“I want to go here; add this to the list” is something I say to myself pretty often lately. (Two recent additions: Alaska in the summer, to hike and see the nearly-all-day sun; a couple free-form weeks on the Eurail. These both happened within FIVE MINUTES.) But Asia is something that hasn’t piqued my interest so much until recently, mostly because of my fears around not being able to talk to everyone.* But OH MY GOD, this! According to this, the Wat Samphran Temple isn’t on many mainstream tours, which says, to me, that most mainstream tours are exercising poor judgment. I want to go there and just stare at it for about 15 minutes before wandering through all the (publicly accessible) nooks and crannies of this incredible place.

At Rookie, a set of 46 photos from a woman who has spent two one-month periods living at Shakespeare & Co. Ohmygodohmygodohmygod. I’m so glad I’ve sat in the nook pictured above. It’s even more beautiful in person.

I love Captain Awkward because boundaries and how we maneuver around our fellow humans is an area of endless interest to me. (Which is, oh, half or more of why I write fiction.) This recent column on the less-addressed area of problems of finishing a creative work is perfect and perfectly to the point.

This brilliantly curated collection of photos of black people from the last 150 years or so feels so vivid and well done and alive. As seen on Kate Beaton’s Tumblr, which is also highly worth it.

A set of beautifully stark pictures of colorful houses of Butte, Montana.

Secret hidden paintings on the edges of books, courtesy of the University of Iowa Special Collection & Archives department. The artform dates to at least the 1650s.

Masquerades, falconry, and decoy diamond-hiding jewelry accoutrement, all in the rad estate jewelry roundup at The Hairpin.

*This was SO HARD for me in Paris, and the reason I’m learning French so that I can go back again and be comfortable. But at the same time, I was reassured that I can feed myself and maneuver well enough even when I’m functionally semi-mute and illiterate. Win/win?