Emma Carmichael—recession-era graduate, hip hop enthusiast, most recently managing editor of Deadspin, and previously managing editor of Gawker—will become the editor of The Hairpin beginning next Wednesday. She plans to turn the site into a field hockey fan forum. Lots of gifs of amazing goals. Kidding! No, it's mostly just NASCAR coverage from here on out. And what of trusty Hairpin founder Edith Zimmerman? She will take a little break and then return to continue making The Hairpin the Special People's Club that it is. Questions? Ask them in the comments over there. Just not here. We're trying to keep this a safe space. (Yes, [...]

Wake up when you have to.

Take as much air you need.

Examine trivial details, the bubbled foam on a just-used but not-yet-rinsed toothbrush.

Eat what you eat too often.

Swallow.

Have or dwell on the possibility of sex.

Envy things but realize it is not the things you desire so much as the comfort of envy itself, the notion that you might one day have more.

Photo-rebroadcasting site Pinterest has rolled out a meta tag that disables people stealin' your photos on Pinterest. It's a good and smart measure for the company, sure. It doesn't mean the vast majority of users aren't copyright infringers, either—but it does protect the company even further than their already totally appropriate DMCA procedures. The vast majority of people will not take advantage of this measure, which makes it seem like they are therefore de facto ceding copyright in exchange for promotion. (Although no action does not equal renouncing one's copyright, of course.) For instance, I can't imagine that we'd ever use it: denying readers the ability [...]

As an Amazon affiliate, we get a wee percentage of sales from people who click through from our site to Amazon. But better than that, we get a report from Amazon about what people have purchased! (Don't worry, it's all anonymous: there's no information at all passed on about the purchaser's identity.) One thing we can guarantee: you people buy things online. Here are just a few excerpts from the year 2011, here with quantity, title, media and cost.

1 Chupacabra (HD), Amazon Instant Video, $2.84

2 "Top Chef: Don't Be Tardy for the Dinner Party," Instant Video, $1.89

1 Buffalo by David Bitton Men's Bridle Strap Belt [...]

Doctor Says I Can’t Fly Anymore Something to do with kidney strain. Now, absurdly, my feet are what move me. I look to the sky, clouded by people: executives floating to work in suits… kids soaring too high, backpacks dangling by a strap. Police officers hover ten stories up, analyzing the flow of traffic. When my neck aches from tension and longing, I return to the rippled shade of the sidewalks, which are in severe disrepair, as everyone in this city flies. I avoid fellow terrestrial travelers, who inevitably seek to combine their misery with mine. The path is dim—is cracked, unreal and lonely—but veined with a sunlight sifted [...]

This is a fairly helpful explanation of bitcoin mining. To back up a little, and to put it in non-nerd terms, your computer "earns" (or "makes") bitcoins by, basically, doing math. Because it's an "economy," you have to do a lot more math to "earn" the same amount of money over time; new bitcoins are being "issued," with greater "value" (defined as amount of work), until the system reaches a cap, in the year 2033, when we all live in space. Our guide writes: "Since competition made the difficulty level astronomical, they’ve overwhelmingly joined 'mining pools' that hand everyone a consistent small amount of bitcoins proportional to [...]

Would you like to win a four-night stay for two at the Montpelier Plantation in Nevis? There is a contest giveaway of just that! There are no cellphones and no TVs; but there is a free breakfast that includes homemade yogurts. Um, basically it's kind of nice, if you like 19-room boutique hotels on 60 acres with dogs roaming around and tropical beaches.

From a new ebook today from The Millions: Mark O’Connell's Epic Fail: Bad Art, Viral Fame, and the History of the Worst Thing Ever.

From time to time, we offer our space to individuals with something to say and nowhere to say it. On the occasion of this week's release of the recent film The Muppets on DVD (a "DVD" is what they had before Netflix Instant) and the announcement that a new Muppets movie is expected soon, here is M.B. Cluckerton.

Today is my last day at Disney Muppet Global. After almost 30 years crammed in the back of Fozzie’s car—starting out as a summer intern at Fraggle Rep in Williamstown, then doing yellow-chick understudy work at Muppets Dubai—I can honestly say that the environment now is as toxic and salmonella-ridden as I [...]

Hate those doors.

But! From elsewhere in this bizarre video tour of his house: "That’s Einstein, that’s my dog. I was given the dog from a lovely shelter, but they’d gotten it from a place where they… take ’em out. He’s a fun dog." Which, aww, yay.

Here, you really, really need this brand new web thing!

This is exactly what Amazon wants: cheap, ubiquitous devices that run their digital media stores. Because while most people focus on the purchase price, buying a Kindle is a lot like buying a game console: it’s not very useful until you spend more money feeding it with content, and Amazon takes a cut of all content sales.

From the cables to the screen to the ads it serves, the new $79 Kindle is cheap in every way, which in the end perhaps becomes a virtue: it's on the way to becoming disposable. (Well, for the 1%, obviously.)

Oh my God, what are you guys doing this weekend?

• "12 CDs for the price of 1?" No thanks!

• Korean-American adoptees on their first trips to Korea.

• America's Tea Party and Anders Breivik

• "Just because you write most of a book doesn’t mean you can finish and sell a book." (Ruh roh!)

• Here comes August! Consider it proved: it's the month when real scandals grip the country and we pay attention to other things.

• And this weekend is going to be toasty. There may be cooling centers! Mmm, cooling.

Photo by Nicole Cash.

• authentic

• virus-free

• attainable

• exclusive

• compatible

• popular

• English-speaking

Matter dot com redirects to the Pinterest page "Mark Cuban's Companies." ("These are the companies that I have a business interest in." Sidebar: I do really wish that this page read "These are the companies in which I have a business interest.")

"New research from a team at the University of Michigan shows that simply saying something is the final one makes people enjoy it more."

“Granite has taken on the Kleenex brand,” says Carino, the HGTV host. “Now everything’s Kleenex. Most people don’t realize that they don’t actually want a granite countertop.” They might want soapstone. They might want Silestone. What they’re really looking for, Carino says, is “granite-esque.”

The forward-leaning design snobs — the readers of “Dwell” and “Architectural Digest” — have already moved on. They want poured concrete in swirling designs. Carino is trying to turn people on to quartz, which is even harder than granite, even less porous.

—Your aspirational kitchen material is barely valid.

From the Internet that brought you Barely Feral Dot Tumblr Dot Com and Animals In Casts and Teenage Mutant Ninja Noses Dot Tumblr Dot Com, please welcome Animals In Places They Shouldn't Be Dot Tumblr Dot Com. [Via]

Ifttt is pretty close to being the greatest thing in the world. Go explore the preset recipes or make your own.

Playground next to low-income housing. At night. Modular squares of beaten rubber serve as gridlike, lunar ground. Swoop of a tubular plastic slide. Sag of a miniature plank bridge that joins a pair of raised platforms, one outfitted as nautical helm, the other roofed with a ziggurat. The vast brick cake—apartment complex—beyond. Counterfeit moons in clustered bulbs, the color of scrambled eggs, on poles.

Medicine cabinet mirror ajar. Shelves a mosaic: prescription orange, paradise blue. Twin hairs stuck to the grooved little shelf that should offer soap. Silver faucet a mounted bird’s neck. Raised drain-stopper whose ridge amasses a layer of slime. Damp jeans draped on translucent rod. Tile [...]