This has been a busy week (not quite done yet either).
Offline: how’s it going? – Paul Miller, The Verge
If the book I’m reading is difficult? If the writer’s block is insurmountable? If I want to hang out but nobody picks up the phone? If I end up watching four hours of Olympic water polo by myself while eating donuts I bought at 7–11? There’s still nobody on the computer waiting to love me, and I just have to deal with it.
Welcome To The New Internet: Simple Design, Short Names, No Ads – John Herrman, BuzzFeed
In recent months, at least four of the most interesting new startups — all either from or backed by people with deep roots in the current internet, including Twitter cofounders and many of the most prominent VCs in Silicon Valley — have been launched to, in some way, replace the internet.
H – Jacob Scullum, Reason
The Times noted that “nearly everything about the 44-year-old executive…seems to fly in the face of widely held perceptions about heroin users.” The reporter who wrote the story and his editors seemed uncomfortable with contradicting official anti-drug propaganda, which depicts heroin use as incompatible with a satisfying, productive life. The headline read, “Executive’s Secret Struggle With Heroin’s Powerful Grip,” which sounds more like a cautionary tale than a success story. And the Times hastened to add that heroin users “are flirting with disaster.”