Finished listening: Sense of Wonder by Bill Schelly 📚 Mainly for comics enthusiasts, a memoir of Schelly’s growing up in the Silver Age of Comics and his involvement in comics fandom. So far, so ordinary. Yet his ordinary life includes his growing awareness of his homosexuality, fathering two children with a lesbian couple, and pouring enormous amounts of energy into a quite marginal artform – fanzines – that nevertheless was a lifeline for marginalized personalities like his own: artistic, nerdy, introverted, and – because of their love of comics – pretty socially isolated.

The PhD Paradox

Daniel Lemire on how the current system of producing PhDs is backward and unsustainable. As he says,

“…[T]his system works like a charm as long as universities are expanding. But what happens when they hit the brakes? You guessed it – a PhD glut.”

During my year in PhD land I was always astonished by stories of the medieval personnel management practices and politics, and the infantilization of the PhD holder: stand before us every few years to justify your existence and why we should let you stay in the club.

A few personalities are well-adapted to the system and succeed in staying themselves while climbing their ambition’s ladder. But too few.

Most of what I write about here is minutia about me. So … me-nutia?

Across these differences, their food and service are so dependable that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) consults an informal “Waffle House Index” to determine the severity of a storm’s impact on a community, where “Red” corresponds to a closed Waffle House, “Yellow” corresponds to a limited menu, and “Green” indicates an open Waffle House.

Source: The Photographer Capturing the South From Waffle House Booths - Gastro Obscura

Found by Liz: Lake Street Dive Plays “I Want You Back” On a Boston Sidewalk