Celebrated slice-of-lifer and avid Twitterer Susan Orlean lives in Columbia County with four chickens. Or, rather, she did. On Sunday she set the creatures loose for a little constitutional. Now she's complaining about the cremation costs of one dead chicken.

The Way We Live Now: Stripped up, ripped up, shacked up and backed up. From the chicken plant recession war to the Amish RV salesman slinging jelly to the empty rows of McMansions—getting paper is a life-threatening hobby.

A confluence of localvore do-gooderism and desperate poverty is transforming America's suburbs into a Third World hellscape, because otherwise-normal people are raising chickens in their backyards.

A respectful, comprehensive, and interesting overview of the historical evolution of the design of farm magazines. A must-read for poultry portrait aficionados. [Design Observer]

As much as people in Brooklyn like to complain about their neighbors—loud noises, kids, dog poop, the fact that other people exist—we can't wait to see the brouhahas that will undoubtedly ensue when people start raising chickens in their backyards because it's some sort of hip, vaguely ironic gesture: