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Take My Life, Please

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NEW YORK | Take My Life, Please By Jay Dixit IT’S comedy night at the Parkside Lounge, a dark dive on the Lower East Side, but nobody is laughing. The first person to stand up is a dark-haired man wearing a beleaguered expression. He talks about his time in prison and…

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I’m hiring a writing assistant

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I’m hiring a writing intern / freelance editor to help me during the writing process for my nonfiction book. I’m looking for someone who’s a clear thinker with an eye for clarity and precision. Ideally you’re good at writing clear sentences quickly and editing for clarity and style. Hopefully you read widely, including nonfiction books. This job is super fun because instead of me assigning you to go off and write something by yourself, this will be an interactive, collaborative process in which we work in real time on a Google Doc, talk through ideas, hashing out verbiage, and writing paragraphs.

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I can has cheezburger… and pathos?

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The first time I saw a lolcat—those funny images of felines with grammatically questionable captions—it took me a minute to understand the joke. “What’s with the misspellings?” I wrote the friend who’d IM’d me the link. “Cats are dumb and can’t spell?” “Pretty much,” my friend replied. “And they have…

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The Art of Now

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The Art of Now: Six Steps to Living in the Moment We live in the age of distraction. Yet one of life’s sharpest paradoxes is that your brightest future hinges on your ability to pay attention to the present. by Jay Dixit, Psychology Today A friend was walking in the…

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Spike Lee Interview

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NEW YORK—In his two decades of making films, Spike Lee has earned a reputation as one of the most brilliant—and angriest—of American directors. But he doesn’t see himself as an angry person. “That’s not me,” Lee says. “That’s the way I’ve been portrayed.” The people who have met him think…

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Will Shortz, Crossword Puzzle Genius

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Pleasantville, N.Y. — As crossword puzzle editor of the New York Times, Will Shortz is responsible for 365 crossword puzzles a year. He doesn’t write them all himself—he relies on a stable of freelance puzzle creators—but he is charged with ensuring that every puzzle is at the right level of difficulty…

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How to Build a Psychological Immune System

By psychology, speaking

The new psychology of post-traumatic growth: how get through tough times and bounce back stronger than ever. Why is it that failure wipes some people out, while others bounce back? The answer is something called resilience: the ability to not take failure personally by realizing that failing at something doesn’t…

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Vigil at the Armory

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Note: This article was originally written on assignment for Rolling Stone. Vigil at the Armory As family members waited for news of survivors, they had to contend with prank phone calls, Tony Soprano jokes and the dull ache of dwindling hope. BY JAY DIXIT, special to Salon.com NEW YORK — It’s…

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