Want to see some extremely fucked up stock photography? Follow @darkstockphotos.

I have been listening rigorously to NPR’s “How I Built This with Guy Raz.” Episodes I have binged through include LinkedIn, Kate Spade, Instagram, Chipotle, Teach For America, Starbucks, and Kickstarter. So many inspiring stories. Love this podcast.

Jia Tolentino:

Blogs are necessarily idiosyncratic, entirely about sensibility: they can only be run by workhorses who are creative enough to amuse themselves and distinct enough to hook an audience, and they tend to publish like-minded writers, who work more on the principle of personal obsession than pay. The result is editorial latitude to be obscure and silly and particular, but the finances are increasingly hard to sustain; media consumption is controlled these days by centralized tech platforms—Facebook, Twitter—whose algorithms favor what is viral, newsy, reactionary, easily decontextualized, and of general appeal.

Blog still provides freedom and fun for me. I am just not getting paid doing it and that’s OK with me. I don’t expect to get paid for freedom and fun.

Slate has a new logo, types, and design. Read Julia Turner’s “Slate’s New Look” and Jason Santa Maria’s “Redesigning the Way We Work.”

The Guardian has a new masthead. Read Brand New’s review.

With the recent Aziz Ansari sexual allegation, the fiction essay, “Cat Person,” by Kristen Roupenian in the New Yorker has been mentioned. Just read it this morning and loved it.

iA:

There seems to be a weak undercurrent of old and young bloggers like us that feel sentimental or curious and want to bring back blogging. Blogging won’t save the world. But, hell, after two weeks now, we can confirm: it feels great to be back on the blogging line.

If you are one of those old or young bloggers, please join in. Drop Facebook, drop Twitter and drop Medium for original thought. Own your traffic. You can use them to engage in discussion. But don’t get lost in there. Write daily. Publish as often as you have something to say. Link to other blogs.

I am so glad to see the return of one of my favorite design blogs.

This year I will put all my eggs in one blog. That’s right, I try to refrain from posting on Twitter and Facebook as much as I could. So you’ll expect to see more short posts on here rather than on social media. Let’s get into some of the podcasts I have listened to lately.

As the New Yorker lover, I started to listen to “The New Yorker Radio Hour.” Here’s an enjoyable one interview with Jon Hamm and a hilarious one with Jerry Seinfeld.

As a book lover, I started to listen to “What Should I Read Next?” with Anne Bogel. Episode 112 with Laura Vanderkam, in particular, is intriguing. They talked about finding the time to read.

As a typographic lover, I started to listen to The Weekly Typographic by The League of Moveable Type. The hosts do a nice job of sharing the latest news in type design community.

As a design nerd, I also started listening to Design Notes by Google. As I was searching for Design Notes, I learned about Method podcast also from Google Design. I’ll give that a shot as well.

What’s else? I am still on the sideline about Design Recharge. I am giving it a few more episodes to see if it is for me.

Oprah Winfrey:

For too long, women have not been heard or believed if they dare speak the truth to the power of those men. But their time is up. Their time is up.

Winfrey’s 9-minute speech at the 2018 Golden Globes is worth-watching.

Two memoirists died of cancer and their spouses fell in love. Nora Krug reports:

“I’m still surprised,” said Lucy Kalanithi of her relationship with Nina Riggs’s widower, John Duberstein. “I’m surprised by how ridiculous it is and how natural it is at the same time.”

Audrea Lim:

The model-minority myth exists alongside another dangerous and limiting idea — one that is consistent with the alt-right’s misogyny and core anti-feminist values. The main problem with white women, as many alt-right Asian fetishists have noted, is they’ve become too feminist. By contrast, Asian women are seen as naturally inclined to serve men sexually and are also thought of as slim, light-skinned and small, in adherence to Western norms of femininity.