The Web site Stack Overflow was created in 2008 as a place for programmers to answer one another’s questions. At the time, the Web was thin on high-quality technical information; if you got stuck while coding and needed a hand, your best bet was old, scattered forum threads that often led nowhere.
ON SUNDAY WE went on a epic 50 km bicycle ride past Wimbledon and Clapham Common (where we stopped for a bit to lounge in the sun and nibble on the mini ice cream bars and pan au chocolat we picked up along the way) before heading into the city centre...
For the first thirty years of my life, I lived within a one-mile radius of Willesden Green Tube Station. It’s true I went to college—I even moved to East London for a bit—but such interludes were brief. I soon returned to my little corner of North West London. Then suddenly, quite abruptly, I left not just the city but England itself.
BEFORE P’S brother came to visit last July, he asked for London tips, and one of the places we recommended was Gordon’s Wine Bar on Villiers Street. We hadn’t even been yet, but we heard good things.
Within minutes of my decision to hand my life over to AI, ChatGPT suggested that, if able, I should go outside and play with my dog instead of work. I had asked the chatbot to make the choice for me, and it had said that I should prioritize “valuable experiences” that contribute to my “overall well-being.”
Kindness and niceness, though both excellent personal qualities, are not the same thing. The former is to be good to others; the latter is about being pleasant. They don’t even have to go together. Some say, for example, that New Yorkers are kind but not nice (“Your tire is flat, you moron—hand me your jack”), in contrast to Californians, who are nice but not kind (“Looks like you’ve got a flat tire there—have a good day!”).
The New York Times recently played host to a trilogy of articles, delving into the shifting landscape of work in the digital age. These thought-provoking pieces shed light on myriad challenges that arise as we navigate the evolving nature of work in the modern world, and underscore the pressing need to prioritise the well-being of workers as we forge ahead into the future.
In 2017, I was trying to write How to Be an Antiracist. Words came onto the page slower than ever. On some days, no words came at all. Clearly, I was in crisis. I don’t believe in writer’s block. When words aren’t flowing onto the page, I know why: I haven’t researched enough, organized the material enough, thought enough to exhume clarity, meticulously outlined my thoughts enough. I haven’t prepared myself to write.
THIS WEEKEND we watched Aftersun, the 2022 drama written and directed by Charlotte Wells, starring Paul Mescal, Frankie Corio and Celia Rowlson-Hall. We talked about it for quite a while after it was over, analysing what it could mean, discussing our own interpretations, processing the feeling of sadness it left in us afterward. It's about memory⏤more specifically, our memories of those we love after they are gone, the people we remember them as, sometimes as opposed to how they really were.
Sunday Best is a brand new feature here at TIG that we plan on making a recurring one. Each Sunday, we will bring you a cross-section of interesting articles, links, ideas, music, culture, and anything else we think might be interesting or entertaining⏤the perfect supplement to your Sunday and one we hope you will add to your routine.
April is the cruellest month because we are stuck. We’ve stopped dead and we’re going rotten. We are living in the demesne of the crippled king, the Fisher King, where everything sickens and nothing adds up, where the imagination is in shreds, where dark fantasies enthrall us, where men and women are estranged from themselves and one another, and where the cyclical itch of springtime—the spasm in the earth; the sizzling bud; even the gentle, germinal rain—only reminds us how very, very far we are from being reborn.