Skirts with Pockets
Welcome to Skirts with Pockets, a weekly (fine, weekly-ish) collection of the online articles, websites, and other links that I've loved and now want to share with you. Please excuse any stray candy wrappers that fall to the ground as I empty my virtual pockets.
► Bird-watching with the Ravenmaster
How do you even get a job like Ravenmaster for the Tower of London? I am a sucker for stories like this—interesting people doing interesting work and loving it.
► Wine and Candy Pairings
To be honest, I bookmarked this article last year at Halloween, and I am just that far behind on sharing links. But it's never the wrong time to do a little wine and candy research, so hop to it.
► The Sugar Conspiracy
This is one of those "long reads," so you have time to do the wine and candy research before you get to the end of it. It's a fascinating history of nutrition guidelines and food science, full of a surprising amount of drama.
► Looking at Frames at the Louvre
"Today, the Louvre possesses one of the world’s largest collections of frames, with around six thousand in use and another three thousand in storage." Why is this so delightful? I miss museums.
► LEGOLAND Japan Breaks Record With Cherry Blossom Tree . . .
You could give me 880,000 LEGO bricks and stop time itself, and still, I would never make anything this beautiful. Truly stunning.
Skirts with Pockets
Welcome to Skirts with Pockets, a weekly collection of the online articles, websites, and other links that I've loved and now want to share with you. Please excuse any stray candy wrappers that fall to the ground as I empty my virtual pockets.
► Daring Fireball | The Deck, Adieu
Some of my favorite sites of the last decade were supported by ads from The Deck, and I always thought well of both sides of that partnership—the authors for choosing a classy ad platform and the ad platform for being classy. It was nice to hear that so many authors valued that partnership, as well.
► See One, Do One, Teach One
I subscribe to Paul's email newsletter (from two different email accounts! and I don't even mind!), and while he always has interesting stuff to share, this particular piece really stuck with me. I get stuck in the "see one" phase a lot and am too scared to "do one" and definitely not brave enough to "teach one." (In fact, I've been trying to come up with an online class or ebook I could offer to make some extra money, and I keep telling myself I don't have anything to teach.) As always, I am grateful for the reminder to do more—more succeeding and more failing.
► John Coltrane Draws a Picture Illustrating the Mathematics of Music
I found joy in doing ratios with my dad long before I learned to appreciate piano lessons, but I've always loved math and music fiercely—and the fact that the two are linked.
► How Poverty Changes the Brain
There is no way I can relate to someone who grew up in poverty, but I do relate to getting overwhelmed by stress and anxiety to the point where I cannot rationally break down big problems into manageable steps. Working on it. But I'm fascinated (and delighted) to learn that people are studying this phenomenon and hoping to help break the cycle of generational poverty using science.
► Ethan Marcotte | Device Intervention
Until I moved to rural Tennessee, I had never experienced really bad Internet connections on a long-term basis. Do you know how fun it is to watch every frame of every animated GIF load on Twitter or Tumblr? It is zero fun. Think of me and my fellow cave trolls next time you build a site entirely out of video backgrounds and gigantic parallax images and bloated WordPress plug-ins.
► Vintage Illustrations for Tolkien's The Hobbit from Around the World
This. This. This. More of this.
Skirts with Pockets
Welcome to Skirts with Pockets, a weekly collection of the online articles, websites, and other links that I've loved and now want to share with you. Please excuse any stray candy wrappers that fall to the ground as I empty my virtual pockets.
► Ugmonk | How I Designed a Super Productive Desk Setup
Every time I see photos of Jeff's desk in the wild, I smile and think of what a nice person he seems like and what great products he creates and how much I want this ampersand sweatshirt. (If my Internet fairy godmother is reading: cranberry, size medium, please and thank you.) Looking at my own desk, I can see how I've been inspired by his set-up in a variety of ways, so it was a treat getting to read about some of his favorite details.
► Historic GIFs wot I did
I would love to visit a museum that displayed these GIFs and nothing else.
► What If We Said Chores And Allowance Should Have No Bearing On One Another?
I was raised by nerds, so I had a very complicated allowance system as a child. (It involved a daily chore chart and an incremental payment system that reset weekly and after any day I failed to complete all my tasks.) It was a brutal set-up that encouraged my brother and I to help out only when we had external motivation, like wanting to save up for a toy or a bicycle or a computer. Once the allowance got cut off in high school, helping out around the house stopped, as well. I feel miserable about that in retrospect and take responsibility as an adult to change my behavior going forward, but I was thrilled to read this article. Society as a whole will benefit if more of us have the opportunity to grow up with healthy attitudes about money, plenty of practice managing our finances, and a willingness to help out in our families and our communities.
► Famous Authors' Handwritten Outlines for Great Works of Literature
My favorite is the outline for Catch-22, but all of these are super interesting. (And all of them make me even more certain that I have no interest in writing a book.)
► A Eulogy for Crayola's Dandelion
The illustrations in this post are adorable, and I will be running out to the store to buy a huge box of Crayola crayons immediately.