#NoFaceArt Instagram Account

I have an Instragram account. I don't post any personal photos, but I curate. I was inspired by a billboard that I saw on the High Line to collect #nofaceart photos. Interestingly, Picasso said in Life with Picasso, "As long as you paint just a head, it's all right, but when you paint the whole figure, it's often the head that spoils everything." These are some of my finds:

Writers Are Anitfragile

According to Nassim Taleb's Antifragile, artists and writers are antifragile i.e., they benefit from disorder and controversy. For example, Nabokov's Lolita, his most controversial book, made him rich and famous. (Interestingly, most of Nabokov's books contains nympholepsy.)

500 Blog Visitors = 1 Book Sold?

I was having dinner at Má Pêche with a New York Times bestselling author when I frustratingly shared that I sell one book per (approximately) 500 unique visitors to my blog. 

Surprisingly, the author shared quite nonchalantly that he got the same results. 

Is this an unspoken rule slash phenomenon or just a coincidence?

The Tenants (2005): A Writer Writing

A Perfect Man [Un homme idéal] (2015): Writing is a Gift

Duolingo's French & French in Action: A Clarification

Last fall, we finished Duolingo's French skill tree. Consequently, we received an e-certificate, and we were informed that we're 52% fluent. 

Duolingo's claim that we're 52% fluent should be clarified. We're more like 52% fluent in reading French but not in speaking or writing. For example, about 50% of the time we can read the French that's peppered throughout Nabokov's oeuvre. For example, in Transparent Things, when Armande, who had a grain de beauté, setup a rendez-vous with Hugh prior to their subsequent marriage, she told him, "Now listen, tomorrow I'm occupied, but what about Friday-if you can be ready à sept heures précises?" (43)

Erard related from Krashen in Babel No More: The Search for the World's Most Extraordinary Language Learners that: "[Language] [a]cquisition happens [...] when we understand what we read or hear-not when we speak or write it, memorize vocabulary, or study grammar." (102)

Very recently, we watched all fifty-two episodes of Yale University's French in Action. Interestingly, we didn't understand 50% of the dialogue, but we understood over 50% of the transcripts. 

MR & MME ADELMAN (2017): A Writing Writing

Abstract Exhibits @ The Met Breuer & the MoMA

Like Harry Lesser, we frequently visit museum exhibits. In particular, abstract exhibits and the more minimalist the better. If you're in New York, we highly recommend the Lygia Pape: A Multitude of Forms exhibit at the The Met Breuer and the Making Space: Women Artists and Postwar Abstraction at the MoMA.

Lygia Pape (Brazilian, 1927–2004) Tecelar 1959
Woodcut on Japanese paper @ the Met Breuer

Counter-Intuitive Contradictions

I have observed some scenarios that appear to be what I call counter-intuitive contradictions. Some examples may serve as the best way to describe what I mean:


Most secular nymphets see no problem with wearing two-piece [cheeky thong] bikinis to the beach but most would never wear their bras and panties in public. Yet, what's the difference.

Especially among the underprivileged and outside of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, a man wearing a pair of high-water pants would be ridiculed but a man wearing a pair of sweatpants would be ignored. Yet, what's the difference. (Strangely, this phenomenon does not apply to women.)

In White Girl (2016), which I saw advertised on the Uptown 4, a college girl and her boyfriend do cocaine, smoke marijuana, have sex on a roof with the Manhattan skyline in the background, and have sex during daylight in a moving cab, but when her boyfriend suggested that they get married, the girl opined that they were too young. 😑

Speed Reading Made Easy

I've been reading eight books - five in English, two (slowly) in Arabic and one (very slowly) in French. The English titles are:

Abbott's The End of Everything
Nabokov's Mary
Wilson's The Twenties
Dawidoff's The Fly Swatter
Mathews' Paul Gauguin: An Erotic Life

To save time, I've reverted back to speed reading. I'm not sure why I stopped. I believe that I decided to read slowly as a passive-aggressive protest against the hustle and bustle of New York City. 

I learned to speed read from Ferriss' blog post "Scientific Speed Reading: How to Read 300% Faster in 20 Minutes". It's a long read and there is more than one way to do it, but the short version is that to read quickly while retaining comprehension, one should read with a pen\pen or his finger and stop about two words in from the left and right margins. 

Reading with a pen forces one to read quicker and your peripheral vision will read the words that are "skipped" near the margins. 

Trust me. It works.