When 🙁 Won’t Quite Cut It (Because You Are Functionally Illiterate In The Traditional Form Of Human Expression)

“Ms. Dikeou is among the millions of people now turning to the animation snippets on phones to relay complex feelings and thoughts in ways beyond words and even photographs. That surge — tens of millions of the clips are sent every day on blogging site Tumblr alone — represents the next wave of mobile and visual communication, following the rise of photo-sharing services like Instagram and Snapchat, and the widening use of emoji…. They have become a mainstream form of digital expression, hugely popular with young audiences who never leave home without their smartphones.”

10. Man describes another man as having “been around less the last three months than my wife’s period.”

9. Someone has sex with Colin Farrell because the show couldn’t end without that.

8. Woman white-knights a sex worker who was fine and happy and did not need saving, ruining her career.

7. When the sex worker says she did not need saving, woman continues to steamroll her, saying “I’m the only one who can get you out” and then threatens her: “You reach out to those men I’ll let them know you talked to a cop.”

6. Man says derisively to woman, “You see me managing an Applebees?” Woman says, “I worked at one once. They give you a shift meal.”

5. Woman says, “I think I might be unfair to people sometimes.”

4. Man tells man being blackmailed over his sexuality, “If you’d just been honest about who you are no one would be able to run you.”

3. Woman says a dark element of her past is “not something I talk about”; man tells her “that’s one of the things I admire about you.”

2. Woman tells another woman, “Maybe you were put on earth for more than fucking.”

1. Woman responds, “Everything is fucking.”

“It’s nice to walk out your door, and it doesn’t smell like a heaping pile of trash, like in Manhattan.”

I don’t want it to be Monday any more than you do; hell, I don’t even want it to be August. August means September, and September leads to fall. And after autumn… I was walking along the river early yesterday evening and, watching the light still shining brightly on the water flowing by, it suddenly occurred to me that if I somehow make it through the next six months my only reward will be misery and cold and sunset before six. Winter waits patiently for summer to die and any joy you are able to extract from these hot, endless days is just fuel for the fire of its terrible, inevitable revenge. The darkness is not gone, it’s only resting. Anyway, good morning. Here is “an accidental new age record” aimed at instilling “a calm, relaxed and meditative mood associated with alpha brain waves.” Enjoy.

★★★★ Clear sun from the east met charcoal-gray clouds in the west. A short while later, the first shower had already wetted the streets and gone. A wheel of the scooter ran through a little clump of smoldering tobacco fibers on the damp sidewalk; a tiny rooster tail of water flared when the scooter crossed a decorated Con Edison manhole. The air felt pre-sweated into. The breeze off the river made a brave roar in the ears but carried less than one block inland. Ambient vapors made the phone’s touchscreen finicky. In the unfinished office, every crackle of the plastic sheeting sounded like driving rain. Real rain came again and left again, with the sun behind it. There was enough time to walk to lunch, but a lunch companion running a few minutes late came in rain-spattered. That rain passed too, and it began to feel as if the showers were being personally obliging, even as flood warnings thrummed through the 1 train — an illusion that lasted up to 66th Street, where exiting passengers cleared the turnstiles and stopped in shock, with audible exclamation. Rain was hammering the stairways, exploding into whiteness, the splash on each step going higher than the tread. A train pulling away drew the spray after it, over the crowd. People came down the stairs utterly drenched, clothes saturated and drooping. After a few minutes, the cataract seemed to have subsided to a mere downpour, enough to tempt escape. But if what was falling had diminished at all, it was fully offset by the swirling waters underfoot. Two blocks was enough to flood the shoes, while a renewed deluge soaked through the shirt and left hair wet to the scalp. The day-camp pickup would require a detour: dry t-shirt, dry socks, rubber-bottomed boots, and the rain jacket, with the child’s boots and rain jacket in a bag. In the minutes it had taken to pull the gear together, the barrage of rain had ceased. The sun began to burn through, and the waterproof equipment became pure encumbrance. What was running down the face now was sweat. Another cycle — or two? — would pass, with lightning and pelting water, before a compact but vivid sunset certified it was over.

Seven years ago, literally no one in New York even drank coffee, which was exclusively consumed and commented on by snobs on the West Coast, before the Cascadian Subduction Zone and drought forced everyone to move to Kansas. Now, through the miracle of trade, there is fancy — or fancy-seeming — coffee in every neighborhood in New York City, and even in some of its most miserable suburbs. Some of this Fancy Coffee is Very Good*! Most of it is not, although a number of diplomatic guides to good coffee in New York might make it seem otherwise. What follows is a proper categorization of most of the city’s “good” coffee shops — whether they are Actually Good, Perfectly Okay, or In Fact Bad — listed in no particular order. (This list was last updated on March 3rd.)

Very Good Shops

Everyman Espresso (but the West Broadway location is the best)
Black Fox
Culture Espresso (not always, unless you get a cookie)
Parlor Coffee (quality has slightly dipped, but I think so anyway!)
Marlow & Sons (the counter, obviously; perhaps the best selection of coffee in NY right now)
Little Collins (especially if you get the food, but Australians)
Abraco (there’s a gigantic new space that I haven’t been to yet, but I’m sure it’s still v chill)
Budin (probably stick to the Nordic coffee, but watch the roast dates?)
Voyager Espresso (but Australians)

Perfectly Okay Shops

Any Variety
Any Sweetleaf
Any Stumptown
Any Intelligentsia
Any Blue Bottle
Any Joe
Any Toby’s Estate (however, Australians)
Any Ninth Street Espresso
Supercrown Coffee Roasters
Underline
Propeller Coffee (so cozy)
Sweatshop (terrible name, also Australians (I think?), but)
Cafe Pedlar (it’s…almost bad, though)
Blind Barber
The ELK
Hi Collar (if you pick the correct coffee, anyway, which, hint, NOT Porto Rico; apparently the coffee lately is frequently old)
Little Skips (frequently treads the bad line, but… )
WTF Coffee Lab (sometimes it was very good but I’ve heard lately it’s bad, so let’s split the difference?)
Southside Coffee
Third Rail Coffee
Kaffe 1668 (the juice is pretty good)
Prodigy Coffee
Beaner Bar (but… sometimes bad)
Pushcart Coffee (their coffee is better than it was, but execution can be off, so might be bad)
Ground Support
Swallow Cafe (it is somewhere between fine and bad)

Bad Shops That Mysteriously Maintain Reputations As Notable Shops

Birch Coffee
Bluestone Lane (more Australians, but also… maybe bad — it was definitely extremely bad the other day)
Cafe Grumpy (but it used to be fine and even good and can still be okay)
Gorilla Coffee
Daily Press
Hungry Ghost
Tar Pit
Think Coffee (I don’t know why this is ever on anyone’s list but somehow it is?)
Gasoline Alley (this was originally in the “Perfectly Okay” category, but then I recalled that every espresso I had there except one was bad)
Mudspot Coffee
Gimme Coffee (it used to be fine and occasionally even good!)
Irving Farm Coffee Roasters
La Colombe Torrefaction (but the draft latte is… extremely good)
Oslo Coffee Roasters (highly offensive to actual Oslo coffee roasters)
Fika (another insult to Scandinavia)
Brooklyn Roasting Company
Gregory’s Coffee (it’s some dude’s MBA project???)
Caffe Vita (go back to Seattle!!!!!)
whynot coffee (this is the worst coffee place…ever?)
The Bean (nevermind, this is definitely the worst coffee place ever; not that anyone thinks it is good, but it is so bad I can’t)
Konditori (another terrible insult to Scandinavian coffee)
Porto Rico

Previously: The Rise of Fake Good Coffee; Forms of Iced Coffee, Ranked

*Good is obviously a subjective term! Lots of coffee is good, from lots of places, like Waffle House or Dunkin Donuts or your corner deli. But within Fancy Coffee, I think the definition “good” can be narrowed slightly to fall within certain parameters specific to this genre of coffee, which is what this list is about. Of course, you should drink whatever you want because you’re going to die very, very soon and why drink something you don’t like?

“He claimed he rides a motorbike to fight crime, protecting the public from knife crime and gang warfare. But we can reveal ‘The Renegade’, who said he lives near Nuneaton but in fact lives in a Leicestershire village, fabricated a number of claims about his activities. It’s understood he does plan to tackle criminals in the area — but isn’t currently able to because he has no bike and works in the evenings.”

The weekend, she is so close! You can see her and you don’t even need to squint! But beware: Suddenly it will be Sunday night and you will say to yourself, “Why, just a moment ago I was carefree and filled with anticipation, yet now all I hold in my heart is dread and regret.” It is inevitable. You will waste this weekend like you waste all weekends, particularly the summer ones. They set you up for failure and you don’t go out of your way to make it any harder for them to win. But right now, at this moment, all you are is promise and potential. Let’s pretend that this time you’re not going to fuck it up. Enjoy.

by Summer Block Kumar

I collect songs about shipwrecks and other maritime disasters, including mutinies, desertions, ghost ships, naval battles, pirate attacks, and as in one prototypical Decemberists song, murdering your nemesis after being swallowed by a whale. So far, I’ve compiled a list of more than fifty songs (with many variations on each). The best shipwreck songs contain some universal elements, which you would do well to include in your own maritime disaster tune.

1. Select a maritime disaster. The most popular era for singable shipwrecks is 1830–1910. The most recent wreck on my list is the Captain Torres, which went down in 1989. James Keelaghan’s song of the same name is tremendous, yet the fact that the grieving families are still alive today compromises the guiltless thrill of romanticizing the distant dead.

2. Your song should be named “The Wreck of” followed by the name of the ship. Don’t get creative.

3. Take the name of the place the ship is heading, then add the suffix -town. The Bay Rupert was on course for Melbourne-town; in “The Wreck of the Caspian,” Boston-town. In “The Wreck of the Ellan Vannin,” one of the very greatest disaster songs, “Her hold was full and battened down/As she sailed towards far Liverpool-town.”

4. But aren’t you really going — to hell? In “The Wreck of the C.P. Yorke,” “though ’twas the mate stood watch at her wheel/’Twas the devil that guided her way.” In “Whaler’s Cove,” an otherworldly whale conspires “to send us whalers straight to hell.” In “The Wreck of the Ellan Vannin,” the line “this little ship was bound for hell” is absolutely thrilling, and Richard Hawley really nails it on the delivery, too.

5. What is the ship’s mission? Be very specific here. The Edmund Fitzgerald was “coming back from some mill in Wisconsin” and “concluding some terms with a couple of steel firms/When they left fully loaded for Cleveland” — “with a load of iron ore twenty-six thousand tons more/than the Edmund Fitzgerald weighed empty.” The Ellan Vannin was delivering the mail. Other doomed ships were carrying cargo, exploring the poles, or ferrying emigrants. But the absolute best reason to go a-sea is to hunt whales, because now your song has whales in it.

6. A single misstep leads to tragedy. In “The Wreck of the Brother Jonathan,” the ship was overloaded. On the C.P. Yorke, “the mate was alert/for sight of the marker ahead/But he cut ‘er too short coming out of the Pass/And grounded on Tattenham Ledge.” “The skipper he was reading Climax,” a pornographic magazine, when he “missed the channel in the dark” and sank The Green Cove.

Other times, the captain ignores fair warning. In “The Wreck Of The Isidore,” a sailor named Thomas King said “’Captain, hear my tale/I have had a terrible dream, I fear that we should not sail.’” He continues, “In my dream our ship was wrecked, and all aboard were lost/Then another sailor he spoke up loud said I too have had such a dream/Of seven coffins on the shore, my own dead face I have seen.”

7. The cook cannot be lucky. He may predict disaster, as in “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” or struggle to accept it, as in “The Mermaid.” In “The John B. Sails” (recorded by The Beach Boys as “Sloop John B”), he goes mad. “The poor cook he caught the fits/and threw away all my grits/and then he took and he ate up all of my corn,” which is excellent, even if the chorus (“this is the worst trip/I’ve ever been on”) sounds like a bad Expedia review of a Carnival cruise. “Our cook in the fore-rigging froze by the fiercest wind that blew,” the first fatality in “The Loss of the Antelope.” Six months after the wreck of the Maggie Hunter, “the cook was found floating near the shore . . . A hatch, a boom, a broken spar, the drowned woman’s pale dead face,/of that stout craft and gallant crew remained the only trace.”

8. Include a lot of technical detail about the wreck. The best shipwreck songs could double as formal incident reports. At minimum, every shipwreck song must mention the exact date of the wreck, as well as the time of day, a rough time line of the incident, and the number of men and women who died. The men and women must all be referred to as “souls.”

In “When the Willie Went Down,” “The pilot stood upon the bridge,/but how was he to know,/the Sinclair tug that crossed her bow held a barge in tow, and the cable cut the Willie, and it opened up the hull, on the night when the Willie went down.”

Here you can remind your land-bound listeners just how long it takes to die at sea. In “The Wreck of the Mary Somers,” “the Somers meets with a heavy gale/and springs a leak under close-reefed sail/with her bowsprit gone and her rudder too.” For six days her crew tried to pump the water out, but “On the seventh morn, our pumps did sound,/nine feet of water in the hold was found.”

9. One way to inject pathos is by suggesting the ship was just a few miles from safety when the disaster struck. This is the nautical version of the cop on his last day before retirement. “Less than a mile from the Bar lightship/by a mighty wave Ellan Vannin was hit.” In “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” “The searchers all say they’d have made Whitefish Bay/If they’d put fifteen more miles behind her.” On the Powhatan, the passengers could see the lights on the shore. “Isaac Lewis” is about a young man who sailed the world only to die ten yards from the shores of his home and in view of his beloved father: “And I drowned where as a child I’d fished on the rocks of northern Wales/And in three days’ time I washed upon the whitened sandy shore/100 yards from Moelfre, my father’s wide oak door.” The coast guard was close enough to let the dying men on the Captain Torres place goodbye calls to their families, but not close enough to save them.

10. Use the phrase “watery grave.” If not now, when?

11. You can include a moral, but don’t be a dick about it. The worst maritime disaster songs are the ones about the Titanic, because they are both boring and smug. In Blind Willie Johnson’s “God Moves on the Water,” he incorrectly names the Titanic’s builder as A. G. Smith, singing, “A.G. Smith, mighty man, built a boat that he couldn’t understand,” which seems neither fair nor accurate for someone who did build a giant damn boat, after all. “Old Canoe” asserts, “This great ship was built by man, that is why she could not stand;/’She could not sink’ was the cry from one and all./But an iceberg ripped her side and it cut down all her pride; They found the hand of God was in it all,” which is a hell of a thing to say.

12. The best morals are populist ones. Less preachy than most of its kind, “When that Great Ship Went Down” adds a line about the mistreatment of the poorest among the Titanic. Other songs intimate that the cargo they were carrying was not worth dying for, like the coconuts, spices, perfume, and silk dresses carried by the ill-fated Anna Marie. “The Wreck of the Lucy Walker” concerns itself with a wealthy, prideful captain and his crew of consigned slaves. “Now the boilerman named Jim/knew exactly how much steam/that it took to keep Lucy running smooth.” The captain insists they go faster to impress his fellow steamboat tycoons. When Jim refuses, the captain pulls a gun on him. Jim leaps off the boat, saving himself, before a boiler explosion sinks the ship: “With all those dollar bills, Rich Joe couldn’t escape the mighty river’s jaw.”

13. But sometimes, there’s nothing to blame but the the endless, indifferent sea. The “Isaac Lewis” declares, “Man has tamed and shaped the land, he’ll never tame the sea.” For “The Wreck of the Julie Plante,” the lesson is, “You can’t get drowned on Lake St. Claire so long as you stay on shore.”

14. Add a little mystery. “They might have split up or they might have capsized/They may have broke deep and took water,” sings Gordon Lightfoot. In “Lady Franklin’s Lament,” the narrator says, “In Baffin’s Bay where the whale fish blow/The fate of Franklin no man may know/The fate of Franklin no tongue can tell/Lord Franklin alone with his sailors do dwell.” In “The Schooner Persian’s Crew,” “In mystery their dooms are sealed; they did collide, some say,/And that is all that will be revealed until the judgment day.”

15. Don’t try to be funny. While there are a few notable shipwreck songs with humorous elements, including “The Wreck of the Athens Queen” and the parody song “The Wreck of the Mary Jane,” a true folk disaster song should be delivered in utmost sincerity and sobriety. The sea is not the place for sarcasm, my friends. It’s a shipwreck, show some respect.

16. Bitter irony is acceptable, however.

In “Captain Torres,” the narrator, a sailor’s wife, muses: “How strange this world of wonder:/ships sailing, planes flying,/sound sent at speed of light/phone calls from young men dying.” In “The Wreck of the Bay Rupert,” they set off with a load of goods including “a dozen score of Bibles.” She goes down on a Sunday morning, “And the town was all at prayer,/but no missionary minister or the word of God,/Could have kept them there.” Eventually the “Eskimos” [sic] salvage anything of value, saying “to hell with all them Bibles.”

17. The best shipwreck — the best folk songs in general — conclude with the protagonist explaining that though he may die, his spirit will live on, as long as he is remembered/avenged. I include “The Highwayman” on my maritime playlist even though only one of its verses concerns the sea, because in only seven lines, Kris Kristofferson hits upon nearly every key element of a good maritime disaster song, concluding triumphantly, “when the yards broke off they said that I got killed/But I am living still.”

18. Though it contains no maritime tragedy, I would be remiss not to mention “Willie Taylor,” the keystone entry of my forthcoming play list Songs of Maritime Triumph. Briefly: a young woman and her lover are engaged, but before they can be married he is pressed into service and shipped off to sea. She disguises herself as a sailor (by lightly dabbing her fingertips with tar) and goes to find him, when a single button accidentally pops off her jacket, baring her breasts to all assembled. Unfazed, she asks to see her man. The captain informs her, “If you’ll get up tomorrow morning/Early as the break of day/There you’ll spy your Willie Taylor/Walking along with a lady gay.” She follows his advice, returns the next morning, sees Willie with his new bride, and immediately shoots him dead. Impressed by her decisiveness, the captain proclaims her the new ship’s commander.

Everything about this song is perfect.

Laura Olin, who ran social for Obama 2012, tells us what the political internet is going to be like in 2016. Presidential Twitter feuds. Snapchat gaffes! Hundreds of reporters with no idea what their jobs are anymore.

We’ll also talk about her newsletter, Everything Changes, and the strange and incredible advice exchange she hatched in thousands of inboxes earlier this month. Subscribe here.

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