Stacy-Marie Ishmael

After years - years - of dithering, I signed up for Fancy Hands sometime around midnight on the Tuesday of a week during which my calendar, my inbox and my immune system all seemed to be conspiring against me.

It was similar to the situation that prompted me to sign up for Task Rabbit last year: three months of being silently mocked by the bag of clothes I'd earmarked for charity and which I failed, every single day, to deliver to Goodwill.

I quipped then that as I've gotten older, I've become more willing to exchange money for time. This continues to be true.

In the 19 hours or so since I coughed up for their basic service, the virtual assistants at Fancy Hands have:

• scheduled five meetings for me (which involved creating calendar invitations and sending them to all participants - this service is free with their subscriptions)

• sorted out a fairly involved but entirely solvable with a lot of Googling type-query that I've been putting off for not quite three months, but close. This is what I emailed my 'virtual assistant', whom I've dubbed (at least for the purposes of my address book) Patrick G Jeeves, to figure out "restaurants eligible for DiningDough.com AND Either 3.5+ (preferable 4) stars or higher on Yelp OR higher than a 7.5 Explorer rating on FourSquare." I also asked that the list include the Yelp and/or 4SQ link.

90 minutes later, "Ana R." replied with this list:

-Walkers Restaurant 4 out 5 starts out of 161 reviews http://fncy.it/YJTYGp (yelp.com) Categories: American (New), American (Traditional) 16 N Moore St (between Hudson St & Varick St) New York, NY 10013 Neighborhood: TriBeCa (212) 941-0142 http://fncy.it/1611f24 (walkersnyc.com)

-Ecco 4 out 5 stars out of 42 reviews http://fncy.it/1611f25 (yelp.com) Category: Italian 124 Chambers St (between Church St & Broadway) New York, NY 10007 Neighborhood: TriBeCa (212) 227-7074 http://fncy.it/1611han (eccorestaurantny.com)

-Le Pescadeux 4 out 5 stars out of 111 review http://fncy.it/1611hqA (yelp.com) Categories: Seafood, French 90 Thompson St (between Spring St & Prince St) New York, NY 10012

-Giorgio's of Gramercy 4 out 5 stars out of 306 reviews http://fncy.it/1611hqC (yelp.com) Categories: Italian, American (New) 27 E 21st St New York, NY 10011 Neighborhood: Flatiron (212) 477-0007 http://fncy.it/YJTYGv (giorgiosofgramercy.com)

-Kellari Taverna 3.5 out 5 stars out of 180 reviews http://fncy.it/1611f2d (yelp.com) Categories: Greek, Mediterranean, Seafood 19 W 44th St (between Avenue Of The Americas & 5th Ave) New York, NY 10036 Neighborhood: Midtown West (212) 221-0144 http://fncy.it/YJTYGw (kellariny.com)

-L'YBane 3.5 out 5 stars out of 90 reviews http://fncy.it/YJTVuh (yelp.com) Categories: Mediterranean, French, Wine Bars 709 8th Ave (between 44th St & 45th St) New York, NY 10036 Neighborhoods: Hell's Kitchen, Midtown West, Theater District (212) 582-2012 http://fncy.it/1611hXE (lybane.com)

-Acappella 4 out 5 stars out of 63 reviews http://fncy.it/YJTYGE (yelp.com) Category: Italian 1 Hudson St New York, NY 10013 Neighborhood: TriBeCa (212) 240-0163 http://fncy.it/YJTYGF (acappella-restaurant.com)

-Blue Planet Grill 3.5 out 5 stars out of 99 reviews http://fncy.it/YJTVuj (yelp.com) Categories: American (Traditional), Bars 120 Greenwich St (between Albany St & Carlisle St) New York, NY 10006 Neighborhood: Financial District (212) 571-1700 http://fncy.it/YJTVuk (blueplanetgrillnyc.com)

-India Place 4 out 5 stars out of 84 reviews http://fncy.it/YJTYWU (yelp.com) Categories: Indian, Vegetarian 655 Vanderbilt Ave (between Prospect Pl & Sterling Pl) Brooklyn, NY 11238 Neighborhood: Prospect Heights (718) 398-7776

-Ethos Gallery 51 4 out 5 stars out of 85 reviews http://fncy.it/YJTYWV (yelp.com) Category: Greek 905 1st Ave (between 50th St & 51st St) New York, NY 10022 Neighborhood: Midtown East (212) 888-4060 http://fncy.it/1611hqT (ethosrestaurants.com)

-Benito One The Original 4 out 5 stars out of 55 reviews http://fncy.it/YJTVuo (yelp.com) Category: Italian 174 Mulberry St (between Broome St & Grand St) New York, NY 10013 Neighborhood: Little Italy (212) 226-9171 http://fncy.it/YJTVuq (benitoone.com)

-Cafe Espanol 3.5 out 5 stars out of 105 reviews http://fncy.it/1611hHc (yelp.com) Categories: Spanish, Basque 78 Carmine St (between S 7th Ave & Bleecker St) New York, NY 10014 Neighborhood: West Village (212) 675-3312 http://fncy.it/1611hXR (ordercafeespanol.com)

-Cercle Rouge 3.5 out 5 stars out of 113 reviews http://fncy.it/YJTVuu (yelp.com) Categories: French, American (Traditional) 241 W Broadway (between Beach St & Moore St) New York, NY 10013 Neighborhood: TriBeCa (212) 226-6252 http://fncy.it/YJTYXa (cerclerougeresto.com)

Brilliant. Next step, reservations.

Don't join a gym this January. Seriously. Gyms aren't so much about helping you get fitter as they are about raking in profits by maximizing their total membership, and minimizing their active base.

And I say this as a hard-core gym-goer who's spent many thousands of dollars/euros/pounds on personal training and gym memberships over the years.

Take a yoga class. Try a self-defense course. Start running. Take the stairs. Get off one stop early. Buy some weights or a suspension system. Attempt the 100 push-up challenge. Try bodyweight exercises or P90X.

Any one of those options will set you back less than the cost of a one-month gym membership. And your sunk costs will be considerably lower if you flake out by February.

But whatever you decide, you might want to wait before you tell anyone lest the Gollowitzer principle undermine your very best intentions. There's a very watchable TED talk by Derek Siverson the subject, if you're so inclined.

Writing goals down, though. That's cool. If somewhat unscientific. Writing your goals down in a Moleskine probably wouldn't help you get them done any faster, though. Or if pen-on-paper isn't your thing, or you prefer recording achievements (ahem, Gollwitzer) iDoneThis might be of interest. And if even email is too old school, Streaks.

May you achieve at least 50% of your resolutions, etc.

This post first appeared, with links and other content not included here, in the Galavant Times on Jan 5 2012.

These are things that happen when your friends and neighbours are open-minded, broadly athletic and generally fun.

You agree, over Christmas dinner and drinks and cake and games of Taboo and charades, because of a chance 'how about we', to run a half-marathon in 2013.

This leads to a discussion of training regimes and running clubs.

Which reminds you that there are two 30-40 mile bike rides you want to do next year.

So here's what 2013 looks like, from a 'this seemed like such a good idea at the time' perspective:

Run

2 runs/week with Woodside-Sunnyside Running Club

5K by March

10K by June

Half-marathon by December

Bike

TD Five Boro Bike Tour - May 5

Ride to Montauk - May 18

Yoga

Yoga (asana practice) every day in January

Start Ashtanga practice - Feb 1

Start Iyengar practice - Mar 1

Updates as they happen.

It's TED season. The interwebs are afire with links to and discussions of slickly-produced inspirational vidoes, each delivered by Someone Who Is More Accomplished Than You Will Ever Be (But That's Ok).

I have a love-hate relationship with TED (which stands for 'Technology, Entertainment and Design'). I confess to having sent Sheryl Sandberg's TED talk to many a high-achieving female friend, for instance. And I'd recommend the TED talk by Daniel Kahneman on experience vs memory; Benjamin Zander on music and passion; Rory Sutherland on advertising.

But here's the things about TED (ok, a few things) that make me uneasy.

One, while its marketing machine is slicker than most, it does not have a monopology on interestingness-and-inspiration-caputured-on-well-produced-video. Into design? There's Build. Future of education? Learning without frontiers. Pop and intellecutal zeitgiest (as defined by Google)? Google Talks.

Two, TED is the very definition of elites networking with and talking to other elites - access to the main conference (as distinct from the TEDx offshoots) costs $6,000 and is invite-only. If you haven't been invited (or don't have $6,000) but still want to see the talks in real time, a "TED Live" subscription will set you back at least $995. And TED does not post all of its videos online, only those that get high audience ratings. So: if you're not invited or don't pay for TED Live, only those vidoes that the self-selecting TED elite liked will be made available to the masses. Given that the TED slogan is "ideas worth spreading", this fact ought to give one pause. The groupthink goes on.

Three, partly because if its exclusivity, TED creates a pretty toxic mythology for a conference that wants to change the world: the idea that being invited to TED as a speaker to deliver a headline talk represents the very pinnacle of achievement. A pinnacle that is unattainable for most, and one that necessarily privileges gifted orators over less impressive speakers. I call this the "You have done nothing with your life" fallacy.

Four, most TED talks fit into a pretty well-defined template.

Five, TED pays lipservice to creativity and free thinking, but the organisation itself punishes dissent, as Sarah Silverman learnt to her cost.

TED receives much less mainstream criticism than say, Davos. But the events (and the people who attend them) are more similar than the organisers of either might necessarily acknowledge. But we all should.

The full version of this post - with links, references and additional paragraphs not included here - first appeared in the Galavant Times on March 5 2012.

It's been a while since I've been properly delighted by a book.

The author, Robin Sloan, described Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore as "a novel about books and technology, cryptography and conspiracy, friendship and love".

I'd first encountered Sloan's work via Fish, 'an interesting mix of app and essay', an interactive experience I enjoyed.

But I read Penumbra in old-school text-on-a-page format (thanks to James Gross' support of the Percolate library); appropriately, perhaps, given that so much of Penumbra is about printed books.

There's so much about this book I loved: wonky discussions of typography; characters so vividly sketched I could easily imagine having them over for coffee and spirited conversation; a reference to a secret passageway that delighted my inner fantasy-epic-devouring-fourteen-year-old. HackerNews makes an appearance, as does the Googleplex.

I'll cite one of the book's closing epigrams here, because it gives a sense of the life-affirming nature of the work:

“There is no immortality that is not built on friendship and work done with care.”

Go read it. And get it in print. Not just because the cover glows in the dark.

The Amazon link is an affiliate link, which means that if you click through and purchase the book, I'll get a tiny percentage of what you spent - at no cost to you - which I will inevitably use to buy more books.

I need to run more, so today I added a new habit to my Lift profile.

But before I added the habit, I had to decide on what I wanted to pursue:

Initial goal: daily 5k. Immediate mental pushback: seriously, when are you going to fit that in? 3 miles? Are you sure? Do you really have the time to commit to that every day? Also, it's getting cold and Blink is packed on evenings. How early do you want to wake up, seriously?  
Revised to: 30 minute run. Monologue: Hmm, maybe, but still a tricky one to fit in - not easy to do a lunchtime run and still be back in an hour.
End result: 20 minute run. Monologue: Okay, this isn't wildly ambitious. This could work. Let's do that.

There were other thoughts. Like: you haven't run a decent 5k in weeks! Months, even! Why not start smaller? 

Which was, for me, an interesting departure from my usual approach - go big, all-in, buy all the gear. book all the classes, DO ALL THE THINGS.

Because I've come to realize that I don't want to do all the things, and crucially, I no longer care about maintaining the appearance thereof.

But I do want to meditate. I want to practice yoga every day. I want to spend more time with friends and family. I want to get through that pile of books and magazines and articles to which I add almost daily. I want to write more. I want to fall asleep to the sound of waves crashing on tropical beaches. I want to make contributions that are bigger than me.

And when I look at my schedule and I can't fit in a yoga practice because I've scheduled a 7.30am breakfast meeting and am attending an 8pm Skillshare session, I realize I am doing it wrong. 

Do less, do better. Be better.

One year ago I lost my team. A team that had built an ambitious project in record time with limited resources and unending reserves of wit, humour, intelligence and perseverance. 

I learnt more about management and building a product from those frantic, stressful, delightful, intense, rewarding, frustrating few months I spent working with Alex, Alastair, Denise, Hannah, Rina, Sid, Tom and Vivianne and Ranjan than in all the years I spent at the FT prior. 

Those months taught me about design, development, pricing, customer relations, corporate politics, HR, tax laws around the world, media, publishing, the power and value of imagination, hiring, firing, internal and external communications, the absolute imperative of honesty and transparency and good faith in dealing with your team and your colleagues, human nature, and - of course - failure.

I learnt never to take loyalty - Darcy, Garcia, McDermott - for granted, because there are colleagues who will happily leak the news that your project was getting shut down before you even had a chance to brief your team. I learnt that people you've never met or worked with will defend and fight for you while others who you helped and supported will grinfuck and undermine you at every turn.

I learnt that what matters most at the end is the enduring friendships.

Tilt is dead. Long live the Tilt alumni.

An improbable number of Tilt alumni meeting for brunch in NYC. Also present but not represented in the pic: Rina. 

Lavender incense. Ravi Shankar's Chants of India on surround sound. Ambient lighting. Tea. I could scarce be more relaxed.

And I wonder, why don't I do this more often? Where this = downtime. Chill out time. Only-one-browser-tab-open-and-it's-the-one-I'm--composing-this-post-in time. 

I get busy. I get caught up. I get sucked into the clicking and the scrolling and the emailing and the constant monitoring of Asana and the checking of and for replies, mentions, reblogs, retweets. Those little hits of dopamine. Those bursts of activity that are more appearance of busy than real productivity.

I have to step out of the busy to get into the zone. Flow requires a presence of mind and an intentionality, a focus, that I cannot attain unless I take a deep breath, don some headphones and turn up some Damian (when deadlines loom) or some Shankar or whatever ambient action Songza serves up. 

Flow requires rest. Downtime. Critical and emotional distance. None of which I sufficiently prioritize.

But sometimes I come home and take a deep breath or five and break out the sitar music and the lavender incense and the jasmine silver needle tea. And I remember, again, that balance is about opposition, too.

A life in beta., continued.

I've been using Lift - think of it as a foursquare for habits - since its public launch about two weeks ago: 

(Some of) my lift habits

If nothing else it's reinforced how competitive I am - and that the person I compete with (or against) most is myself. (One of my goals is 'write blog post', and I want to get this post in before midnight to I can check it off in Lift...)

It's also a daily indicator of how I am, or am not, prioritizing. Yoga: winning. Meditate: not so much. Some irony in that one of the habits for which I have zero checkins so far is "prioritize my day".

I am also crushing inbox zero for both my work and main personal inbox. But am still months behind on emails, because I don't include - or regularly check - the two other accounts to which most of my friends-and-family emails go. Which is (another) clear priority fail.

And there are the things I haven't put on the list: run; bike to work; write down one thing every day for which I am grateful (working on just saying this aloud, daily). Read a book every week. 

In this vein I tried the 3 Tiny Habits course by Dr BJ Fogg, with mixed results. My intended habits were (are):

After I wake up, I will not pick up my phone until I meditate for three breaths.
After every email I send, I will take a deep breath and relax.
Before I go to sleep, I will write down one thing I'm grateful for today.

And because I belong to the throw-a-book-at-the-problem school, I bought Eknath Easwaran's text on passage meditation. Which I have started reading. But not finished. Or using. Yet.

(I realize and acknowledge  I sometimes buy books with the same motivations for which I use time-shifting apps like Instapaper.)

I don't want to add too many goals to Lift; or at least, I don't want to add more goals to Lift before the ones currently there become habits.

Like this 'write blog post' situation.

I think a lot about scale.

How do you make a contribution that outlasts your presence in the room or your tenure at a given organization? Contributions that are bigger than yourself?

How do you build systems that work for teams of 8 or 80? How do you ensure  there is no single point of failure? That no one person is mission-critical? That everyone on the team feels empowered to achieve his goals, that no one feels micromanaged? 

What's the relationship between scale and impact?

I say this a lot and I continue to find it to be true: people don't scale but processes do.

People can make a difference - they can confound stereotypes, for instance - but it takes changes in process to ensure that the next batch of hires is more diverse.

I've been thinking about this more and more as I get older, which has correlated positively with the number and complexity of the management and leadership roles I've held.

And I think a lot about the importance of media and message to achieving scale  - this, I believe, is the nexus of scale and impact.

Word. Sound. Power.

Marissa Mayer, already one of the most powerful women in Silicon Valley, is off to run Yahoo.

The news generated, as CNBC's Kelly Evans tweeted with justifiable exasperation, the usual flurry of "analysis" that greets women doing things.

That commentary included various assertions that Mayer's ascent represented a shattering of the glass ceiling.

But wait, there's more. Mayer revealed after the Yahoo news broke (and after the US equity markets closed) that she and her husband are expecting their first child in October.

Appointed CEO of Yahoo and several months pregnant? Surely she's smashed that glass ceiling into smithereens.

No.

Ann Marie Slaughter - she of the most recent discursion on women and 'having it all' - rightly noted that Mayer is not 'just' a woman. She is, as Slaughter put it, superhuman, rich and in charge. Mayer can afford an army of nannies, chefs and drivers. And she's the one calling the shots at Yahoo.

And, nowhere discussed, Mayer is white. Privileged white motherhood is vaunted in America in a way that mothering by women of colour is absolutely not.

And even with that arsenal of wealth, privilege and power at her disposal, consider Mayer's own words: 'my maternity leave will be a few weeks long, and I'll work throughout it'.

Mayer is wildly successful, a testimony to her talents and discipline. But that glass ceiling remains intact - for Mayer and her cohort, women of her ilk and power, and certainly for the vast majority of women in the workplace.

“Here’s the thing about racism: it requires power and privilege. The privilege of being able to dismiss mass murder, genocide, rape, the destruction of histories, cultures, languages, nations and tribes as “scarcely violent”. The privilege of having been on the “right” side of history, on the other side of the whip. The power to be in a position to endorse laws and worldviews that perpetuate that privilege. Power and privilege that come in no small part from the wealth amassed by colonial forebears on the backs of those unmentionable millions.”

Extract from the most recent issue of the Galavant Times in response to this.

Here's the thing about racism: it requires power and privilege. The privilege of being able to dismiss mass murder, genocide, rape, the destruction of histories, cultures, languages, nations and tribes as "scarcely violent". The privilege of having been on the "right" side of history, on the other side of the whip. The power to be in a position to endorse laws and worldviews that perpetuate that privilege. Power and privilege that come in no small part from the wealth amassed by colonial forebears on the backs of those unmentionable millions.

When I do yoga I am a better person (I do yoga because I want to be a better person).

I am forced to concentrate. To focus. To be present.

I’m disconnected. I’m not online. I’m not responding to email. I’m not experiencing any Pavlovian responses to unread counts or the succumbing to the promise of a quick hit of dopamine.

Why I need this disconnection, this presence: because it’s taken me an hour just to write these hundred or so words, as I fiddled with AppleScripts and Marked and Squarespace settings.

When I do yoga I am centred, I am equanimous. I am not worried about hacking my workflow.

I don’t practice enough.

First, there was the tweet from @wsj: 

Manicure meetings: some professional women are opting to network over nails instead of over lunch. http://on.wsj.com/LCbdxz

Then, the story with *hilarious* headline, "Idea to file away: manicure meetings".

Oh, and the equally puntastic lede:

In three decades of networking for her career, Mardy Sitzer never managed to polish her golf game. But she has found an alternative: networking over polish. 

There's much about this story that bothers me - not least the fact that professional women network is considered 'newsworthy' - and what bothers me about it most is this paragraph:

It's a departure from the traditional image of clubby executives back-slapping on the back nine, yet manicure meetings offer the same sort of camaraderie found on manicured greens.  

Consider the subtext for a moment: women networking - regardless of where - is a departure from the idea that only men do this.

"Yet" - why is there a yet? Why is the author so surprised that women can get together and find the "same sort of camaraderie found on manicured greens"?

Despair.

Last Tuesday, two days into my second foray into juice dieting, I had an amazing run. Broke past my usual wall, longest distance since my most recent bout of back issues, felt great.

Haven't run since. 

So when this evening my weekly training report from dailymile appeared in my inbox, I heard myself say out loud, "dammit!"

Because dammit I hadn't hit my distance or frequency goals this week. Because dammit too much to do, not enough time. Because dammit I spent two days being feverish. Because because because.

I need to run. I want to run. I keep choosing to prioritize other things above running.

And then I hide from those decisions. 

Not winning. Not winning at all.

There's no negotiating with a back injury; no amount of angst over dailymile emails reminding you that you've run zero miles this week will speed the recovery process. When negotiating stairs or getting out of bed moves from the level of reflex to conscious, painful decisions,  you develop a certain irony-tinged appreciation for the adage, take it easy.

I am not a natural take-it-easy person. I'm a constant-state-of-activity person. I'm a feels-guilty-about-eating-unless-I'm-doing-something-productive-while-I'm-at-it person. I'm a pre-dawn-spin-class person.

I've also spent a lot of time injured, or sick, or in hospital. There's a certain cosmic balance to this: I tend not to slow down until I am so obliged, by injury or illness or exhaustion.

But as I've gotten older (and more, rather than less, impatient with my ailments) I've tried to make this balance, as it were, less painful.

Yoga. Pilates. Running (clears the mind. really.) Actually taking vacations (I have mostly failed at this).

But in typical type A fashion, I can get a little competitive about my relaxation. (AARGH did not go to yoga this week I am a terrible person, etc. An attitude that could not be described as zenlike.)

So I've been trying to build calm into my day.

I used to come home from work, hang up my bag and drop my mail on the sideboard and immediately rouse my computer from sleep. Three hours later I'd still be standing there (standing desks, FTW), sucked into a void of tweetage and email.

Now, when I remember, when I am "present"-- as my yoga teacher would say -- I hang up my bag and drop my mail (almost inevitably some form of Amazon package) on the sideboard. I light some incense. I turn on some music. I decline to check my email or fire up the Twitter. 

I'm also trying to use my phone more consciously (i.e, less). Some weeks ago, as an experiment, I left my phone at home on what I knew would be a particularly long day. And then I counted the number of times I reflexively reached for it - on the subway, standing in line, while walking - for reasons ranging from habit to boredom. A number I will not share, but it was not small. I turned off push email. I read (books!) on the subway instead of manically emailing myself tweets with links I want to read later. 

I installed RescueTime (what? Type A remember?) to keep track of my productivity killers. 

I aim to cook once a day, and to try a new recipe once a week. I keep my Sundays free.

A work in progress. Life in beta, etc.

Prompted in part by a question from the talented Brianne Garcia and in part by yet-another-Amazon-shipping-notice, herewith what I'm reading*:

Steal Like An Artist 

Pop self-help, attractively presented. Nuggets that resonated include, "quit picking fights and go make something" and "keep a log book" (for which I use idonethis, of course)

The Blind Men and the Elephant

Mixed feelings about this book. Where by mixed I mean, I put it down a week ago and I haven't been able to pick it up again. Perhaps it's the ever-so-slightly grating I'm-so-evolved-and-you-can-be-too tone in which it's written. Perhaps it's the belaboured analogy to the poem by Saxe. Perhaps because, for a book about project management, it never quite defines what PM is and spends quite a lot of time making it sound truly soul-destroying. My marginalia and underlining have been relatively limited - never a good sign. 

Joel on Software

Last year I had one of those headasplode moments when I realized the company behind Trello - a nifty bit of kit that would be so much better if it allowed me to update the account email address - was FogCreek Software, of founded-by-Joel-Spolsky fame. And I say fame, because both FogCreek and Joel's eponymous blog have been around since 2000 (survived the first bust, FogCreek did), and in his "spare time" Spolsky co-founded Stack Overflow. I'd been reading Joel on Software (the blog) for so long that I forgot Spolsky actually, you know, made software. And using Trello reminded me that it had been some time since I dug into his blogging archives. But you know what's a pain? Navigating blog archives. So I bought the book - which is basically a collection of his better blog posts from 2000-2004 - instead. Reading this book is like going back in time (woah! OS/2! Jabs at Mozilla and MacOS!). But many of the lessons and discussions are evergreen. And the nostalgia is fun. (And yes, I admit to having ordered More Joel on Software) 

* These are all Amazon affiliate links, which means that if you click through to Amazon and purchase the linked item, I'll get a tiny percentage of what you spent - at no cost to you - and which I will inevitably use to buy more books. 

I have just about had it with drive-by generalizations like this one from Sarah Lacy, is a post about (of all things) Oracle:

Millenials are coming into the workforce and the generation has an amazing capacity to demand the world revolve around their desires, whether that’s reasonable or not.

Or this tweet [sic] and accompanying post by Above the Law:

Students sue law school for grading them on a curve. Yes mellinals are just that weak: http://bit.ly/zGBZu8 -EM

At least once a month, something happens that makes millennials seem insufferable. It’s like we’ve bred an entire generation of people who can’t take criticism. It’s an entire generation that hasn’t watched the Godfather and doesn’t understand the phrase “it’s business, not personal.” When they fail, they don’t redouble their efforts; instead, they get their feelings hurt, make excuses, and whine and complain to anyone who will listen.

Let's get several things straight, here. The generation of people born in the so-called "developed world" in the 80s and the 90s are facing an inherited recession and staggering loss of wealth, paucity of opportunity, massive and rising inequality, enormous student loan debt, social immobility, a capricious labour market (jobs for life? what? defined benefit pension plans who?) and an uncertain geopolitical outlook. And they are contending with a steady stream of invectives from the very same baby boomers who are holding on to their extensive and expensive entitlements for dear life - all but ensuring they will be the last generation to benefit from them.

So even if Gen-Yers were anywhere near as whiny as the commentariat  make out -- and they avowedly are not -- who the hell could blame them?

As a journalist far greater than I will ever be remarked in 2001:

10 years of martial law and a war-time economy are going to feel like a Lifetime to people who are in their twenties today. The poor bastards of what will forever be known as Generation Z are doomed to be the first generation of Americans who will grow up with a lower standard of living than their parents enjoyed.

That is extremely heavy news, and it will take a while for it to sink in. The 22 babies born in New York City while the World Trade Center burned will never know what they missed. The last half of the 20th century will seem like a wild party for rich kids, compared to what's coming now. The party's over, folks. The time has come for loyal Americans to Sacrifice. ... Sacrifice. ... Sacrifice. That is the new buzz-word in Washington. But what it means is not entirely clear.

Etc.

Related: Heather McGhee on the Millennial Generation - Vimeo

To pass through Grand Central Terminal, one of New York’s exalted public spaces, is an ennobling experience, a gift. To commute via the bowels of Penn Station, just a few blocks away, is a humiliation. What is the value of architecture? It can be measured, culturally, humanely and historically, in the gulf between these two places.

Source: NY Times

A standing ovation for Mr Zach Wahls:

Related:
This, this, this - miscellany
I am Zach Wahls, the guy who defended my two moms before the IA legislature. AMA - reddit
The Iowa House v Zach Wahls and his moms - The Economist