Kind of kidding; the new Slate is largely very nice! Look for yourself! It’s also great that they waited for Farhad Manjoo to decamp to the Wall Street Journal (also a former Hard Candy Shell redesign client) to unveil it. Here’s one thing about it that’s driving me a little crazy, giving me extreme eye-burn, reproduced real-size.

Kinda nutty right? (The text works fine if you break it up with a picture every paragraph though? It could be worse!) Anyway, lots of interesting fodder for the discussion about “what does the Internet do and/or want.”

What are you going to do this weekend!? Tell us in the comments on someone else’s blog, goodbye! Anyway, go outside, we hear winter is arriving.

★★★★ Blandly relaxing, neither demanding attention nor particularly rewarding it. Bare ankles and knee-high boots were both apparently tenable. A man with a white fringe of hair wore snow-white slacks, brilliant in the sun, and a navy blazer. Dark-featured Dante brooded from his high pedestal over his deep-shaded grove on Broadway, behind its thin wire fence. A hydrant spilled into the street downtown, where it settled into a clear, churning pool, wetting the tires of the Vespas outside the cupcake shop.

Good luck, orphaned bear cubs!

“Paul Harrison, Chris Kantola, and Jesse Angle, scrounging for bitcoins outside a public library in Pensacola, Florida,” is the caption for the photo accompanying this article headlined, “Homeless, Unemployed, and Surviving on Bitcoins,” in which the following sentences appear, one after the other: “Jesse Angle isn’t your average homeless person. But he shows that bitcoin is changing the world in more ways than you might imagine. Some believe it could provide a major boost to the country’s 640,000 homeless, not only in providing extra pocket change for those on the street, but by helping urban homeless shelters more quickly secure donations for hot meals, beds, and blankets.” Have a good weekend.

by Adam Carlson

The 113th Congress: do they blog? They do, a little! And here we review their blogs. Hey here is the Tumblr of Alan Grayson, the Democrat in the House of Representatives from a crazy central stretch of Florida.

Who: Alan Grayson (Rep-D, Florida) — Alan Grayson’s Emails

What: A Sorkinesque salad of high, low, and high-handedness through diatribes, transcripts, remembrances, and Don McLean references.

Design: 4.812/10 The blog is basically basic; its basicness announces itself with every post, every one set against and surrounded by a white background. But the function of design is functionality, and the lack of design pairs potently with the lull of the scroll.

Community engagement: 1/10. Grayson breaks some cardinal rules of community management (there isn’t any) without ever forgetting to ask followers for money while also making sure said followers know America may become a terrible place without their contribution. Please reblog!

Fun: If you still hate “The Newsroom,” you will probably hate Grayson’s blog. If you still hate “The Newsroom” but also watch it each week because you loved Jeff Daniels in that one movie from a few years ago and because it’s nice to hear people shove long words at each other like sexual proxies and because when did Olivia Munn get so funny? Well, you have been warned. Recently Grayson has been blogging quite a bit about not going to war with Syria, often to the tune of single-digit Tumblr notes in response.

Peak/Valley: Republishing MLK, Jr.’s “Letter From Birmingham Jail” on its 50th anniversary.

Soundbite: “One of the nice things about being a Member of Congress is that I have security clearance, and you don’t. Sorry!”

Previously: Mark Takano’s Tumblr

Adam Carlson writes things for money.

Oh, the Bloomberg army is on the defensive now, after the election, and after everyone declaring themselves fed up with Bloombergianism — and also with Bloomberg running around just being a straight up dick to everyone. So Kevin Sheekey is “putting some things out there” now. Kevin Sheekey, you may not know, is a Bloomberg lifer who was a Washington lobbyist for Bloomberg LP, worked on the election, oversaw the Republican convention here (that went fairly poorly — for residents, not for Republicans), did some time as a deputy mayor and then eventually went back to Bloomberg LP. Of course. Here’s what he’s on about — and it’s incredibly frustrating, because when you start distorting the record, trying to recast Bloomberg as the “real” progressive, you take away from us the ability to say “Yes, there are a lot of good things about New York City now!” Instead we have to say, wow, you’re full of it.

Oh, and how do I know he’s doing this? Because Sheekey bought a promoted Tweet to take his ideas to the people. If only Bloomberg had a media company.

Is the Progressive the retiring Mayor? Teen pregnancy rate fell 30% during Bloomberg’s term in office. http://t.co/QngIrTBsck

— Kevin Sheekey (@ksheekey) September 20, 2013

Enjoy your nationwide trend. In fact, New York City lagged behind in improvement the last few years; the national rate dropped 8% while New York City’s rate dropped 5%. WHY IS BLOOMBERG FAILING OUR TEENAGE GIRLS?

Is the Progressive the retiring Mayor? Since 2000 NYC has gone from 6th to 13th highest poverty rate among the 20 biggest US cities.

— Kevin Sheekey (@ksheekey) September 19, 2013

“The poverty rate rose to 21.2 percent in 2012, from 20.9 percent the year before, meaning that 1.7 million New Yorkers fell below the official federal poverty threshold. That increase was not statistically significant, but the rise from the 2010 rate of 20.1 percent was.”

— The New York Times yesterday. The national poverty rate is 15%.

Is the Progressive the retiring Mayor? Will successor create largest affordable housing plan in nation’s history? http://t.co/pVYYQdFGzf

— Kevin Sheekey (@ksheekey) September 18, 2013

The bullshit in this one is deep. Fortunately we’ve asked and answered this one at great length. Not only is there very little affordable housing being created (as opposed to preserved), there’s very little housing at all being created. So yeah: the plan is impressive! The execution is not (although you gotta give the Bloomberg administration a lot of credit for hammering away at trying to keep affordable housing, a thankless and expensive task).

Is the Progressive in NYC the retiring Mayor? http://t.co/0qwrnLOPWm

— Kevin Sheekey (@ksheekey) September 16, 2013

Yeah so that is a link to an article that is about how all schools should be charter schools basically and we should abandon public education, it’s kind of insane. I don’t even know what we’re supposed to say to that. “No”?

Fact: 22 of the top 25 public schools in NYS are now NYC schools — which boasted zero in the top 25 before Mayor Bloomberg. (New York Post)

— Kevin Sheekey (@ksheekey) September 16, 2013

That’s weird, no link? Here’s the link! Public schools… sort of! “16 of the schools have selective admission criteria — based on test scores, gifted and talented exams or other factors — while two are charter schools run independently of the district.”

Is the Progressive in NYC the retiring Mayor? (757,386 reasons and counting.) http://t.co/fEeXUB9ML0

— Kevin Sheekey (@ksheekey) September 17, 2013

The City has done a very good job planting trees! Even I, who complain about everything, cannot believe people are complaining about more trees.

This recasting of the Bloomberg era will be stronger and stronger here in the last few months. Be aware! If you see something, say something, preferably to the cop who has illegally stopped you and frisked you.

But seriously guys. It’s almost over. You can trash de Blasio next year! Now you’re in the homestretch. Just be chill, and everyone will thank you for your service. Oh and try to keep Bloomberg from being an asshole? If you’re concerned about “optics,” maybe start there!

“Smile, yell or wave — everyone has a theory about the best strategy for getting a drink in a busy bar. But scientists have conducted painstaking, or at least headache-inducing, research to work out the best method and discovered what nine out of 10 of us already know — that standing squarely to the bar and looking directly at the barman is the best way to get served.”

So what are THE SMELLS? Take it away, Science!

Working with a standard set of data, Andrew Dravniek’s 1985 Atlas of Odor Character Profiles, the researchers applied a mathematical method to simplify the olfactory information into coherent categories, similar to the way compressing a digital audio or image file reduces the file’s size without, ideally, compromising its usefulness. The team identified 10 basic odor qualities: fragrant, woody/resinous, fruity (non-citrus), chemical, minty/peppermint, sweet, popcorn, lemon and two kinds of sickening odors: pungent and decayed.

I guess that pretty much nails it, except I am not sure where you would slot in the New York City scent of late-summer street urine, which lacks the astringent nature of the first pavement piss of spring but carries within its present-yet-subtle profile the undeniable fact that no matter how long you want to wish it away, winter won’t wait forever. I suppose you could go with “decayed” but that just doesn’t seem to capture the essential sadness of it.

Photo by ollyy, via Shutterstock

“With little to no scientific evidence backing them, why do so many people still look at their horoscopes?”