Weekend Reading

Morning constant reader, another swathe of random posts. Enjoy!!

  • How We Learn Fairness
    A pair of brown capuchin monkeys is sitting in a cage. From time to time, their caretakers give them tokens, which they can then exchange for food. It’s a truth universally acknowledged that capuchin monkeys prefer grapes to cucumbers.
    I love this kind of article, helps me understand myself better
  • How could I read more books?
    Agatha Christie read 200 books every year, while Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg gets through a book a fortnight. President Theodore Roosevelt read a book a day, and increased this to two or three when he had a quiet night. But how can mere mortals get through more?
    Yup, I’m doing Goodreads Reading Challenge again this year!
  • Seeing Lili Elbe
    Nine decades before the world knew the name Caitlyn Jenner, they knew Lili Elbe—a successful Danish landscape artist who achieved fame as a biologically male artist before transitioning to her lifelong female identity.
    Now an Oscar nominated movie, an amazing woman
  • All the world’s in a moral panic
    The outpouring of outrage that has characterised public discourse over the past few years shows no signs of abating. A few years ago, many were outraged, first against corruption, and then against those who were not supporting the movement that had sprung up in protest.
    This is what gives me fatigue, outrage fatigue. I don’t even have the energy to…
  • Resolving to Read, Write, and Travel More in 2016
    Let’s be real: My 2016 resolutions are intentionally vague. I tend toward self-loathing, so settling on achievable goals is important for my mental health. But I’m still excited for a fresh year and a fresh start, even if time is a social construct.
    Is still early in 2016, I think I have some ideas but nothing concrete yet
  • The Easiest Way to Lose 125 Pounds Is to Gain 175 Pounds
    I let myself go for a few years and then, on a breezy spring afternoon in San Francisco, I found myself riding my bike down Market Street towards the Embarcadero. I stopped at a red light in the Tenderloin and a worn, reedy man panhandling for change headed in my direction.
    Inspirational and lots of useful advice and thoughts
  • Jessie Thompson
    In a step of unprecedented tastelessness, Milo’s fans then co-opted a phrase that was used to pay tribute to the victims of a terrorist attack, and got #JeSuisMilo trending globally. If you haven’t heard of Milo, he’s kind of like Katie Hopkins except he’s never come second on Celebrity Big Brother.
    The background to this story enrages me, how any human can act like this guy bewilders and saddens me
  • How the Phonograph Changed Music Forever
    Much like streaming music services today are reshaping our relationship with music, Edison’s invention redefined the entire industry These days music is increasingly free—in just about every sense of the word.
    Show this to your kids!
  • The Lightning Before Death: A Tribute to Clive James
    There will always be young men coming up who will find his achievement a clear light. I MET CLIVE JAMES by accident, about five years ago, while navigating the literary nonfiction stacks at the Strand bookstore in New York.
    Not read many of his essays but those I have are always great reads
  • Beat Godfather Meets Glitter Mainman
    William Seward Burroughs is not a talkative man. Once at a dinner he gazed down into a pair of stereo microphones trained to pick up his every munch and said, “I don’t like talk and I don’t like talkers. Like Ma Barker.
    A nice insight to David Bowie
  • From Portrait Painters To College Applicants, Squirrel Obsessives Through the Ages
    If there’s a squirrel on it, it’s probably in George’s house. There are ceramic squirrel figurines, a squirrel rug, squirrel paintings and wall hangings. She has a squirrel light switch cover and squirrel dishes.
    Squirrel!
  • How GM Beat Tesla to the First True Mass-Market Electric Car
    Ten years ago, the room where I’m standing would have been filled with a deafening roar. The air would have pealed with the sound of a dozen V-8 engines, each one trembling atop its own laboratory pedestal as engineers in white shop coats used joysticks to adjust its throttle and load.
    With a woman CEO… I wish that wasn’t noteworthy
  • How Intermarriage Created One of the World’s Most Delicious Foods
    Laksa is said to get its name from the Sanskrit word “lakh,” which means 100,000. A few things are definitive of an afternoon on the coasts of Southeast Asia: inescapable heat, the smell of the sea, and a steaming bowl of laksa.
    Om nom nom!!
  • Why too much evidence can be a bad thing
    In a police line-up, the probability that an individual is guilty increases with the first three witnesses who unanimously identify him or her, but then decreases with additional unanimous witness identifications.
    For those watching Making a Murderer
  • Dinter, bitz, and gwop: The wacky linguistics of British slang in 2016
    If you struggle to understand the teenagers and young people around you when they call their schoolfriend a durkboi and try to cadge some peas, you are not alone.
    Fo shiz! (do the kids still say that? TELL ME I’M STILL COOL!!)
  • Frozen soap bubbles are beautiful
    I saw a sparkle in her eye so I promised to make a film to show her that. She was so excited about this idea that of course she forgot that she didn’t want to put her jacket on.
    Take a few moments to watch this. Beautiful.
  • Track the dangerous squirrels attacking the US power grid
    It’s not just Chinese and Russian hackers that want to take down the power grid. The real cyber enemy lives inside — a true insider threat — and has been attacking national power lines for decades: squirrels.
    SQUIRREL!!
  • A beautiful exit
    I was 18 years old when I became a lifelong David Bowie fan. That summer, I did my leaving cert, and was counting down the days til I left my parents home. I saw it as an escape from a deeply unhappy household and childhood.
    For anyone who is a fan of anyone.
  • Literary travel: around the world in 10 must-read books
    In 2012, I embarked on an eccentric project. Having realised how anglocentric my reading was, I decided to try to read a novel, short story collection or memoir from every UN-recognised country, plus former UN member Taiwan (then 196 nations in all), in a calendar year.
    More books (I know, I know)
  • Everything in its place with MOOP
    MOOP is an acronym I learned recently, from an essay by Tarin Towers, which immediately caught my attention because of its organizing implications. She wrote: MOOP is a term coined by hikers and other ecology-minded people who use phrases like “pack it in, pack it out” and “leave no trace.
    The uncluttering continues!
  • The man who studies the spread of ignorance
    In 1979, a secret memo from the tobacco industry was revealed to the public. Called the Smoking and Health Proposal, and written a decade earlier by the Brown & Williamson tobacco company, it revealed many of the tactics employed by big tobacco to counter “anti-cigarette forces”.
    This + social media = a lot

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