Starting today on Awl Music: "Gossip," a playlist by Emily Gould, that'll be unrolled throughout the week. (You can follow along on Tumblr and Twitter too for when new videos go up, if you like.) READ MORE

"A new law is threatening to cut short the purrs of delight, which don't just come from the pets each night." A new curfew law threatens Tokyo cat cafes. We'll stay on this important news story as it develops!!!

I've actively avoided reading a lot of the recent news articles and blog posts about the spate of controversies, both trumped-up and real, that have lately befallen the yoga industry. By actively I mean: people send me links to these and I refuse to read them. This is part of a self-awareness practice rooted in Sutra 2.16, which is usually translated along these lines: "The suffering which is yet to come may be avoided." Of all 196 this is probably the Sutra I think about most often. Are you getting the sense yet that, when it comes to yoga, I'm not exactly an unbiased outside observer? READ MORE

Getting into a PhD program, getting a prestigious residency, getting a book deal, getting married, getting a raise — these things happen. (YAY! GOOD JOB!) But so often, it seems, they happen to people who have no idea how to judge who's an appropriate audience for their understandable joy. The Internet has made it harder to figure out how and with whom to share, we've heard. But one thing even otherwise clever people with otherwise good judgment seem not to have figured out is how not to be obnoxious when their lil' cups overfloweth. So let's talk about it, and figure out handy rules that will help eliminate the possibility that our braggy ways are making everyone hate us. READ MORE

(possibly set in a hair salon) READ MORE

14. Sex Packets READ MORE

Yesterday VIDA, an organization devoting to promoting women in the literary arts, released its annual slideshow of pie charts representing the proportion of female to male publication in literary journals and book reviews, including The Atlantic, Granta, Harper's, the LRB, the NYRB, the New Yorker, the Paris Review and the Nation. It was not remotely news to anyone that far more men than women write for these publications. Reactions were varied, and ranged from knee-jerk to profound. Some men piously proclaimed that their publications needed to do better; some women found the idea that women need affirmative action to succeed "offensive." Some people interpreted this data to mean that "America's Top Magazines" are "Still Not Hiring Women". But here's the thing: these magazines are only "America's Top" in the sense that they are the most culturally elevated; they are certainly not the "top" in terms of circulation or in the rates they pay their writers. Could it be that part of the imbalance is caused by the fact that women are choosing not to write for these magazines? Due to ... the fact that they have free will, and are not just passive victims of an unjust system? It's not difficult to imagine why some women (and men) might not want to write for these magazines: They do not, on the whole, pay well or assign articles with reliable frequency to, pretty much, anyone. If your options include: waiting a year or more for the legendary septuagenarian editor of a historically important book review to tweak your prose so that you can someday receive a check for 50 cents a word, or spending an evening hanging out with a movie star, writing about it for a sorta-vapid glossy, then cashing a check that pays your rent for four months, who is to say which is the wiser choice? That's my issue with this tally, anyway: it doesn't allow for the idea that women have agency, and they might be choosing to avoid having bad (albeit prestigious) jobs. READ MORE