“In the recent history of American music, there’s no figure parallel to [Tom] Lehrer in his effortless ascent to fame, his trajectory into the heart of the culture — and then his quiet, amiable, inexplicable departure. During his golden decade, he appeared on The Tonight Show twice, drew a denunciation in Time magazine, and by the early 1960s, seemed poised for a lasting place on an American cultural scene that itself was undergoing a radical upheaval. Then Lehrer simply stopped performing. His entire body of work topped out at 37 songs. He bounced around Cambridge, never quite finishing his doctorate on the concept of the mode — the most common number in a set — in statistics. He kept the Sparks Street house but began spending most of his time in Santa Cruz, Calif., where he became a beloved instructor in math and musical theater for some 40 years.”

In case you haven’t made the transition from freaking out over taxes to freaking out over that massive Internet insecurity thing, here is a list of places you should change your password at.

“NASA has some projects in the works when it comes to space exploration, but they’re no big deal: Just grabbing an asteroid and throwing it at the moon, sending people to Mars and laying the groundwork for permanent human settlements in the solar system.”

by Awl Sponsors

We’re living through an historic time in human communications. The ways that we connect to each other, to information, and to the physical world around us are changing at a truly breathtaking pace. And with it, life itself is changing as well.

AT&T;, in partnership with Vice, is looking to highlight the role of networked life in enabling young Americans’ always-on lifestyles with a new platform it’s calling The Mobile Movement. Beginning in Austin at SXSW, AT&T; has been traveling the country to discover the many faces of the mobile movement and document how it’s changing our lives.

According to Vice’s Eddy Moretti, “The condition, which we’re calling a movement, is a networked existence. It’s really visible and strong with young people, but everyone lives their lives connected through their devices to each other, and to apps that entertain them or bring them information. This is a new stage in human communication and human socialization. There is a movement out there, almost like an art movement, and we’re tapping into it, amplifying it in some cases, documenting it and celebrating it.”

So, how are young people thinking about their mobile devices? As it turns out, they’re pretty high maintenance. Take a look in the above mini documentary put together by AT&T.;

Follow The Movement at www.youtube.com/themobilemovement.

“On April 10th, J&R; will close its doors so that we can rebuild this location into what we hope will be an unprecedented retailing concept and social mecca.”

2014’s album of the year comes out on May 6th and I for one cannot wait.

Dear Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, this is who you’re inducting tonight. Congratulations. http://t.co/JD6z53ZAj4 @YusufCatStevens @RollingStone

— Salman Rushdie (@SalmanRushdie) April 10, 2014

And you thought putting KISS in there was the outrage.

Just 100 days into the de Blasio era, we have entered the trash-shaming era. The city is rolling out composting in parts of the city, including Park Slope, and today, the city will be showing off New Yorker’s waste production. Um… Brought to you by Glad! Sponsored shaming! How odd. The family above displays a week’s worth of landfill and recycling production.

By the end of the de Blasio era, we’ll all be living on the subways anyway, wearing outfits created from all the trash we make. We’ll all fight from scavenged tools in his Garbagedome. I can’t wait! I’m going to win!

by Jeff Bender

Nothing will replace the “like” button on our Facebook pages. But does it say enough? Even with the fine suggestion from Facebook engineers of a “sympathize” button, we’re still handcuffed to a simple abstraction — “like” — when what we really mean is so much more specific.

• This post has my name on it.

• Historically I’ve “liked” stuff like this.

• Don’t dislike.

• Great photo of you! (Shitty photo of me!)

• Ha ha ha! — I think I understand.

• A lot of my friends have “liked” this.

• Inside joke?

• Missing word?

• LOL’d… didn’t quiiite ROTFL.

• Think you’re attractive.

• Keep going back and forth between “like” and “unlike.”

• Thought you were staying in this weekend…?

• Nice accomplishment.

• Are you dating an old man? Or is that your dad?

• In the bathroom “liking” a post you made earlier from this bathroom.

• My, you are outgoing.

• You can’t expect me to “like” two different profile pics in the same day. I won’t. I will not…. Okay, I changed my mind.

• How did you get married before I did?

• You dressed better than you needed to for that event.

• You look heavier than you did last year at this time.

• Did the math and you may have been pregnant before the wedding.

• Can figure it out for sure if you send me dates of your last ten periods.

• Don’t think we haven’t noticed you’re posting a lot lately.

• You titled your own photo. Are you an artist?

• Can’t believe you “liked” your own post. Can’t believe I did, too.

• Clicked “See More” when I wasn’t reading in the first place.

• Your newborn looks dumb.

• No one has “liked” this yet, and it’s been hours.

• Do you own other t-shirts?

• You look thrilled to be in this photo. Bill Clinton does not.

• Wish I had a house like yours and not like mine.

• Again: nice accomplishment.

• Is there such thing as a “hate-like”? I’ve been “hate-liking” a lot of these.

• And hating myself all the while.

• Your dog is cuter than your son.

• Your niece makes weird art.

• This post is actually cool, but I’ve sold myself out by “liking” so many of your posts that weren’t cool, and now I don’t know how to express that.

• Okay, once again — nice accomplishment.

• Sick of your accomplishments.

• Leaving Facebook.

• Goodbye forever.

• Hey, I’m back.

• Will you be my friend?

Jeff Bender is a writer living in Bellingham, Washington. He received his MFA from Columbia University and is currently at work on his first novel.

★★★★ Through the cool morning drizzle and mist, the shoe-repair shop was already showing an OPEN sign, ready to sell a replacement shoelace for the first-grader’s earlier replacement shoelace, which had already exploded into parallel strands at one end. A thin film of water covered the concrete of the schoolyard, where a gravely misplaced earthworm slowly and intermittently twitched, first one end and then the other. The rain stopped; the partly built new scaffolding around the building kept its share of sidewalk damp well after the rest had dried out. The sun came through, and the clouds, now separated, formed a pixelated clouds-and-sky image in the north face of the glass apartment tower. The descending sun was joined by a second sun flaring white off a Trumpville building. Curving wisps of pink spread across the upper western sky. Far off and low down, the underside of a skinny purple cloud lit up in searing reds.