Maggie Haberman says: “Before you post, ask yourself: Is this something that needs to be said, is it something that needs to be said by you, and is it something that needs to be said by you right now? If you answer no to any of the three, it’s best not to rush ahead.”

Is there really any reason to tweet now? (Was there every any reason? A primer.) Twitter has become such a hellscape, with Nazis and broken news sandwiched between the commander-in-chief’s signature There’s Always An Old Tweet™ tweets and his newer, more unhinged signature Taunt™ tweets designed purely to arouse the ire of his politically opposed spectators. The new New York Times social media guidelines are, as you might expect, fairly reasonable, if somewhat exhausting—like a rule-loving little gray lady with newspaper wings sitting on your shoulder, not even whispering anything but just raising her eyebrows over her bifocals. For those of us who participate in Twitter mostly for real-time-only jokes and to dopily announce that we have Written A Thing, these rules mostly make us remember we are not Maggie Haberman, and you have to wonder if there’s any point to saying something when you could just as easily…not. What do you really get out of Twitter besides repeated dopamine hits and very good blog posts from The Awl? If you’re looking for a nicotine patch of sorts, I highly suggest the paperclip game. It is a great reminder of how engaging but ultimately pointless everything on the internet is.

I can’t believe how long the week was and I can’t believe how next week I’ll look back at the relative briefness of this week with longing and nostalgia and I can’t believe how the week after that I’ll be all, “I can’t believe how long the week was and I can’t believe how next week I’ll look back at the relative briefness of this week with longing and nostalgia.” I guess I should start believing more. Anyway, here’s music, enjoy.

★ There was a thinning bluish patch in the sheet of clouds over the schoolyard but there were also fair-sized, widely dispersed raindrops scattering down. The cloud cover remained inconclusive; more raindrops fell from a half-bright noon sky, almost enough to count as a shower. A spell of clear, emphatic sunlight appeared, but it proved as unstable as everything else. The approach of evening concealed the fact that it had begun fully raining. The rain jacket, forgotten on its hook on the third floor, had to be retrieved. The rain wasn’t a drenching one, but people stood under scaffolds and overhangs, unprepared to deal with it. Garments went over heads and faces looked chagrined. An hour into it, there were still new people being caught unawares. Nothing before had lasted, and now there was this.

Image: Dave Parker via Flickr

10/12 8:25 ET At Carolina -3 Philadelphia

Cam Newton doesn’t
Respect women reporters
And must be destroyed

PICK: EAGLES

10/15 1:00 ET At Houston -10 Cleveland

The Cleveland Browns are
A human caterpillar
Of awful football

PICK: TEXANS

10/15 1:00 ET New England -9.5 At NY Jets

Game of the Jets’ year
It’s a Gang Green Super Bowl
Carpe diem, Jets

PICK: JETS

Photo: Wikimedia user donald

Sometimes it’s hard to tell what makes a German mad, because Germans always seem mad. But there’s a marked difference between Resting Deutsch Face—the Teuton’s natural state, wherein arguing about soccer and pointing out other people’s insignificant grammatical errors does not actually mean that one is böse (BOOO-suh), geärgert (guh-AEEER-gurt), or sauer (ZOW-ur)—and actual Wut (VOOT, or “rage.” Fun fact, the German word for “rabies” is Tollwut, TOLE-voot, meaning “crazy rage.”) Yes, all right, the Germans have a lot of words for being pissed off, but I promise you that usually they’re not. Unless, that is, they discover that you’re fucking with Nutella.

Granted, the chocolate hazelnut spread, which is dubious-looking (if you’ve ever changed a diaper) but delicious, isn’t a German product—in fact, it alights on the Früstückstisch (FRUU-stuuks-TISH, or “breakfast table”) of every German in the cosmos directly from Italian company Ferrero, purveyor of those known death traps, Kinder Surprise eggs. And guess what? According to this incredulous article in Die Zeit (titled “The Nutella Crisis”), Ferrero might be using deliberately shittier ingredients in the jars that are bound for supermarkets in Slovakia, Czechia (it’s called that now!), Poland, Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia, Bulgaria, Romania and Lithuania—offering, essentially, a second, worse class of groceries to an entire bloc of EU citizens, treating them, as it were, like the “garbage can of Europe.”

Unholy Triptych

i.

here is my faith

here is my reason

one bucket with a hole in it

one without a handle

how to carry my life

to where it needs to go

without losing anything

not memory

not hope

I have good news and bad news. The good news is it’s Thursday, so more than half of the week is over. The bad news is it’s 2017, things are the way they are and they’re not going to get better any time soon, plus it’s going to be a million hours at least until we actually do get to the end of the week and even when you get there your search for succor will prove fruitless nor will you find the respite you so desperately desire. I guess it’s kind of a mixed bag, if you use a pretty loose definition for “mixed.” Anyway, here’s music. Enjoy.

★★★★ Sun! Unimpeded sun shone on the apartment building across the way, and the sky was cloudless. The ten-year-old, from the couch, found an angle at which the half-moon was visible, bright with its own reflected share of sunlight. What were the properties of this sun, again? It was blinding, when one walked facing into it, so that black surfaces were white and oncoming people were unrecognizable. It was even painful, by midday, sinking into bare skin with a sting like a razor burn. It was inviting, drawing the feet back outside, drawing the eyes upward to where there were now brilliant white patches of cloud with blue rifts curling back and forth in them. And it was brief—by the workday’s end, already lost to view.