I hope you had an amazing March! I’m so excited to be heading into warmer weather that I am practically jumping out of my skin. Until the sun comes out for good, though, here are a selection of articles and videos to keep you entertained. I think this is one of the best collections of links I’ve put together in a long time… Enjoy!

I loved seeing these visual depictions of weird band riders (the stuff musicians request backstage).

Why You Should Stop Hacking Your Life and Invest in The Journey. Yes!

Maybe stop trying so hard to find shortcuts to “hack” your life. The best things are hard. Invest in the journey. Just sayin’.

Mostly, articles like this are nonsense, but this one is good (and not full of obvious-isms): The 4 Mantras of Successful Entrepreneurs.

Recently, I learned that the physical sensations I feel when listening to music — tingles all the way up my spine, that shoot out of the top of my head — are “peak emotional experiences”, or frisson. So cool!

I love looking at listings on Airbnb. Here are some of NYC’s coolest rentals.

Here are the best/worst places to cry in New York City, courtesy of NYC Crying Guide.

This documentary, CAM GIRLZ, looks fascinating. Back it if you wanna see it!

There’s an abandoned secret cinema in the Sinai Desert. Isn’t the world amazing?!

Thanks to Mystic Medusa, I just found out you can feng shui your vagina. Hey-oooo! Love the comments on that, too — check out the one about menstruation, onyx, and cutting the energetic cord with ex-partners! But back to the feng shui: you can do it at home or you could pay $75 at a spa, like this writer from Cosmo. Faaaaaascinating!

My babe Rachel interviewed SARK about how she does it, “it” of course being “all-consuming awesomeness”. It’s a gorgeous interview, lots of gems.

“Study money as energy so you can receive it as well as spend it.” (SARK)

Want to start all over again? It can be done. Check out the ultimate cheat sheet for reinventing yourself.

If you enjoyed Gravity, check out NASA’s actual photos from space. Incredible.

The Seattle Seahawks meditate and practice visualisation as part of their training. Very cool!

The big idea is that happy players make for better players. Everyone in the facility, from coaches and players to personal assistants and valets, is expected to follow Carroll’s mantras regarding positivity of thought, words and actions. “Do your job better than it has ever been done before,” he tells them. Yelling and swearing are frowned upon, and every media interview with a player or coach ends with a thank-you to the reporter. … “We do imagery work and talk about having that innovative mindset of being special,” Wilson says. “We talk about being in the moment and increasing chaos throughout practice, so when I go into the game, everything is relaxed.”

Would you try the no complaint experiment? How long do you think you could make it before you had to switch hands?

Here’s an interview with Tony Revolori, who played Zero in The Grand Budapest Hotel.

True Detective is one of the best shows I’ve seen in AGES. If you missed it while it was on, I implore you to watch the whole thing! The theories around it were amazing, and all the backstory, too. I enjoyed this piece on the sacrificial landscape of True Detective, as well as Vanity Fair‘s finale review.

Things to do when you’re doing something else: listen to stories from The Moth.

I loved this post on before and after perspectives from the Free People blog. It’s like “behind the scenes of beautiful Instagrams”!

On asking women if they’re pregnant. (Love you, Naomi.)

Our constant need for news updates has ushered in ‘a news addiction age’.

Veronica wrote about creepy photographers in Terry Richardson and 7 Tricks Manipulators Will Use To Get You To Do Anything.

Would you ever want to live on a luxury cruise ship? I love the idea but you have to wonder about the practicality… It would be good for a month or so!

Living in NYC can be a bit rough (to say the least). Here are some of the most horrifying rental stories.

What do you think about “Ban Bossy”? I’m not really feeling it. I love Justine’s perspective, too.

I loved this post: What to Do If You’re Falling Out of Love With New York.

I don’t know how many of us will ever watch an autopsy, but in case it happens to you, here’s ten things you should know. Holy shit, this is a fascinating piece. I made lots of faces and also covered my mouth with my hand while I read it.

“The single best way to remove the ribcage is with a set of hedge clippers from Home Depot.”

By the same author, My Mum, the Bulimic. This one brought tears to my eyes. Such a powerful piece of writing.

On Meg Ryan’s face, and the reaction of an audience.

Dear Person Who Just Left a Negative Comment About Something On the Internet, an open letter to haters.

How long does it take to make improvements to your health? A long time. Don’t beat yourself up!

Are we happier when we stay in the moment?

Cary Elwes — you know, Westley — is writing a Princess Bride memoir. Awesome!

Here are four reasons why your brand posts are fading on Facebook. Ugh!

This is how they transformed a department store into The Grand Budapest Hotel.

How we were fooled into thinking that sexual predators lurk everywhere. Creating a moral panic about social media didn’t protect teens — it left them vulnerable.

My friend Amy (from Sugarpill Cosmetics) recently went sober. If you scroll to the bottom of this post full of drag queen pictures, she talks a little bit about the process. I’m so proud of her for making such a positive change.

What does your favourite flower say about your life path?

Here’s why SXSW isn’t worth it.

Do you have major nostalgia for your favourite teen movies? There’s a reason for that!

Laverne Cox Is The Woman We’ve Been Waiting For. Orange Is The New Black’s breakout star is ready for her close-up.

Pretty brilliant stuff: If I can’t accept you at your worst, then maybe you should stop being so horrible.

Ricky Gervais says that in order to be successful you should be a cocky little nobody. Haha.

Inside The Cookie Dough Oreo. Gross.

I almost always use Airbnb when I visit another city. I’m so excited to learn about their big plans!

If you have nothing else to do today — or hell, if you just like procrastinating — vanish into a Wiki Wormhole with this list of unexplained disappearances.

My pal Dhru asks, has it all been said and done?

There have been so many times that our lives have been touched by the work of others. And you know what? Those people that touched our lives didn’t have it all figured out. And they didn’t always know if they were headed in the right direction. But their work still touched us. They still left an impact.

Got a free minute? Help out a reader who is doing a study on women’s body image perceptions, and includes questionnaires about self-esteem, body image attitudes, and attitudes about cosmetic surgery. Sylis is looking for women who are between the ages of 18-40, who are not pregnant, not using any kind of hormonal contraception, have not used any in the past three months, and are not using hormonal replacement therapy.

In The Reckoning, the father of the Sandy Hook killer searches for answers.

Can people with anorexia identify their anonymised body?

Bitches get stuff done!

Emily Henderson designed a pop-up home for Snoop Dogg and it is SO GREAT. Ugh, I love it! I would live there!

Whoooooah. Your Guide to Shailene Woodley, America’s Sacred Moonchild.

This is one of the most incredible body paintings I’ve ever seen!

Skeletor will now deliver you daily affirmations.

Here are 10 famous geniuses and their drugs of choice.

Suicide rates are on the rise, and so is clinical depression. This piece in the New Yorker is gut-wrenchingly sad: The Neglected Suicide Epidemic.

I wanted to let people know that it’s ok to have suicidal thoughts and feelings, and that in fact it is a very human experience. I also hoped to show people that through talking about it, and by having someone else listen, it is possible to overcome the darkness that overwhelms a person when they feel helpless.

These emergency compliments made me laugh.

This installation at TED helps you find your social media soulmate. I can’t believe this is a thing! How kooky and wonderful!

Vintage Black Glamour is a wicked Tumblr and soon, a book.

Want to brush up on your writing skills? Here are 10 universities who offer free writing courses online!

As Clayton Cubitt said on Twitter, how do you afford your Instagram lifestyle?

Women Who Hate Other Women: The Psychological Root of Snarky.

I have found that women who are mean-spirited about other women were often raised by a mother who probably didn’t like herself and didn’t feel warmly toward women, in general, either.

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly: Why It Pays To Be Kind. This one is all about how to give people the benefit of the doubt and respond with kindness and empathy, regardless of the way other people are interacting in the situation.

A winner seeks for the goodness in a bad man, and works with that part of him; a loser looks only for the badness in a good man, and therefore finds it hard to work with anyone.

Lady Gaga’s charity donated $5000 out of $2.1 million last year. Ugh!

Eight Years of Solitude, on freelance labor, journalism, and survival.

20 Amazing Musical Numbers From The Muppet Show. Extra-cute.

This is AWESOME: the Castro is getting rainbow crosswalks. !!!

Apple creates an App Store section for narcissism. There are some good apps in there too, ha!

Want more willpower? Pumping Up the Self-Control in the Age of Temptations.

“There is research that shows people still have the same self-control as in decades past, but we are bombarded more and more with temptations. Our psychological system is not set up to deal with all the potential immediate gratification.”

Surprise surprise, some hipster dude said some racist shit about Drake. Comments are good, too.

Haha! These crazy “food hacks” are amazing.

With FutureMe, you can send yourself emails in the future. Here are some that have been recently delivered.

What’s it like to be a contestant on The Biggest Loser?

Before you get Botox…

Stop thinking about the way you look all the time and just actualize yourself beautiful.

Why do we consider skin to be the barrier of “permissible” beauty work?

Taste is not relative – here’s the proof.

Want to know the secrets of the world’s happiest cities? Of course you do!

Why are we still taking lifestyle advice from the former stars of The Hills? Honestly, this is more of a question about personal branding, I think.

Here are the 30 naughtiest dogs. Hahah!

Paul Jarvis tells you how to be rich like him.

On Lena, On Rihanna, On Kimye: The Very Necessary Death Of “Vogue”. This is a long read, but an excellent one.

Vogue wants us to believe that their publication is merely a reflection of cultural values, and not one of the most powerful shaping tools for those cultural values. When they insist on yet another Blake Lively or Gwyneth Paltrow cover, they are, they silently protest, just giving the people what they want—whether they like it or not. I feel confident in asserting that no one was pounding down Vogue’s door for a Blake Lively cover—and it certainly turned out that no one was desperate for a Taylor Swift cover either—but rather that Vogue wanted its readers to want Blake Lively, the way they’d like them to want the Clarins family, or Lauren Santo Domingo, or a similar blonde socialite born into money and status, because it is good for Vogue’s business if they are pushing something that can literally never be obtained by 98% of their readers. It’s aspirational, is the argument, but really it is the opposite. The Vogue mentality is a crushing, totalitarian, all-encompassing binary of right and wrong, and good bad, and no one can ever really obtain it. The best case scenario is to get rich and die buying.

The last three covers are right, the sign of a new Vogue. These last three covers show that the publication as a whole may have actually been wrong all along. This is a sign of Vogue’s own way of adapting, and changing, and recognizing that the model they’ve created for themselves is unsustainable and often grossly narrow-minded. I cannot be Vogue, you cannot be Vogue, and now Vogue can no longer keep up with Vogue’s standards—not if they want to keep their preferred spot at the front of newsstands.

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Kisses,

Illustration by Laura Callaghan.