I loved Severance, but it almost felt like it was written for me, cheating to earn an automatic five stars. As a big advocate of Station Eleven, this near-future-dystopia brought about by a fast moving widespread humanity-ending pandemic mimics the structure and tone of Station Eleven perfectly, alternating chapters between timelines of present vs past.

But Severance feels updated, more possible, and much closer to home. It’s about NYC in 2006, the same year I moved to the city. It’s about working in publishing, finding yourself, and looking for love - even starting a passion project photoblog. It’s earnest, funny, and incredibly relatable.

That is to say this is an immigrant novel (imbued with authorial authenticity), a coming of age story, a changing New York story, a generational story, a realistic apocalypse fable, a road trip book, and even a zombie thriller.

The characters are compelling, the stakes slowly raise as the plot develops, and everything feels familiar, possible, and terrifying. It’s so much better written than it needs to be, so that leaves me with no choice other than to recommend the whole package.

Read it so we can talk about it. Trust me.

Getting to know Paperless Post…

My experience so far in life with Paperless Post has been of receiving fancy electronic invites to parties that I immediately want to go to because not only does the invite and the site look good - but it works!

You simply click YES in the RSVP in the email and the link takes you to a landing page already prepopulated with your name - you’re done! Then if you want to add it to your calendar (and of course you do, you’re busy) then you just click one more time! They know you’re coming and you know where to go.

Brands and people use PP like this for invites and it’s what I used last year for keeping track of my dad’s surprise 60th birthday party. But when they reached out to me with some free credits for an honest review earlier this month (and yes, disclosure - THIS post is that review), I didn’t have any events coming up to plan.

But I did have some birthdays of friends, family, and coworkers that I wanted to celebrate. So I dove into the Paperless Post free app and wanted to see what they had to offer. And it turns out - a lot!

There are free options, fancy options (you pay for backgrounds, envelopes, liners - as you use them), plus the ability to use photos and have filters on them. And here’s the feature that clinched it for me - you can design cards THEN SCHEDULE THEM to email deliver at a certain date/time.

Thats awesome. Now I can set it and forget it and still look like I am watching the clock for their birthday or life event. The thought counts and the intention is received! Love it. And think you might too. So give it another look, get the app or go to https://www.paperlesspost.com.

Or signup with my link here and I’ll know you’re trying it out and will send you a card! We can all send more cards. Paperless Post - it’s more than just event invites (although they do that pretty well too)!

Keep New York Gritty

Drivers don’t treat women like they do their male passengers…at all… and that’s super disturbing.

In just 24 hrs on Twitter, I’m running into threads like this one where women can’t take Uber/Lyft/cabs without the male driver (who has them hostage in a vehicle, with their home address already in their phone) asking: where they’re headed, if they’re married/have kids/boyfriend, if they’re drunk, etc.

I mean, I’m so so sorry. The worst it gets for a guy is if the driver tries talking at all. The best case scenario for a woman sounds like hoping the conversation is simply uncomfortable instead of outright creepy and threatening.

Should go without saying but women shouldn’t have to: put in a fake home address that’s near their destination but not exact, screenshot to send out car info then call someone to be on the phone with them the whole time, never travel solo/drunk/late at night, have to lie about a boyfriend/husband/their sexuality/or status, or worse - just to hope “cab conversation” doesn’t lead to them assaulting or stalking you.

Women deserve so much better. There’s been the post of the things women/men do all the time to avoid assault - where the men don’t think at all about it and the women have to think constantly about it.

It used to be you were worried the driver would find out you’re on vacation then come back and rob your house. Now you’re worried you either won’t reach your destination or that the driver will return to your house hoping to find you actually there. This is so distressing to hear - much less live.

Men should just shut the fuck up unless spoken to from now on; it’s obvious we’ve all been talking too much for too long.

Drivers should do their job, which is driving safely, and not expect to get any more lucky at work than any man doing any job fucking anywhere.

Aside from hoping someone comes up with the Uber for women drivers or allows all conversation to be recorded inside a car during a ride (like any custserve call), I’ll just say I’m sorry. And if you need a couch to sleep on in Brooklyn to avoid a car ride, or for me to go with you and then come back by myself, I mean you should know you can ask.

Because I don’t know where else to go from here. This seems like it shouldn’t ever happen if these drivers treated women the same as men, but also that that clearly seems too much to hope for and more than we’re able to stop climate change.

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postedbygaslight:

An excellent thread with likes and retweets from both Rian Johnson and Pablo Hidalgo. I don’t have much to add here except to say it’s an excellent thread, and it’s simply mindboggling that there are people who have willfully misread this story and its characters for so long.

Links to tweets: X, X, X, X, X, X, X, X

(via geekandmisandry)