Put this in your kids stockings.
- It took us all year, but we’ve found the best link of 2014. Here’s a Play-Doh toy that looks just like a penis. Is Play-Doh play a thing now? [E!]
- A shitty year, in words: the trending searchwords of 2014, from Dictionary.com, include asphyxiation, misogynistic, and sociopath. [Dictionary.com]
- On the upside, according to the Global Language Monitor, the heart emoji is the most popular word of all. [the Language Monitor, via the Verge]
- The story of 11-year-old Sally Horner’s abduction changed the course of 20th-century literature. Fascinating read by Sarah Weinberg on the real Lolita. [Hazzlit]
- On nerd entitlement. Laurie Penny nails it. [New Statesman]
- Thanks to Ben Davis for a really nice shoutout on artnet News! He listed our follow-up piece on the Gramsci Monument as one of the most important art essays of the year, along with Molly Crabapple’s Saadiyat Island reporting and Trevor Paglen’s Creative Time report. Needless to say, it’s a huge honor. [artnet News]
- The MTA is finally getting rid of the subway alarms on the emergency exits, a Bloomberg era invention “to curb fare evasion”. In practice, they annoyed us all on a daily basis. [WNYC via Animal New York]
- Something about this Stefan Simchowitz article reminds me of Ariel Levy’s 2007 New York Magazine article on Dash Snow. The contentiousness of its subject becomes a mythologizing force. A good read. [The New York Times Magazine]
- Another government delivers an extremely harsh punishment to a fairly benign feminist artwork. Megumi Igarashi, the artist behind the vagina kayak, has been indicted with a potential two-year jail sentence for distributing “obscene” material by distributing the data which allows others to 3D print vagina kayaks. As a testament to the project’s prominence, it comes up first when you google “vagina”. [NPR, via artnet News]
- One of the best editorials we’ve read from the New York Times Editorial Board ever. The subject: The NYPD. (And for the second day in a row). A good way to close out the year at The Times. [The New York Times]
