Weekend Reading

  • France outlaws lewd cat-calls to women in public amid attack uproar
    France voted to outlaw sexual harassment on the streets, leaving cat-callers and aggressively lecherous individuals facing potential on-the-spot fines of up to 750 euros as part of tougher legislation to fight sexual violence.
    Good.

  • Somebody at Fitbit needs a lesson on the menstrual cycle
    How long was your longest period? Eight days? Ten days? Two weeks? A month? It’s the “how long is a piece of string” of the female body, isn’t it? I’ve had periods that have lived, like a Mayfly, for a single day. In 2016, I had a period that lasted the entirety of the Rio Olympic games.
    More women in tech would help with this kind of poor, male-centric, thinking, no?

  • Color or Fruit? On the Unlikely Etymology of “Orange”
    The human eye can distinguish millions of shades of color, subtly discriminating small differences of energy along the visual spectrum.
    And what rhymes with orange…?

  • The Mystery of Winnie the Pooh’s Pants
    Experts weigh in on the bear’s bottom half. On Friday, Disney released Christopher Robin, a live-action Winnie the Pooh film.
    TROUSERS! Stupid Merkins.

  • The trick to staying close to coworkers when you work from home
    At the moment, I am about 245 miles (394 km) from the majority of my coworkers in New York. I’m almost 3,000 miles (5,000 km) away from my direct supervisor in San Francisco, and more than 3,600 miles (5,700 km) away from one of my favorite teammates in London.
    Home working is becoming more prevalent, some good tips in here.

  • A Spectre is Haunting Unicode
    In 1978 Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry established the encoding that would later be known as JIS X 0208, which still serves as an important reference for all Japanese encodings.
    I wonder which other unicode remnants are there for no good reason.

  • Why Are Thousands of People Watching an Old Man Sleep on Periscope?
    Bob Pagani isn’t sure why hundreds of people tune in to watch him sleep every week. Nor did he ever plan to become a minor Periscope celebrity while literally snoring. It just … happened. “It was really just by accident,” Pagani says, “like pretty much everything interesting in my life.
    Dear Internet. Never change (well, not these bits at least)

  • Denialism: what drives people to reject the truth
    From vaccines to climate change to genocide, a new age of denialism is upon us. Why have we failed to understand it? By We are all in denial, some of the time at least.
    Not sure I buy this… oh wait…

  • Meet the guy with four arms, two of which someone else controls in VR
    Yamen Saraiji has four arms, and two of them are giving him a hug. The limbs embracing Saraiji are long, lanky, and robotic, and they’re connected to a backpack he’s wearing.
    The future is as equally amazing as it is terrifying.

  • Architects of the Future
    In 1960, Buckminster Fuller had an idea to transform New York City: a two-mile-wide geodesic dome over the top of Manhattan. The self-titled “anticipatory design scientist” wanted to cover the city from the East River to the Hudson and from 21st Street to 64th Street.
    And yet, still no jet packs!

  • How Helsinki Arrived at the Future of Urban Travel First
    Harri Nieminen decided it was time to replace his car with an app. He had owned a car in Helsinki for the past nine years but recently found he’d lost the patience for parking on crowded city-center streets, especially in snowy months.
    More of this please. No reason a compact city like Glasgow couldn’t follow suit.

  • In Conversation: Kathleen Turner
    When Kathleen Turner, standing in the Vulture reception area, introduces herself in her singular throaty rasp, the effect is almost comic — who else has a voice like that? “This thing happens with restaurants,” says Turner as we walk to a conference room.
    Actual legend.

  • What to do with your implicit bias
    White/Innocent. Black/Criminal. Men/Clever. Women/Nurturing. If you’ve ever taken an implicit bias test or training, you’ll recognize pairs like these as examples of the unconscious associations our brains make about social categories.
    Guilty as charged.

  • La Traviata
    According to Hungarian news site Parameter.sk, the woman, identified only as Eva N, played a four-minute aria from Giuseppe Verdi’s ‘La Traviata’ non-stop, in her house with on speakers full blast, from morning until night.
    Bet her neighbours wish she’d been the ‘woman that strayed’…

  • Why this student collected more than 50,000 golf balls out of the ocean
    Marine pollution is probably not the first thing that comes to mind when you think about golf. But 18-year-old student Alex Weber is hoping to change that. She’s been collecting golf balls from the ocean for the past two years. So far, she’s accumulated more than 50,000 balls.
    Dear golfers. Aim better.

  • LA’s Awesome History Of Weird, Food-Shaped Restaurants
    An exterior view of Eddie Blake’s Tail o’ the Pup hot dog stand. It was located at 300 N. La Cienega and Beverly Boulevard, next to the Beverly Center. (Photo by Gary Leonard via Los Angeles Public Library Collection)
    These are utterly superb.

  • You are not original or creative on Instagram
    Everyone on Instagram is living the same life. If it seems when you scroll through your feed that everything looks similar, that’s probably because it is.
    Guilty as charged (take 2)

  • Employees of a U.K. Burger King will hear Toto’s “Africa” 108 times today
    A U.K. Burger King location will continuously bless the rains down in Africa today as it plays Toto’s earworm “Africa” through its speakers on constant loop. All day. Seriously. The Camden Town Burger King will play the 1982 epic as the result of a Twitter contest.
    How many times before someone goes postal? 50? 73?

  • New study: People tend to aspire to date someone ‘out of their league’
    Online daters tend to pursue people who are “out of their league,” according to a new study that used a unique method to analyze a large online dating website in Boston and three other major US cities.
    VERY Guilty as charged.