We probably shouldn’t be telling children that who they are determines what they do. --- This admittedly fine point is not just a matter of language; it also carries an ethical implication. The coward can’t really be blamed for doing cowardly stuff, because that’s his nature — the same way you can’t blame the kitchen table for being hard and heavy when you stub your toe. But the difference between human beings and objects is that we do not have fixed natures that determine our behavior. When I say I didn’t do the dishes because I’m lazy, I’m talking around the fact that I could have done them but chose not to. The illusion of a fixed nature gives us an excuse to repeat bad behavior. To insist that what we do determines who we are — and not the other way around — is to make freedom and therefore responsibility a part of our worldview at the most basic level. Freedom is scary, though, because it is the freedom to become something other than what you are now — something you cannot predict. It’s easier to think of yourself as a type of person, riding along with yourself and playing out the behaviors your type does. It’s comforting to think that you did what you did because of who you are, even if who you are is bad, because nothing is more frightening than the feeling that you are about to change into someone else. Ask any 12 year-old.

A Q&A with an expert who studies the relationship between mental illness and violence.

…men also tend to be unaware of their own privileges as men. … I thought I’d compile a list … focusing on the invisible privileges benefiting men.

What privilege is.

“Nerds will still be nerds, and trust me, their adolescences will still be awful enough to provide fodder for a lifetime of creativity and humor, if they’re lucky. The thing that everyone seems to forget is that nerddom, in its purest form, is a teenage affliction, something that many, if not most, people grow out of. They figure out how to be passionate about their interests without being smug and humorless about them. They learn to laugh at their past humiliations, and to celebrate this newfound comfort in their own skins, they proudly take on the epithet so long slung in their direction: they call themselves nerds. And that’s it. If done in the true spirit of awareness and goodnatured self-deprecation, the day you call yourself a nerd is the day you become an ex-nerd.”

”…the tweets offer a funny reminder that one kind of center really does hold: That no matter how dominant and predictable something might be in your world, it is still a weird, marginal thing to most everyone else.”

Why tipping needs to die.

“We forget that what we have is more than what we need. Obscenely more. I know it may sound perverse, but here in the future people often feel like they need more than they have.”

MC Chris tells the story of his show at The Gathering of the Juggaloes and the G.I. Joe film screening that followed.

Thoughts on the tendency of the internet to empower and break down niches. “You can be a niche, but you’re a public niche, so you can’t expect to be left alone about it, or understood on your own terms. The internet makes niches possible, but it’s also a massive space in which loads of different people communicate — and spaces like that tend to pull everyone toward the middle, developing conventions and enforcing a cultural center. So far, this hasn’t stopped plenty of corners of the internet from getting extremely insular and specialized, but it’s still a form of cultural policing on this front.”

"So you want to keep your lover or your employee close. Bound to you, even. You have a few options. You could be the best lover they've ever had, kind, charming, thoughtful, competent, witty, and a tiger in bed. You could be the best workplace they've ever had, with challenging work, rewards for talent, initiative, and professional development, an excellent work/life balance, and good pay. But both of those options demand a lot from you. Besides, your lover (or employee) will stay only as long as she wants to under those systems, and you want to keep her even when she doesn't want to stay. How do you pin her to your side, irrevocably, permanently, and perfectly legally?"

"'I do not see any socially redeeming purpose being served by these beverages. At the end of the day, they’re aimed at a young, inexperienced market for the purpose of enabling them to become rapidly intoxicated.'"

A sympathetic overview.

"Let me think about that." In other words: with a glut of information, we're trying to form opinions and take action on it all just as fast as it's coming in, and we're suffering for it.

This guy seems to have some family issues that his addiction to incoming data via screens is severely aggravating. I experience, on a smaller scale, some of the problems outlined in this article, and, though none of this is particularly new to me, it's frightening to see these habits taken down the slippery slope. Should all of us, and especially people like Kord, make a concerted effort to make screens less a part of our lives, lest we lose our humanity? Or is trying to avoid technology's increasing integration with our every second just being traditionally biased and counter-progressive? I think there is a middle ground where one can be hooked in and focused on doing work while still not ignoring ones' children. Food for thought.

Is it?

An insight on the limited morality of babies and the implications of that for the rest of us societal adults.

On what Farmville is (not a game) and what it means (nothing good).

Why I don't think I'm a curmudgeon for thinking the green Iran icons are a joke. "…if you believe for one minute that publicly agreeing with an echo chamber is changing anyone’s mind, behavior, or outlook, you need to stand up, locate your disused front door, walk the fuck through it, and then go spend a full (unwired) day doing something to actually help another person."

"The rage and self-loathing associated with hipsters has become more annoying, more naive, and more artificial than hipsters could ever hope to be."

Post-crash style.

Why are so many women willingly giving up their identities and letting their children take over? And are our children being overly coddled as a result?

Check out the "Hobo Code" page.

A hobo is a migrant worker in the United States. Hoboes, tramps and bums are generally regarded as related, but distinct: a hobo travels and is willing to work; a tramp travels, but avoids work if possible; and a bum neither travels nor works.

Kenan Malik writes that the attempt to preserve "cultural identity and authenticity" is largely an inauthentic act, one steeped in relativism and traditionalism, and more concerned with how individuals "should" act than how they actually do. Thanks to @kemp for the link.

A man with personal experience in the criminal justice system explains why trying to eradicate violence with violence is foolish, destructive, and a fundamentally broken idea.

"Scenius is like genius, only embedded in a scene rather than in genes. Brian Eno suggested the word to convey the extreme creativity that groups, places or 'scenes' can occasionally generate."

On the "cognitive surplus" we're going through, and how interesting and valuable all this new engagement and experimentation with technology is.

What to do if you're robbed.

Who are those people out and about between 9 and 5? Poets and web designers, trust fund babies and people between jobs.