internet explorers club | knife emoji + book emoji

I promised everyone that just signed up for this newsletter that I would talk about "my murder books" that I've been reading / am planning on reading in the near future, so here you go.

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But first! More Serial. Critique of the critiques of Serial. A teacher is using Serial instead of Shakespeare to teach HS English, which I'm not sure how I feel about. Maybe he should use text messages instead?

Murder-books: The one to start with is clearly Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America. Next up is The Murder of the Century: The Gilded Age Crime That Scandalized a City & Sparked the Tabloid Wars which I just read this past weekend, and Special shout-out to the lawfirm of Howe & Hummel (no relation -- OR IS THERE?) who represented the defendants, the latter described as "specializ[ing] in civil law and [running] the firm's thriving blackmail racket, representing chorus girls and thwarted lovers, threatening married men with exposure and well-off young bachelors with suits for breach of promise of marriage." YES. Finally -- and this just arrived at the library for me -- we've got Alice and Freda Forever: A Murder in Memphis. Man, these books are big on colons.

Mallory Ortberg is again proving to be a national treasure with Bible Verses Where The Word “Philistines” Has Been Replaced With “Haters”: “So the haters were subdued and they stopped invading Israel’s territory. Throughout Samuel’s lifetime, the hand of the Lord was against the haters.”

There has been a lot of discussion about emojis recently. First off: diverse emoji are coming (finally). New emoji are coming, including the coveted "reversed hand with middle finger extended." Taco emoji is still forthcoming, but if you want to send a picture of a taco to someone, Taco Text is here for you. I am trying to get people to join emojli, an only-emoji chat, with limited success. (If you want to join, my name is:

Also my Silicon Valley Job Title is "Emoji Curator," so let's be real. New York Magazine has actually a great piece about the evolution of emoji, which is long but worth it, and comes with bonus great pull quotes:

Tempura Shrimp emoji, she writes, has become
“a way to be present when there’s nothing else to say at all.”

Etcetera: a ram playing with a punching bag. Carry-on cocktails. Interstellar is actually about the death of film. (Maybe.) Mom, have you watched the Shia LaBoeuf video yet?

Quiet, quiet--

Emily