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We’re back with a new collection of our favorite stories from across all of WordPress.

1. Books for the Broken-Hearted

Hannah Richell

Hannah Richell’s husband Matt was killed in a surfing accident in July. In a recent post, Richell writes about finding comfort in reading words written by people who have also experienced the shock of losing a loved one — people like Joan Didion, C.S. Lewis, and Cheryl Strayed.

2. The Shame of Poor Teeth in a Rich World

Sarah Smarsh, Aeon

An essay about growing up poor in America, and the role of teeth as a class signifier.

3. Giving Up the Ghost

Lynn Cunningham, The Walrus

Lynn Cunningham smoked cigarettes for fifty years before making a decision to quit and get help by visiting the Mayo Clinic’s Nicotine Dependence Center in Minnesota.

4. The Laborers Who Keep Dick Pics and Beheadings Out of Your Facebook Feed

Adrian Chen, Wired

Adrian Chen travels to the Philippines, where he meets the employees who work for content moderation companies that scrub objectionable content from social media sites.

5. ‘Before I Write a Word, I Need to Know Clearly What I Want to Say’

Ed Odeven Reporting

An interview with Baltimore-based author and sportswriter John Eisenberg.

6. Talking Shit about Hemingway and Thoreau with ‘The Toast’ Founder and ‘Texts From Jane Eyre’ Author Mallory Ortberg

Elisabeth Donnelly, Flavorwire

The beautiful thing about Texts From Jane Eyre, based on Ortberg’s original column for The Hairpin, is that it offers exactly what it says on the cover: the Western canon is parodied and spoofed through the silly modern invention of texting. Ortberg’s comedy is shot through with love and deep literary knowledge, highlighting the silly and outrageous subtext bubbling under classics from Lord Byron to Nancy Drew. It’s hilarious, wickedly smart work that also serves as a fantastic reading list.

7. Pot Kids

Kate Pickert, Time Magazine

Inside the quasi-legal science-free world of medical marijuana for kids.

8. On Modesty

Anna Vodicka, Shenandoah

An essay about modesty that recalls the author’s girlhood in a conservative community and challenges the mixed messages of women as both “Eve” and “Jezebel.”

9. One of Us

Jennifer J. Roberts, Boston Magazine

Memories of being a Southie kid and black in a mostly white neighborhood in Boston.

10. An American Dream Deferred

Eli Saslow, Washington Post

Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Eli Saslow profiles Javier Flores, an undocumented immigrant who was hoping that an executive action by President Obama would prevent him from being deported to Mexico and forced to leave his wife and U.S.-born children behind in Ohio. Flores is now in La Mixtequita, Mexico, with few options to reunite with his family.

As always, you can find our past collections here. You can follow Longreads on WordPress.com for more daily reading recommendations, or subscribe to our free weekly email.

Publishers, writers: You can share links to your favorite essays and interviews (over 1,500 words) on Twitter (#longreads) and on WordPress.com by tagging your posts longreads.

Here it is! A new collection of our favorite stories from across all of WordPress.

As always, you can find our past collections here. You can follow Longreads on WordPress.com for more daily reading recommendations, or subscribe to our free weekly email.

Publishers, writers, you can share links to your favorite essays and interviews (over 1,500 words) on Twitter (#longreads) and on WordPress.com by tagging your posts longreads.

1. What Happens When a Veteran High School Teacher Becomes a Student for the Day

Grant Wiggins

“I waited fourteen years to do something that I should have done my first year of teaching: shadow a student for a day.” A high school teacher learns some sobering lessons about how kids experience a typical day — and the amount of sitting required.

2. No Apology

Mehreen Kasana

The truth about being Muslim in America:

In the eyes of those perpetually seeking an apology from Muslims, I am a Bad Muslim. I don’t put hashtag-suffixed apologies online for what someone else of my faith does. When 9/11 happened, I was as shocked and terrified as anyone else was. We scary-looking Muslims experience human emotions, too. … We Muslims react to unexpected loss of life like any non-Muslim would. We cry, we mourn.

3. The Rise and Fall of Public Housing in NYC

Richard Price, Guernica

A “subjective overview” of the history of public housing in New York City from the novelist Richard Price, framed through the lens of his own upbringing in the North Bronx’s Parkside Houses.

4. Ways Men In Tech Are Unintentionally Sexist

Kat Hagan, This Is Not a Pattern

How our behavior and language can have a harmful impact — and how we can fix it. “Small, simple changes will build the foundation for a better tech culture.”

5. Gone Girls: Human Trafficking on the Home Front

Mike Kessler, Los Angeles Magazine

Kessler talks to survivors of child prostitution, as well as law enforcement officers, judges, politicians, and advocates working to prevent the sex trafficking of minors.

6. The Evans Family Is Living in This World

Linda Vaccariello, Cincinnati Magazine

A community comes together to help a family after a tragedy:

“The reality hit me like nothing I’d ever experienced,” McDonald says. “She had no one. I couldn’t imagine what that was like.” McDonald went to Ao, threw her arm around the sobbing woman’s shoulders, and said, “We’ll help you.”

7. The Plunge

Carl Schreck, Grantland

The story of Shavarsh Karapetyan, a Soviet swimming champion who dove into Armenia’s Lake Yerevan and saved dozens of lives from a sinking trolleybus.

8. How Pixar’s Gurus Brought the Magic Back to Disney Animation

Caitlin Roper, Wired

A profile of John Lasseter and Ed Catmull, whose intense focus on storytelling helped revive Disney’s animation studio with hits like Frozen and Wreck-It Ralph.

9. ‘I Am Darren Wilson’: St. Louis and the Geography of Fear

Sarah Kendzior & Umar Lee, Quartz

St. Louis is a city long on the run from itself. White flight has spread from suburbia to exurbia, while decades of black demands — for better jobs, better schools, better treatment—go unheeded. This is a region deprived of resources, forcing residents to scrounge for more fertile terrain.

10. Stephen Powers Puts the Writing on the Wall

Neima Jahromi, Bklynr

From the magazine Bklynr, a profile of the street artist behind some of Brooklyn’s most recognizable murals.

Photo: dystopos, Flickr

Here it is! A new collection of our favorite stories from across all of WordPress.

As always, you can find our past collections here. You can follow Longreads on WordPress.com for more daily reading recommendations, or subscribe to our free weekly email.

Publishers, writers, you can share links to your favorite essays and interviews (over 1,500 words) on Twitter (#longreads) and on WordPress.com by tagging your posts longreads.

1. What Happens When a Veteran High School Teacher Becomes a Student for the Day

Grant Wiggins

“I waited fourteen years to do something that I should have done my first year of teaching: shadow a student for a day.” A high school teacher learns some sobering lessons about how kids experience a typical day — and the amount of sitting required.

2. No Apology

Mehreen Kasana

The truth about being Muslim in America:

In the eyes of those perpetually seeking an apology from Muslims, I am a Bad Muslim. I don’t put hashtag-suffixed apologies online for what someone else of my faith does. When 9/11 happened, I was as shocked and terrified as anyone else was. We scary-looking Muslims experience human emotions, too. … We Muslims react to unexpected loss of life like any non-Muslim would. We cry, we mourn.

3. The Rise and Fall of Public Housing in NYC

Richard Price, Guernica

A “subjective overview” of the history of public housing in New York City from the novelist Richard Price, framed through the lens of his own upbringing in the North Bronx’s Parkside Houses.

4. Ways Men In Tech Are Unintentionally Sexist

Kat Hagan, This Is Not a Pattern

How our behavior and language can have a harmful impact — and how we can fix it. “Small, simple changes will build the foundation for a better tech culture.”

5. Gone Girls: Human Trafficking on the Home Front

Mike Kessler, Los Angeles Magazine

Kessler talks to survivors of child prostitution, as well as law enforcement officers, judges, politicians, and advocates working to prevent the sex trafficking of minors.

6. The Evans Family Is Living in This World

Linda Vaccariello, Cincinnati Magazine

A community comes together to help a family after a tragedy:

“The reality hit me like nothing I’d ever experienced,” McDonald says. “She had no one. I couldn’t imagine what that was like.” McDonald went to Ao, threw her arm around the sobbing woman’s shoulders, and said, “We’ll help you.”

7. The Plunge

Carl Schreck, Grantland

The story of Shavarsh Karapetyan, a Soviet swimming champion who dove into Armenia’s Lake Yerevan and saved dozens of lives from a sinking trolleybus.

8. How Pixar’s Gurus Brought the Magic Back to Disney Animation

Caitlin Roper, Wired

A profile of John Lasseter and Ed Catmull, whose intense focus on storytelling helped revive Disney’s animation studio with hits like Frozen and Wreck-It Ralph.

9. ‘I Am Darren Wilson’: St. Louis and the Geography of Fear

Sarah Kendzior & Umar Lee, Quartz

St. Louis is a city long on the run from itself. White flight has spread from suburbia to exurbia, while decades of black demands — for better jobs, better schools, better treatment—go unheeded. This is a region deprived of resources, forcing residents to scrounge for more fertile terrain.

10. Stephen Powers Puts the Writing on the Wall

Neima Jahromi, Bklynr

From the magazine Bklynr, a profile of the street artist behind some of Brooklyn’s most recognizable murals.

Photo: dystopos, Flickr

To accompany its fawning story on the success of Walt Disney Animation, "Wired" labeled John Lasseter and Ed Catmull as "big heroes" on its cover.

In Williamsburg, Brooklyn, there’s no shortage of businesses offering unique artisanal goods, which makes it an ideal location for Dream Factory Animation, the new full-service boutique animation studio fronted by alt-cartoonist M.Wartella.

While Wartella formed his company on 12/12/12, the doors to his new studio on Humboldt Street officially opened in May of this year. An underground illustrator who has dominated the pages of alternative publications for the last two decades and animated on various music videos and television shows, he has spent the last three years animating nearly 300 shorts for Cartoon Network’s animated sketch comedy program MAD.

While discussing with Cartoon Brew the transference of his print aesthetic to the studio’s signature style, Wartella cannot help but extol the quality of animation talent that has found their way to his studio. “All the animators here are great artists in their own right; we only hire people who can draw exceptionally well.” Wartella is so concerned about only attracting top-flight talent that he has chosen to eschew the industry standard of utilizing unpaid interns in his productions, as stated in a recent press release: “Everyone gets paid for their contributions. In fact, we operate a unique profit-sharing system whereby our animators share in part of the studio’s profits at the end of the year.”

However, his talented crew and high-profile, lowbrow background are not the only qualities that make his studio special. Wartella enthusiastically touts the development of a personalized production system for creating his animated shorts. A proprietary blend, of sorts, that enables his crew to produce “anything” in the studio’s signature style, quickly and efficiently. “Using my secret formula, we can produce super-high-quality cartoons in a time frame that would be virtually impossible for any other animation studio to rival,” he says. “We can turn out a fully animated 30-second spot from top to bottom in one business day if we have to. This brings traditional animation within reach for almost any commercial business that wants to get noticed.”

And while Wartella hints at a few yet-to-be-announced projects, (one involving Punk Magazine cartoonist/writer John Holmstrom and another that will revive “a classic cartoon character” for Warner Bros.) the only one he speaks openly about is a new webseries being made alongside @Radical.Media for Conde Nast Entertainment called WIRED: Mr. Know-It-All.

A series of ongoing shorts, WIRED: Mr. Know-It-All, based on the WIRED magazine articles of the same name, is a digital age advice column providing answers to a wide assortment of modern questions from Facebook etiquette to child rearing in the information age. It is produced in the style of illustrator Christoph Niemann and conceived, developed and animated by Wartella’s team. “I don’t think there is any other studio in New York or the world that can crank out animation as efficiently as we can,” he says. “We have a solid formula and a great team!”

Would you buy a book on Twitter? One author is experimenting with Chirpify, a way to buy and sell goods without ever leaving your Twitter feed.

SocialTimes has the scoop:

Starting today, Wired contributing editor David Wolman is conducting a 4-day “experiment in barrier smashing” to see if he can sell his new book, The End Of Money, on Twitter. To buy the book, readers hit “reply” to a specially coded Tweet with the word “buy” in the text to enter the payment system and download the eBook. Is Twitter a viable platform for selling goods? The microblogging site didn’t make a single dent in Black Friday sales, which collectively drew only 0.34 percent of referral sales and 0.84 percent of referral traffic from social media sites overall, according to a study by IBM.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

We only have one week left in August, people. ONE WEEK! Oh, the agony…

Here are some things that don’t make me sad.

Marcel the Shell with Shoes On. It might be the most delightful video I’ve ever seen. [Vimeo]

Dinner Party Download needs your help! Because “it’s not really public radio if you don’t beg your listeners for money.” [APM]

Ah, home… This Day in History: Record Setting Tow-Truck Parade Held in Washington State [History Channel]

I’m sure this was staged, but it is delightful. [YouTube]

Cute item of the week: Puffin. [Next Web]

Our colleagues at Oxford Fajar have a treat for you! [Save the Words]

Kindle vs. iPad close-up showdown [Wired]

It’s about time we had a Silly Bandz anthem! [Urlesque]

#EatPrayWhatever [Twitter]

This is one “epic” parking garage. [GalleyCat]

So, among many of the hats I wear in the illustration field, I’m the vice president of ICON6, which is the only creative conference in the US that focuses exclusively on ILLUSTRATION.

It’s been 2 years of a lot of work to plan an unforgettable event people leave with A LOT from, making it worth their money, energy and time.

Now, we’re almost there, merely 2 weeks away, and I can say with certainty that we, the board, have proudly achieved our goal: This is the best ICON ever, packed with art directors and art buyers, illustration stars, educators and a couple of networking events (full disclosure: I’m the events chair too) that will make sure you don’t remember what you did last night.

The conference rate is about to go up, so hurry! If you’re wondering if it’s worth it, I can assure you won’t regret it- and I’m supposed to be the queen of networking and self-promotion.

Speakers include The New York Times, creatives from the illustrated United ad campaign, Christoph Niemann, DreamWorks, Yuko Shimizu, Random House, Tim Biskup, Wired, Taschen and Bil Donovan among others.

ICON6 – LA July 14-17, 2010
www.theillustrationconference.org

See you there!

Fernanda Cohen
ICON6 Vice President & Events Chair

But whoops, we already missed it. Rewire your Life Day was yesterday, according to a Michigan State University professor, Ellen Ernst Kossek.

But contrary to what it sounds like (take a day to sort through all the old chargers, USB cables, hard drive folders, and straighten out your iTunes to mobile phone synch, once and for all...), she's saying to take a break from your iLife and switch everything off.

Go to lunch with a friend, talk face to face, etc.

Maybe I have the crackberry addition, because it feels almost the equivalent of saying, "This is a pencil free day," because your hand needs a break from all this writing it does.

Almost, but not quite. And looking through Kossek's Work-Life Web site, I am drawn in. The CEO of Me sounds appealing. Okay, I am changing my mind about this crazy person who is proposing I stop blogging e-mailing chatting texting powerpointing videoing for a day....

Now, can I get that title in an eBook, so I can read sections of it to my lunch friend?

Setting aside the fact that it would promote the wrong brand message for your library (a connected, totally wired space for the future)...what do you think of Rewire Your Life Day, as a personal empowerment strategy?

According to Wired magazine...Public libraries! (Right between "heated seats" and "remote control.")

I would have put ice cream higher up on the list. But maybe placement on the list does not indicate its rank of nonsuckiness.

Also check out the list of things that do suck. (According to Wired.) What's cool is, they've gathered scientific reasons for the suckiness.

(Spotted by Andy!)

I apologize for the belatedness of some of these links. Last week’s link love was rescheduled due to holiday party pictures.  Be sure to check back next week when we will be sharing the favorite books of some of our favorite people.  Enjoy the links below and have a snow-filled weekend!

What’s in a name? What does creative non-fiction imply to you?

News that our in-house IT guys must love, macs may someday be able to run windows-based programs natively.

Not sure who to vote for in the primaries? Enter how you stand on the issues and Glass Booth will tell you which candidate is the best choice.

Another sad story about newspapers. (Full Disclosure: I once worked for Creative Loafing.)
Do you think its ethical for book reviewers to back out of a review because they didn’t like the book?

A year in Media Errors. I mean, really, how hard is it to spell B-A-R-A-C-K O-B-A-M-A

A musical blog feature worth paying attention to.

These cats are creepy, but at least they may help further science.

Some holiday advice for curing that hangover you came into work with.

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I saw it at Wired and the Chronicle of Higher Education. I read about it on Everything is Miscellaneous. They’re talking about 23 Learning 2.0 Things, a little blog post with a big impact.

The idea is simple and easily explained: “23 Things (or small exercises) that you can do on the web to explore and expand your knowledge of the Internet and Web 2.0.” Helene Blowers is a librarian, or rather the Public Services Technology Director for the Public Library of Charlotte & Mecklenburg County. The project as outlined is a two month project, so you have about eight weeks to learn about two things a week. Best of all, it’s all available on the web, via an easy to read and understand hyperlinked blog, so you can try it out at your organization. Christine MacKensie, the director of the Yarra Plenty Regional Library in Melbourne, Australia (who did a four month version of the program) makes a great point in the Wired Article “The last thing we want is for people to come into our libraries and ask about Flickr or Second Life and be met with a blank look…. And they certainly won’t now.”

I saw it at Wired and the Chronicle of Higher Education. I read about it on Everything is Miscellaneous. They’re talking about 23 Learning 2.0 Things, a little blog post with a big impact.

The idea is simple and easily explained: “23 Things (or small exercises) that you can do on the web to explore and expand your knowledge of the Internet and Web 2.0.” Helene Blowers is a librarian, or rather the Public Services Technology Director for the Public Library of Charlotte & Mecklenburg County. The project as outlined is a two month project, so you have about eight weeks to learn about two things a week. Best of all, it’s all available on the web, via an easy to read and understand hyperlinked blog, so you can try it out at your organization. Christine MacKensie, the director of the Yarra Plenty Regional Library in Melbourne, Australia (who did a four month version of the program) makes a great point in the Wired Article “The last thing we want is for people to come into our libraries and ask about Flickr or Second Life and be met with a blank look…. And they certainly won’t now.”

I just quickly put this together. What do you think?

visit www.onnoknuvers.com for more images

The Listening Post blog over at Wired has an interesting little post about libraries that use Overdrive to “check out” digital content. The content only plays on Windows machines and comes with Digital Rights Management that tries to prevent copying and using materials past its built in due date. More interesting is the comments where people debate whether using DRM in cases like this is actually completely appropriate, or a totally unnecessary inconvenience to library patrons. [del.net]