Some good f*cking advice for creative roadblocks.

So you gave up on your New Year’s resolutions. I’m sorry to hear that. It sounds like you might need some tough love to get back on track. And while I’m not going to give that to you, Jason Bacher, Brian Buirge, and Jason Richburg will. They’re the authors of a new book called Do the F*cking Work: Lowbrow Advice for High-Level Creativity, and its chock-full of pithy, expletive-laden words of wisdom for the creative who needs some common sense advice—advice so straight to the point you might feel like someone slapped you across the face with it. But, in a snap-out-of-it good way, okay? Here are a few key pieces of advice from the book:

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“Par Excellence Redux” reimagines a high-concept putt-putt exhibition from 1988.

Thirty-two years ago, Chicago’s art scene made history when an exhibit called “Par Excellence” debuted at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. This was the first artist-designed golf course ever created, and museum-goers experienced recreation and art intertwined in new way.

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The direct-to-consumer maker of custom drapes and shades wants to make buying window treatments easier, cheaper, and more fun.

Buying new drapes or shades is not, generally, one of the more exciting parts of decorating your home. Most of us think of window treatments (if we think of them at all) as a functional product, one that keeps light out at night and nosy neighbors from looking in.

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And actually, it makes us pretty miserable. A new study from researchers at Harvard Business School and Boston College hints at why.

What makes someone buy a Chanel bag or an Hermès scarf?

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It’s a road map that the rest of the fashion industry should follow.

Every year, Adidas makes more than 400 million pairs of sneakers. These shoes are part of the 900 million items–including clothing and sports equipment–the 70-year-old German conglomerate puts out into the world annually. Adidas’s mission is to create high-performance products for athletes, so the vast majority of the materials it creates are made from plastic polymers, which have the remarkable ability to be transformed into everything from springy foam in sneakers to moisture-wicking fabric in sports bras.

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The company recently agreed to a $46 million settlement, after one of its Malm dressers toppled over and killed a toddler. The story doesn’t end there.

Ikea has agreed to a $46 million settlement in the wrongful death lawsuit brought against the Swedish furniture company by Joleen and Craig Dudeck, parents of a toddler who was killed after an Ikea dresser from the recalled Malm line tipped over and pinned him underneath it in 2017.

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Poorly planned cities contribute to alarming rates of depression and anxiety among residents. The good news: Better design can help.

Over half of the world’s population–4.2 billion people–live in cities. This number is expected to rise, with 68% of the global population estimated to live in urban areas by 2050.

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Is audio the future of erotica? The cofounder of Quinn, a sound-based site that launches today, thinks so.

For an industry that’s well known for the money shot, porn newcomer Quinn is putting its chips on an audio platform. The startup, which beta-launched in April and launched its redesigned site today, is looking to break through with its new audio-only porn platform and shift the brand away from the visual-reliant user experience the industry is known for.

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Ahree Lee’s ‘Pattern:Code’ honors the history of women in the connected fields of crafts and computer science.

Before the fast-fashion business model made it possible for clothing companies to churn out 700 shirts a day, textiles in the 19th century were created using a much slower and more mathematical process: the Jacquard loom. This machine, which used carefully designed punch cards to determine the sequence of weaving operations, created patterns out of thread based on a binary system. (Since woven textiles are created with interlocking threads, you can only ever see a warp or a weft thread on the surface, which is essentially a zero or a one.) The intricate Jacquard loom and its innovative punch card input method would go on to inspire the first general-purpose computer, and English mathematician Ada Lovelace is widely credited with publishing the first algorithm to be carried out by this Analytical Engine. As a result, the relationship between woven textiles and computer science was born, and women sat squarely at the intersection of this technical Venn diagram.

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Vinyl mixtapes? Let the romance burn.

“Hey, uh, yeah, so . . . I made you something. No big deal. I was just kind of thinking of you last night, then that got me to thinking about these last 1.5 dates we’ve been on, and . . . look it’s really not a big thing, just some songs that kind of remind me of you or whatever.”*PULLS RECORD FULL OF ALANIS MORISSETTE HITS FROM BACKPACK*

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