wasn’t about fiscal responsibility: The GOP passed a tax plan that has blown up our national debt, which is projected to reach 78 percent of America’s GDP by the end of this year, the highest it’s been since 1950. And Republicans are still not happy. They will pretend that this crisis they created will require “sacrifices,” gutting services poor Americans desperately need, like health care. The poor and disadvantaged will die. Meanwhile, those in power will celebrate how much they deserve their wealth and how little anyone else deserves. And they will grab for more. You’d think they’d be happy: America now has the highest income inequality in the industrialized world. But even that is not enough. The greed is insatiable. And it is a greed not just for wealth but for domination—for permanent entitlement. What they want is to be served. At restaurants. On golf courses. In corporate offices. There is no form of protest they will respect: loud or silent, formal or spontaneous, civil or rude. Written petitions or marches on the streets. They don’t care. Those in power have been very clear about what they do care about. “We have more money and more brains and better houses and apartments and nicer boats,” Trump said Wednesday in a speech to his supporters, because he cannot help but say what he really means. “We are the elite.”

On how non-lyrical music can be political.

Despite what the library industrial complex tells us, reading is not the only avenue to the kind of self-surprise that gives you reasons to go on. You could learn how to make your own whisky and hand it out to your neighbors, or move to Washington like Jane Fonda, with the goal of getting arrested as much as possible. You could help stop traffic for the kids who are climate striking so the kids can concentrate on yelling, or go stand with workers at one of the many strikes taking place right now in many sectors of the economy, quite possibly near you.

Tetris and Snake at the same time. Absolutely maddening.

This page, compiled by @fimoculous, aggregates all of the lists related to 2010s decade.

It's a tool that brings attention and understanding to how color contrast can affect different people with visual impairments. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) covers a wide range of recommendations for making Web content more accessible. Just a tiny part of making the web more accessible is accommodating for those with a form of blindness or low vision. The standard grading system is a great start, but I thought I'd try to humanize the people who are affected by the different grades.

Whatever your feelings on EDM may be, its influence on the 2010s feels impossible to overstate, and the next decade looks no different. Many of the genre’s most talented practitioners have graduated from crafting festival bangers to working with some of the most interesting pop artists of our time. There’s Diplo of course, who has produced for Beyoncé and countless others. More recently, Skrillex and Kenny Beats, the in-demand rap beatmaker who also cut his teeth in the EDM circuit, worked on FKA twigs’ meticulous new album, MAGDALENE. Frank Ocean’s first new song in two years, the recent “DHL,” was co-produced by Boys Noize in the techno maven’s Berlin studio. And A.G. Cook and his EDM-adjacent PC Music sound have helped to steer Charli XCX into even more thrillingly synthetic directions.

Perhaps nothing is so fundamentally queer about Springsteen as the pervasive feeling of dislocation that’s threaded through his work, the nagging sense that something has been plaguing him since birth, and that he’s dreaming of a place where he might finally fling it off his back.

As a very fat person, and as the fattest person in most rooms where I live, diet talk is a constant. Nearly everywhere I go, people much thinner than me are eager to tell me everything they’re doing to avoid looking like me. Without knowing what I eat or how I move, they confidently tell me I’m eating myself into an early grave. It is surreal, being followed by a Greek chorus so eager to foretell my untimely death, seemingly relishing the opportunity to make me a martyr to their cause. But it doesn’t end with diet talk. Strangers remove items from my grocery cart. They recommend weight loss surgeons without so much as a hello. Some shout slurs and insults from passing cars, even in my otherwise progressive hometown.

In the 1920s, auto groups redefined who owned the city streets. --- The idea that pedestrians shouldn't be permitted to walk wherever they liked had been present as far back as 1912, when Kansas City passed the first ordinance requiring them to cross streets at crosswalks. But in the mid-20s, auto groups took up the campaign with vigor, passing laws all over the country. Most notably, auto industry groups took control of a series of meetings convened by Herbert Hoover (then secretary of commerce) to create a model traffic law that could be used by cities across the country. Due to their influence, the product of those meetings — the 1928 Model Municipal Traffic Ordinance — was largely based off traffic law in Los Angeles, which had enacted strict pedestrian controls in 1925. "The crucial thing it said was that pedestrians would cross only at crosswalks, and only at right angles," Norton says. "Essentially, this is the traffic law that we're still living with today." […] Auto campaigners lobbied police to publicly shame transgressors by whistling or shouting at them — and even carrying women back to the sidewalk — instead of quietly reprimanding or fining them. They staged safety campaigns in which actors dressed in 19th-century garb, or as clowns, were hired to cross the street illegally, signifying that the practice was outdated and foolish. In a 1924 New York safety campaign, a clown was marched in front of a slow-moving Model T and rammed repeatedly.