Today is the absolute worst.
No, really. Between the quantifiable fact that Jan. 6 is the most depressing day of the year and the record-low temperatures assailing us from points north, I'm unsure why any of us bothered today. I quit. Let's all just go home, cozy up to a Youtube fire, and read about ... misogyny. Or not! Ahem.
1. If you're a lady, you know all about this already. If you're a dude, perhaps you don't. But fact is, women face skin-crawling, spine-tingling levels of harassment online, and Amanda Hess has written the definitive account. Internet misogyny, what Hess calls "the next civil rights issue" of our age, impacts virtually every lady who's ever powered up a laptop -- but it's particularly bad for women like Hess, who cover controversial subjects in very public forums.
2. "It's like a Dan Brown novel if Dan Brown could write this well." That's writer Chris Bell on Cicada 3301, the baffling Internet mystery that has stumped code-breakers and amateur sleuths since it went up in 2011. No one knows who's behind the puzzles or what their point is. But a more literate Dan Brown entices, no?
3. The travel blog officially turned 20. Wired writer Jeff Greenwald claims to have birthed the genre from a 2.9-pound laptop in Oaxaca in 1994. This seems like a good time to revisit the New York Times' audit of the modern travel blogosphere.
Bao Bao, what are you doing down there! Don't you know it's your big media debut?
Postscript: Yesterday was the best day to online date, which didn't stop OkCupid from showing us its worst. Cosmopolitan is throwing shade at Perez Hilton, and Siri is throwing shade at "Her." (Am I using the phrase "throwing shade" correctly? Can't really keep up with all the hip lingo these days.) Let’s end with a musical interlude, because St. Vincent’s new single is brutal -- and it's about the Internet!
Brief programming note: Today is this newsletter's public debut. I am both humbled and terrified by the number of people who have blindly put their inboxes at my mercy. If you ever wanna chat about anything you read in this newsletter, you can just reply to email me.
Until tomorrow,
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