★★ The snow, though scant, had been able to last in places. A spray of it stenciled the outline of a freshly swept and removed car on the otherwise black parking lot across the avenue. There was white still covering the planting bed at the near end of the glass tower’s garden, with round tufts of green poking through it in rows. Smooth and shapely cumulus stood in ranks to the west, and the wind hissed against the apartment. Cold crept into the bedroom where the younger boy was napping. In the other bedroom, the buffeting of the wind rose above the roar of the heater. The clouds lost their smoothness and plainness, becoming ruffled and tinted in lilac and gold. A knuckle had scraped open and was bleeding a little. Outside the withered leaves on the oaks were hissing. The waxing moon was finely detailed in a sky only slightly less than day-blue. An unwary step into the gutter slid on a patch of ice. Either a finger or the phone’s touchscreen grew so cold and dry as to no longer recognize contact. The clouds in the southwest, from the warmth of the apartment, were tiny and receding, outlined in bright white. Then they were rimmed instead in scarlet and pink, so gorgeous as to be almost certainly unphotographable. It was not possible to try, because the cold had driven the phone’s battery to failure.

If you have plans to do anything else other than play this over and over again, cancel them. Enjoy.

by Isabel Murray

To be betrayed by one’s body is perhaps one of the vagaries of female experience. From a young age I learned that it was better to be small than large, lighter rather than darker, poised and silent rather than and loud and wanton. The subsequent years have resulted in efforts to corral my body and disposition into pleasing acceptability, despite the latter’s ceaseless attempts thwart my efforts. At my Methodist nursery school, I was a swarthy toddler in a sea of towheads of invariably Scandinavian extraction. The advent of middle school hastened a smattering of pimples across the bridge of my nose and forehead. I learned words like “sebum,” “salicylic acid,” and “benzoyl peroxide”, and developed a “skin-care routine” (thanks Proactiv Solution). For the four years the coincided with college, the hormonal oil slick that had taken up permanent residence on my face during adolescence receded. Undaunted by the vat of beer I was imbibing three to four nights a week and the ubiquitous mozz sticks that formed the bottom of my personal food pyramid, I embarked on a dogged pursuit of being sylph-like and untroubled both in countenance and appearance. I would be effortless. Breezy. Plausibly French.

Three-and-a-half years out of college, I have continued this project with variable success. But approaching my mid-twenties, I have became aware of barely perceptible shifts in my appearance. The crone of old age is hardly knocking on my door, but mothers now tell their children to refer to me as a “lady” rather than a “girl.” My hangovers are debilitating all-day affairs and recently two thin lines have developed on either side of my mouth like maddening parentheses. These days, I often times think of my great-grandmother who, in lieu of laughing and acquiring the resultant lines, would form her mouth into a neat “o” and emit a high-pitched and owly hoot. In this spirit, I pile on cheap cold cream at night, more empty gesture than anything else. It’s an easy talisman, a bushel of garlic to ward off the vampiric specter of aging. I know this is ridiculous; I am very, very young. This exercise has as much to do with my vanity as it does my desire to affect a Faye-Dunaway-as-Joan-Crawford-in-Mommie–Dearest look before bed. It’s nice to feel as though one has a modicum of control in a world dominated by relentless chaos, inscrutability, and despair. This scaffolding of propriety collapses, however, when I sleep.

I am a disgusting sleeper. I know this despite the impossibility of ever witnessing myself sleep. I know I am a disgusting sleeper because I often wake up in a veritable Hoover Dam of saliva on my pillow. I know I am a disgusting sleeper because my sister has taken pictures of me while I’ve slept (a personal favorite is one of me in a blue bikini splayed on a bed. I’m indulging in a post-lunch snooze, mouth agog. She titled it “partied 2 hard” and snapchatted it to fifty people.)

I know I am a disgusting sleeper because I’ve witnessed the angelic slumber of my female friends who are able, in their somnolent state, to remain almost rigidly still. Most of them look beautiful, as if crystallized mid-swoon, their lips slightly parted, their hair mussed but untangled. If I were to place a feather underneath their noses, their breaths would hardly disturb a bristle. The other night, after consuming several glasses of red wine, I collapsed into bed of my best friend. I sensed the weight of her body as she gingerly inserted herself next to me in the double mattress. The inky wash of drunk-sleep descended and I awoke to register her absence in the bed. She had fled to the living room couch. “I was snoring egregiously, wasn’t I?” I winced and, in the gentle and benevolent way in which women lie to each other, she shrugged and said she was a light sleeper.

But I really know I am a disgusting sleeper because the men I sleep next to delight in telling me as much. With childlike exuberance, they breathlessly relate the play-by-play of my ceaseless tossing-and-turning, the way in which my mouth hangs slack and lubricious, emitting prodigious snores all the live long night. I try to remain unflappable while listening to them; however, it’s difficult for me to laugh these little asides because they shine a light into the fissures that wrack my self-presentation. Women are ideally silent; my sleeping self precludes the possibility of my attaining this ideal. I like to think that I have a tenuous grasp on the way in which I look and act in my conscious life. But I cannot control how I am when I sleep. Recently, a friend told me that a new beau had told her she was a cute sleeper. I was very envious. No one will ever say this to me.

In the past I tried to mitigate my propensity to be a disgusting sleeper by simply…not sleeping. Third dates were particularly fraught. When a man slept over, I would skim the surface of unconsciousness and purposefully wake myself when I sensed the hint of snore approaching. I would pantomime unturbulent sleep. I would labor under hours of wide-eyed wakeful silence and emerge, in the morning, bleary-eyed, wholly unprepared to face a day at the office, let alone an onerous commute on the 3 train. This is a senseless way to live. But such was my commitment to not being disgusting.

In the past few years, it’s become fashionable to practice what is termed “self-care,” a project that does not include imposing Guantanamo-style sleep deprivation techniques on oneself for the sake of maintaining illusions of prescriptive femininity. So these days I have tried to practice begrudging self-acceptance. I try to exercise each morning and incorporate a punishing amount of spinach into my diet. I’ve stopped shaving my legs and I’m trying not to drink too much. When yet another half-assed non-relationship disintegrates after a measly five weeks I try not internalize it and blame my uncouth sleeping. And although my ideal marriage slumber scenario would be separate rooms or at the very least I Love Lucy-inspired twin beds, these days I sleep, if not blissfully, then through the night.

Photo by Kārlis Dambrāns

As Oxfam announces that the sixty-two richest people now have as much wealth as the three-and-a-half billion poorest, on the eve of Davos, the Times points to a survey of forty thousand people in twenty countries who are in the top five percent of income earners:

The survey also revealed that the rich who were considered more social-minded tended to work for smaller companies and were more optimistic. By contrast, the self-oriented have “a more fatalistic attitude, often believing in the existence of a particular destiny for every individual, which one cannot deny or escape.”

They’re… not all that wrong? At least you have an iPhone and Peach.

These are great. I have nothing to add. Enjoy.

★★ The daylight was in no hurry to get established. When the sun was too low, the sky was unclouded; when the sun got higher, loose clouds covered it. Not everyone was wearing a hat, even as ice still lay by the curb. Up in the distance, past the Empire State Building, pastel blues faded into pastel peach. Things brightened till a subdued gleam showed in high windows, then dulled again. It went on, faltering gloom and faltering light, confusingly unpatterned: Real sun glittered in the headlight reflectors of the taxis and SUVs going by, then departed. The only identifiable time was when nighttime arrived.

New York City’s overdue traffic study — the one which Mayor Bill De Blasio cited as a reason to potentially cap the number of Uber vehicles on the road for one year, leading to his thorough humiliation by Uber’s political machinery — will apparently arrive any day now. The city won’t provide any hints about the results of the study, but that isn’t stopping some council members from already working on new legislation to govern “for-hire” vehicles, the New York Times reports:

While the mayor’s office continues to work on its study, some City Council members have been drafting legislation on regulations for the for-hire industry, although they have not yet reached a final decision on the bills, City Council officials said. A cap on Uber vehicles is no longer part of the discussions, the officials said, but the Council is still considering whether to address surge pricing, a feature in the Uber app that charges higher fares during busy periods.

How many times does it need to be said that crippling surge pricing would be so breathtakingly short-sighted as to be wholly pointless on every conceivable level?

Everything that Uber is working on right now as it moves toward becoming something that might be more accurately described as privatized mass transit will effectively eliminate surge pricing anyway as the company is better able to meet demand without pushing it down or increasing the supply of drivers. (Think about it this way: Uber neither wants to turn riders away nor pay more drivers more money; it wants the maximum number of passengers carried by the minimum number of drivers for the lowest possible price. Uber hates surge pricing almost as much as you do.) UberPool and its more recent, bus-like spinoff, UberHOP, recently announced in Seattle, allow one driver to ferry multiple passengers simultaneously (up to five in UberHOP) with minimal time gaps between each ride. How innovative! How efficient! How cheap.

The components of the Uber apparatus that need thoughtful regulation — let’s leave aside labor here!!!! — are exactly the ones that are most complex and defy easy rule-making. Like, in the interest of reducing the number of cars on the road, maybe there should be a set number of Uber-affiliated vehicles (in which case, surge pricing would be extremely necessary to ensure that the service continues to function!). Or maybe there shouldn’t be a cap at all, or not in certain areas anyway, because some subway lines are already at or very near capacity. Maybe the city could study it.

Regardless, if the city were to be seduced into the idea that surge pricing is an issue to latch onto because the people who complain about it tend to be vocal and tech-savvy and relatively well-off — like the people who banded together to scuttle the city’s previous attempt to come down on Uber — it should recognize that the ones who protest the loudest are the people who use Uber the most. And who could be a worse judge of externalities? They already have their transit solution.

Can’t wait to see what the city will do about Uber if it goes through with shutting down the L train for a year or more!!!!!

Update: The Wall Street Journal reports what the congestion study is expected to show:

It is expected to highlight that Uber’s growth has led to rapid change in the taxi and for-hire-vehicle industries, but that Uber hasn’t so far exacerbated congestion in the city, the person said.

The San Francisco company’s growth in New York City has been offset by declines in trips by yellow taxis, but this person said that Uber’s contribution to traffic congestion could increase if the service continues on the same trajectory.

Which makes regulating surge pricing seem like the city just wants to show that it’s doing… something? What a great reason to pass regulations!

Giph by Screenshot Daily

by Zach Dorfman

30. Swirl

29. Stripe

28. Shmoop

27. Splunk

26. Wrap

25. Kabam

24. Nurun

23. Watsi

22. The RealReal (“Do you want to work with luxury goods every day?”)

21. The Awesome Institute (“Our vision is to help 50,000 entrepreneurs live happier, healthier, more sustainable, and all around more Awesome lives”)

20. Blippar (“At Blippar, we are building something that’s going to change the world. We are creating a new behaviour called blipping”)

19. Replicon

18. Sojern (“Perks: Wealth — Stock Options”)

17. Smart Coos

16. SICKSPORTS

15. MusikFace

14. Crunchyroll

13. CarBuzz (“The BuzzFeed of automotive news”)

12. FungBros (“An Asian-American Buzzfeed, a family-friendly version of Vice hosted by Asians”)

11. The Hustle: Your Excuse to Do Epic Sh*t (“A New Media Company that’s like Vice”)

10. Zazzle

9. Houzz

8. Magoosh

7. Martafy! (“We are growing FAST, and are looking for a superstar Virtual Assistant to support our founder, Branding Badass/PowerPoint Ninja, Marta Kagan” )

6. Amplitude

5. Nitro

4. Hero

3. Feastly

2. Prosper

1. Man Crates

Photo by Kelly Smith

After a week like this it seems as if the only safe thing to do is slip into the weekend as inconspicuously as possible. This song should help. Enjoy.

★★★ A sleek trashcan lay on its side on the roofdeck of the luxury apartment building, and a long strip of fabric, caught on the fence there, lifted one end and waved and settled down again. Steam from the vent pipes was yanked sideways and down. One fingertip had dried out and cracked, and in the act of helping the younger boy out of his puffy coat, a spark of static electricity jumped directly into the split in the skin: Nearly four and a half decades alive, and here was a new and surprising variety of pain. Out by the high school the gusts were stinging. “It’s wind and sun at the same time!” the boy said. At the excavation site by 62nd Street, where a flatbed truck held one gargantuan length of pipe, the wind suddenly lifted a large sheet of dust — too large to duck or dodge — and flung it over the sidewalk opposite, stinging the eyes and grinding in the teeth. On the return trip for preschool pickup, with the sun a few hours lower and westward, the flattened and blackened gum spots outside the corner deli shone like coins. The spilled parts of a newly crushed rat in the street were bright and varied shades of red. On the subway, a stranger coughed straight onto the hand holding the phone. The dark portion of the crescent moon had its own visible shape and shade, distinct from the rest of the night sky.