bookmark_borderWeekend Reading

Busy week + reading things printed on paper = short list today!

Plus it’s Earth Day, so go outside and appreciate this amazing planet of ours!

  • Selling Mark Zuckerberg
    Until recently, Mark Zuckerberg’s most iconic public appearance may have been the image of the young startup founder sweating through his hoodie onstage while journalist Kara Swisher grilled him at a tech conference in 2010.
    Part of me feels a bit sorry for Mr.Z, he has grown up in a strange world (admittedly of his own creation) in the public eye for the large part.

  • Robert Taylor, Innovator Who Shaped Modern Computing, Dies at 85
    Like many inventions, the internet was the work of countless hands. But perhaps no one deserves more credit for that world-changing technological leap than Robert W. Taylor, who died on Thursday at 85 at his home in Woodside, Calif.
    Fair to say you wouldn’t be reading this if it weren’t for him.

  • The Coffee Revolt of 1674: When Women Campaigned to Prohibit “That Newfangled, Abominable, Heathenish Liquor Called COFFEE”
    We denizens of the craft-roasting, wi-fi-connected 21st century know well how to drink voluminous quantities of coffee and argue our opinions.
    From now one I will only be ordering coffee like this! “I’ll have a newfangled, abominable, heathenish flat white please!”

  • The best tweets ever (nominated by Kottke readers)
    Twitter, in principle, could have been invented at any point in the history of the internet. A big networked message board with an upper limit of 140 characters? It sounds like something a resource-conserving developer would have invented before web browsers existed.
    Best ever? Well they are pretty good.

  • Write, Never Marry, and Other Love Advice from Simone de Beauvoir’s Editor
    DA: I think that really it’s the only thing that can be done, so it should be done, and I’m ashamed I didn’t do it. People nowadays are all becoming so money-minded, so materialistic. Greed is very, very powerful. Greed is the worst thing.
    Life advice from a 99 year old is ALWAYS worth hearing.

  • Balenciaga’s $2,145 bag is just like Ikea’s 99 cent tote
    Who wore it better? Balenciaga or IKEA? http://pic.twitter.com/LCB9Qri2xN
    Clearly a post-modern, pseudo-ironic take on the bourgeois acceptance of IKEA. No?

  • MSP Speaks About the Importance of Talking About Depression
    MSP James Dornan has written an amazing piece for us on his experiences of depression, and the difficulty men in Scotland have in speaking about how they are feeling.
    Not necessarliy a ‘scottish’ thing, but worth a read anyway. And if you need help, there is no shame in getting it.

bookmark_borderWeekend Reading

  • LEGO Macintosh Classic with e‑paper display
    tl;dr: I built a Wi-Fi enabled LEGO Macintosh Classic running Docker on a Raspberry Pi Zero with an e‑paper display. Docker deployments via resin.io. [photos] I am not a 100% sure if it was this exact model or perhaps even the Macintosh 128K from 1988, but I guess it doesn’t really matter.
    File under: Will likely never do but GEEKtastic
  • Margaret Atwood, the Prophet of Dystopia
    When Margaret Atwood was in her twenties, an aunt shared with her a family legend about a possible seventeenth-century forebear: Mary Webster, whose neighbors, in the Puritan town of Hadley, Massachusetts, had accused her of witchcraft.
    I’m a ‘late’ fan of hers, wonderful profile of an amazing talent.
  • Gillian Anderson’s & David Duchovny’s Voices Return for An X-Files Case on Audiobook
    X-Files fans who still want to believe there’s more supernatural mystery stories to be told, the truth is out there. And by “out there,” we mean another X-Files mystery in the form of an audiobook.
    File under: Some people might enjoy this.
  • Will London Fall?
    London may be the capital of the world. You can argue for New York, but London has a case. Modern London is the metropolis that globalization created. Walk the streets of Holborn, ride an escalator down to the Tube and listen to the languages in the air.
    Part of me doesn’t care. Part of me knows the impact will be massive.
  • Why Are So Many People Popping Vitamin D?
    There was no reason for the patients to receive vitamin D tests. They did not have osteoporosis; their bones were not cracking from a lack of the vitamin. They did not have diseases that interfere with vitamin D absorption.
    Another health fad? Perhaps.
  • Why Do Movie Villains Have So Many Dermatological Issues?
    In the real world, a prominent facial scar can cause embarrassment and social anxiety. In the movies, it’s enough to drive a man to murder. This discrepancy is the focus of a new investigation published in JAMA Dermatology last week.
    Glib headline for an interesting topic.
  • The subtle brilliance of Sesame Street’s first episode starring an autistic Muppet
    When I was three or four, some friends of my parents threw a party; the kids went and played in the basement while the adults sat upstairs and talked.
    Yay for this. More of this needed!
  • An Hour of Running May Add 7 Hours to Your Life
    Running may be the single most effective exercise to increase life expectancy, according to a new review and analysis of past research about exercise and premature death.
    File under: But didn’t ‘scientists’ say running was bad for us, not that long ago?
  • What happens to political satire when the real world goes mad?
    On Nov. 8, as the nation picked its 45th president, Julia Louis-Dreyfus spent the night observing a fake election. The scene, filmed for an upcoming episode of the political comedy “Veep,” unfolded in what was supposed to be a polling station in a post-Soviet republic.
    Wait, Trump ISN’T satire? Depressing news.

bookmark_borderWeekend Reading

  • A stylist’s five steps to make getting dressed easier
    For some people, getting dressed in the morning is a joy. Good for them.
    In my ongoing route to minimal, I’m taking notes from this.

  • People who talk to pets, plants, and cars are actually totally normal, according to science
    I frequently talk to my plants. “Harold, you look dapper today,” I compliment my tiny green succulent. “Did you miss me?” I ask my Chinese evergreen. Once they begin plotting their slow, synchronized deaths, our conversations tend to intensify.
    AKA people are people

  • Detroit Is Stomping Silicon Valley in the Self-Driving Car Race
    General Motors testing fully autonomous development fleet vehicles on public roads in Michigan.If you’re betting on Silicon Valley stars like Google, Tesla, and Uber to free you from your horrorshow commute with autonomous driving technology, don’t.
    But given the state of car technology UX, this doesn’t bode well

  • A “grammar vigilante” sneaks around at night fixing an infuriatingly common error on public signs
    In the world of grammar sticklery, there’s no rest for the weary. A video published today by the BBC shows an anonymous “grammar vigilante” roaming the streets of Bristol, in the UK, adding apostrophes where they’re missing and covering unnecessary ones.
    I can almost picture the massive spotlight, illuminating the clouds with an apostrophe – to the grammar cave!

  • Soviet women snipers
    Sniper Lyuba Makarova on the Kalinin front. When Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, hundreds of thousands of Soviet women sprang to join the war effort, enlisting as nurses, clerks, cooks — and snipers.
    Women can be killers too.

  • Everything Is Broken
    Once upon a time, a friend of mine accidentally took over thousands of computers. He had found a vulnerability in a piece of software and started playing with it. In the process, he figured out how to get total administration access over a network.
    If you are at all nervous about IT Security, skip this one… gives me the heebee-jeebies!!

  • This is how the next World War starts
    With one miscalculation, by one startled pilot, at 400 miles an hour. And now that Russia is determined to destabilize the West, this scenario is keeping the military establishment up at night.
    OK, time to build a nuclear bunker…

  • Living a Lie: We Deceive Ourselves to Better Deceive Others
    People mislead themselves all day long. We tell ourselves we’re smarter and better looking than our friends, that our political party can do no wrong, that we’re too busy to help a colleague.
    Flipside holds true as well “I am not as smart as my colleagues”.

  • Treating depression is guesswork. Psychiatrists are beginning to crack the code.
    Here’s a frustrating fact for anyone who has been prescribed medication or therapy for depression: Your doctor doesn’t know what treatment will work for you.
    Advances in this area are heartening, I know too well that current approaches are very hit or miss.

  • Ethics can’t be a side hustle
    In the last few months I’ve had a lot of designers ask me “Where can I do good work?”And they don’t mean “good” as in quality. They mean good as in “on the side of the angels.” They look at the world, they see a garbage fire, and they wanna help put it out. That’s commendable.
    Something for everyone to heed.

  • For 18 years, I thought she was stealing my identity. Until I found her
    A woman apparently using my name meant a nightmare of unpaid traffic fines and a criminal record. But when I tracked her down, a different story emerged.
    Journalism 101: let the story write itself. This could’ve been a piece on identity theft, but then, it wasn’t.

bookmark_borderWeekend Reading

  • Smurfette’s Roots
    When we were kids, my brother collected plastic Smurf figurines. While they were all fundamentally the same (blue body, white pants and white hat, except for Papa Smurf, who sported a red hat and white beard), each had different accessories based on their archetypal traits.
    I collected these too, in fact, in my younger rebellious days, I think I shop-lifted Papa Smurf!
  • Survival of the Friendliest
    Violence has been the sire of all the world’s values,” wrote poet Robinson Jeffers in 1940. “What but the wolf’s tooth whittled so fine the fleet limbs of the antelope? What but fear winged the birds, and hunger jeweled with such eyes the great goshawk’s head?”
    It’s nice to be nice!
  • TV show contestants spend year in wilderness – with no one watching
    After a year cut off from modern life in the Scottish Highlands, imagine re-emerging to find a world where Donald Trump is US president, Britain has left the EU and Leicester won the Premier League.
    I remember this show starting but wow, what a weird world it is for them now.
  • What happens when you stare at the sun?
    Lovecraftian monsters really do exist. There are vast burning demons, things from far beyond our tiny world, things that you can’t even look at without going incurably mad. A being that is absolutely here but whose immenseness extends out into the cosmic distance of a fevered incomprehension.
    Someone should write a song about this.
  • The only line comedy shouldn’t cross is the no-laughter line
    In 1996, the late American comedian George Carlin opened his set at the Beacon Theater in New York with a blistering question: ‘Why is it that most of the people who are against abortion are people you wouldn’t wanna fuck in the first place?’
    If you enjoyed this, find a copy of the documentary The Aristocrats.
  • How Cyril the Swan became the UK’s most notorious mascot
    The future looked bleak for Eddie Donne. In March 1998, he was 21 years old and living in Swansea, a gray, industrial seaside city known ironically as the Welsh Riviera.
    BUT WHY CYRIL?
  • A Place of Absorption
    It’s hard to know what to do when someone says, “this is the knife I was going to use to kill you.”
    Harrowing article.
  • Why Millennial Pink Refuses to Go Away
    Even if you haven’t heard of Millennial Pink, or didn’t know that it went by this name (it’s also known as Tumblr Pink and Scandi Pink), you’ve seen it.
    Go away? When did it arrive?!
  • This Object Has Been Sprayed With the World’s Blackest Material, and It’s Freaking Us Out
    Well, we’ve finally cracked it. Scientists have finally figured out how to paint a portal to another dimension, as prophesied by Loony Tunes’ the Roadrunner. Who wants to try driving a (very small) truck right through that gaping void circle?
    Yup. Freaking me out too!
  • Before and After Chuck Berry
    Chuck Berry himself would be the first to admit he didn’t invent rock ’n’ roll, but he came to define it in a series of iconic singles made between 1955 and 1959.
    Wasn’t aware of some of this, legendary stuff.
  • There are people who spend their time yelling at the Mars Curiosity rover on Twitter
    Have we actually been to Mars? For a small segment of the population, the answer is no, and they like to tweet at the Mars Curiosity rover claiming it’s all a hoax.
    Ahhh internets, never change.
  • Ode to a Bloody Mary: A Perfect Blend of Restoration and Celebration
    The first bartending gig I ever had was in Madison, Wisconsin. I was twenty years old, knew nothing about spirits or cocktails, and only wanted to do, say, and look as cool as the older bartenders I admired. But if I wanted to accomplish that, I needed to work brunch service.
    Not a massive Bloody Mary fan but love the geek factor.
  • When Every Day Is Groundhog Day
    On the first night of previews for Groundhog Day the musical, as the lights go down, it’s safe to say that most of the audience already knows the story that’s about to unfold.
    I may have posted this link before.
  • Winners of the 2017 Sony World Photography Awards
    The Sony World Photography Awards, an annual competition hosted by the World Photography Organisation, has announced the winners of its Open categories and National categories for 2017. This year’s contest attracted 227,596 entries from 183 countries.
    *throws camera in the sea*
  • The Squid
    For my money, there are two (large, public) companies that most interest me right now. I find them to be the most fascinating and exciting companies in the broader tech sphere. Amazon and Netflix.¹ Amazon is obviously already an absolute behemoth. It’s the whale.
    It’s easy to forget just how massive Amazon is these days.
  • Domino’s has already outperformed every tech stock, now robots will deliver its pizzas
    Over the last decade, the stock price of Domino’s Pizza has crushed that of Apple, Google, Amazon, and Facebook mainly because it stopped making pizza that tasted like cardboard. Now it’s innovating on the labor front with plans to test robots as substitutes for your friendly pizza delivery guy.
    I don’t have shares in Domino’s but I do frequently ‘invest’.
  • The Disease of More
    Success is often the first step toward disaster. The idea of progress is often the enemy of actual progress.
    I’ve been working on less for a while now, it is possible.
  • 50 Reasons Why Everyone Should Want More Walkable Streets
    As more cities try to improve walkability–from car-free “superblocks” in Barcelona to heat-protected walkways in Dubai–a new report outlines the reasons behind the shift, the actions that cities can take to move away from a car-centric world, and why walkability matters.
    Alas, nothing in this article about removing hills…
  • Read This Before You Ever Make Fun of Comic Sans Again
    Albert Okura lives and breathes the legend of Ray Kroc – he even bought the first McDonald’s location – and he won’t stop until his own franchise is a household name.
    There is always a flip side.
  • This Bonkers New Coffee Has 300 Percent More Caffeine Than Your Morning Starbucks
    I think the title speaks for itself here.


bookmark_borderWeekend Reading

  • Falling in Love with Words: The Secret Life of a Lexicographer
    We’re proud to feature “Hrafnkell,” the first chapter of Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries, by Kory Stamper. We are in an uncomfortably small conference room.
    Words are such wonderful, powerful, beautiful things, this sound like a joyous celebration of a book.

  • The Enduring, Anxious Appeal of Gray
    Looking back, I should have realized it sooner, this problem that I have. The only excuse I can give is that introspection often takes time, and it’s only slowly that one recognizes an obsession, though signs of it may appear everywhere.
    No. NOT 50 bloody shades. Reading this I realise that I have been fighting this too, largely by ordering a lime green sofa.

  • Why It’s so Important to Know About High-Functioning Depression
    Today, Bright Side would like to share a very important article with you. The subject here might not be all that uplifting, but it’s vitally important that as many people know about it as possible if we’re to make the world a better place.
    This ticks many boxes of how I have been, how I am, and how I will be in the future.

  • It took the inventor of the Rubik’s Cube a month to solve his own puzzle
    In 1974, Erno Rubik was a 29-year-old design professor who started fiddling around with a set of wooden blocks in the Budapest apartment he shared with his mother.
    I solved mine WITH A HAMMER!

  • George Saunders: what writers really do when they write
    A series of instincts, thousands of tiny adjustments, hundreds of drafts … What is the mysterious process writers go through to get an idea on to the page?
    Yes, I am STILL writing a book. Although my process is less mysterious and a lot more keyboard bashing based.

  • Why Scientists Are Worried About a Landslide No One Saw or Heard
    If a steep mountainside in a remote national park gives way and drops 200 million tons of rock into deep glacial water, will anyone hear? In the case of the massive landslide that fell into Taan Fjord, Alaska, the answer was no—and yes.
    The continued erosion of earth by humankind, article #3492267. Dear humans, we suck.

  • These Scientists Sent a Rocket to Mars for Less Than It Cost to Make “The Martian”
    On a rocket launched toward Mars. It was India’s first interplanetary mission, Mangalyaan, and a terrific gamble. Only 40 percent of missions sent to Mars by major space organizations — NASA, Russia’s, Japan’s, or China’s — had ever been a success.
    Amazing, stuff, amazing women, this should’ve had a lot more news coverage than it got.

  • Boston public schools map switch aims to amend 500 years of distortion
    A district will drop the Mercator projection, which physically diminished Africa and South America, for the Peters, which cut the developed world down to size.
    One for the West Wing fans!!

  • Can Probiotics Help Your Depression? What We Know, What We Don’t
    What if your psychiatrist prescribed yogurt and vegetables as an antidepressant?
    I think I’d be happier if they could prescribe pizza and bacon and ice cream but whatevs.

  • The General Who Went to War On Suicide
    On the evening of July 19, 2010, Major General Dana Pittard, the new commander of Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas, got a call from the base’s 24-hour duty officer. A SWAT team had been sent to the house of a young sergeant named Robert Nichols.
    We need more stories like these, more people like this. We should not be ashamed of our mental health.

  • A major New York hospital recommends Hanson, Missy Elliot, and Lynyrd Skynyrd for timing CPR
    Music can be a lifesaver—literally.
    Boooo to lack of pun related headlines: “The Rhythm of Life”?

  • The Onion Struggles to Lampoon Trump
    In January, 2013, Donald Trump’s special counsel, Michael Cohen, sent a letter to the Onion.
    Terrifying.

  • Creative and Practical Ways To Use LEGO Around the House (Without Stepping On Any!)
    For the last several decades, LEGO has been a standard toy staple found in pretty much every home that has kids (or nostalgic adults) in it. They were first created by a Danish carpenter named Ole Kirk Christiansen in 1934; since then, over 400 billion of the familiar plastic bricks have been made.
    Some of these are so obvious it hurts (no, not the standing on them bit). Coasters, lamps, ALL ON MY LIST.

  • Back in the Kitchen: A Reading List About Gender and Food
    I’m notoriously grumpy while grocery shopping. Once, my partner and I got into a fight in the Aldi parking lot because one of the eggs in our carton broke.
    Some good stuff in here. I need to get back to cooking more.

  • A Court Will Decide if a GIF Can Be Considered a ‘Deadly Weapon’
    On Monday, a suspect faced federal charges in a Dallas County court for allegedly sending a strobing GIF that triggered a seizure in Kurt Eichenwald, a Newsweek writer with epilepsy, late last year. Light-induced seizures have been fought with lawsuits and TV bans in the past.
    Dear time traveller, yes, this is a thing.

  • What It’s Like To Live With Borderline Personality Disorder
    I was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder at the age of 14. Relationships feel impossible, my brain never stops running and my stress is magnified. For the first time in my life, I’m sharing my story of borderline personality disorder with the public.
    Once again, we need more pieces like this. More normalising of these things, more understanding.

  • How to Small Talk if You Hate Small Talk
    I have two speeds when it comes to small talk: “Tell me your life story!” or a nice, blank stare. It depends on my mood, how much I’ve had to drink and how much work I’ve just left behind on my desk.
    I’m brilliant at small talk after the fact.

  • How a Dictionary Got Into the Marriage Equality Debate
    It was Friday, morning-break time, and I was not just tired; I was beat, wiped, whipped, laid out, done in, dead. Usually during morning break, I got up for a bit of a stretch, walked around, refilled my coffee.
    Words are such wonderful, powerful, beautiful thi…. ohh I’ve done this already

  • The scents in your body wash, chicken stock and canned drink all come from one company
    What’s the first thing you do upon waking up? If your answer’s brushing your teeth or taking a shower, chances are you’re already using a product developed by Givaudan.
    OK, this is just weird.

  • Becoming ‘Everyone’s Little Sister’ to Deal With Sexism
    When I entered the office for my interview, I saw every head in the glass-enclosed conference room pop up and look over at me.
    FFS it’s 2017.

  • 48 Incredibly Short, Clean Jokes That Are Actually Funny.
    Need a wicked short joke to tell that anybody can hear? Below are 48 of the best clean jokes. Short and sweet. Check them out!
    This is so far up my alley that … ohhh wait, CLEAN jokes.. ok, nevermind..

  • How TV Opening Titles Got to Be So Damn Good
    A sharply dressed silhouette plummets through a canyon of advertisements. A troubled man chomps on a cigar as he drives along the New Jersey Turnpike. Gauzy portraits of broken, poisoned people overlay images of the polluted landscape they call home.
    The rise of good TV mirrored by some memorable opening titles (anyone else get the reference in the quote above?)

  • Amazon, the world’s most remarkable firm, is just getting started
    Amazon is an extraordinary company. The former bookseller accounts for more than half of every new dollar spent online in America. It is the world’s leading provider of cloud computing. This year Amazon will probably spend twice as much on television as HBO, a cable channel.
    Easy to forget just how massive and influential this company is.

bookmark_borderWeekend Reading

  • How I Came to the Church of Rock and Roll
    True, in junior high I sang along to John Denver’s “Rocky Mountain High” and knew every word on the “A Star Is Born” soundtrack.
    I was lucky, being introduced to Queen at an early age. Their album “Jazz” still resonates.
  • “Tyler, you’re fucking Marla”: A perspective on Fight Club to piss off its devotees
    Content note: there’s a lot of discussion of sex and violence in this post. Also, spoilers for Fight Club, if somehow you’ve made it without watching it or knowing “the twist” for almost twenty years.
    A fav movie of mine, and a fav type of article. Take a movie and offer a different perspective. I’m gonna adopt this one I think.
  • Paracetamol: widely used and largely ineffective
    In this guest blog, Andrew Moore, who has authored over 200 systematic reviews, many on pain, lifts the lid on paracetamol. Effective and safe? We are challenged to think again… People with pain have some very simple demands. They want the pain gone, and they want it gone now.
    Between this and recent articles on Ibuprofen… suffer, people, SUFFER!
  • Texas lawmaker ridicules anti-abortion measures by filing anti-masturbation bill
    Jessica Farrar’s satirical Man’s Right to Know Act would set $100 fine for ‘emissions outside a woman’s vagina’ and require unnecessary medical tests A Texas lawmaker has filed a satirical bill to regulate “masturbatory emissions” as a riposte to a slew of anti-abortion measure.
    Bravo!! Utterly ridiculous how women’s bodies are ‘legislated’ (I may need to save up though…)
  • Why Female Cannibals Frighten and Fascinate
    “Go on—eat it.” With these words, the 16-year-old vegetarian protagonist in Julia Ducournau’s Raw is urged to consume meat by her older sister and classmates at her new veterinary school.
    Not a genre I’m familiar with but this article challenges the portrayal of women in film very smartly.
  • Trick or Treat: Conniving Behavior Discovered in Dogs
    Dogs have the ability to think through their actions and plan deceptions, according to a study in Animal Cognition.
    Nooooo! ‘Dogs are a bit like cats’ shocker! *sadface*
  • On The Frightening Realities of Being a Woman in 2017
    Hi guys! So for anyone who has spoken to me since January 1st, I have been banging on about starting a blog.
    Horrifying and hard to read. One for all men to read and pass on.
  • Ebook sales continue to fall as younger generations drive appetite for print
    Readers committed to physical books can give a sigh of relief, as new figures reveal that ebook sales are falling while sales of paper books are growing – and the shift is being driven by younger generations.
    I’ve definitely fallen back into buying physical books recently, not sure why though.
  • Vibrator maker ordered to pay out C$4m for tracking users’ sexual activity
    Canadian manufacturer We-Vibe collected data about temperature and vibration intensity, revealing intimate information without customers’ knowledge Sex toy maker We-Vibe has agreed to pay customers up to C$10,000 (£6,120) each after shipping a “smart vibrator” which tracked owner
    Funny? Sinister? Both.
  • Refugees made some of the nicest things we have
    What do Sriracha hot sauce, Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody, Bambi and the Mini Cooper all have in common? They only exist thanks to refugees.
    Mostly so I can mentioned Queen again…
  • Into the woods: how one man survived alone in the wilderness for 27 years
    Christopher Knight was only 20 years old when he walked away from society, not to be seen again for more than a quarter of a century.
    Wow. I like my ‘me time’ but this is pretty extreme, and utterly fascinating.
  • This Article Won’t Change Your Mind
    “I remember looking at her and thinking, ‘She’s totally lying.’ At the same time, I remember something in my mind saying, ‘And that doesn’t matter.’” For Daniel Shaw, believing the words of the guru he had spent years devoted to wasn’t blind faith exactly.
    He’s right. It didn’t. Hmmmm.
  • Norway’s new pixelated banknotes are gorgeous
    Back in 2014, I posted that Norway would start using new banknotes in 2017 featuring an abstract pixelated design on the reverse of each note. Time did the only thing it knows how to do so here we are in 2017 and the bills will begin circulating later this year.
    OK, adding Norway to the list of places to move to (Canada remains #1).