Weekend Reading

Another week, another set of things I’ve spotted on the internets, a few more than normal because I’ve been catching up. Enjoy!

  • The stupid history of water guns
    For decades, water guns were benignly stupid things. Grown-ups still found a way to ruin them, because we ruin everything.
    Read: http://ift.tt/1GaXyLY
  • How to Be Extraordinary: William James on the Psychology of the Second Wind and How to Release Our Untapped Human Potential
    “Compared with what we ought to be, we are only half awake… We are making use of only a small part of our possible mental and physical resources.
    Read: http://ift.tt/1JSAJ25
  • How to Stay Focused in an Age of Distraction: A Beginner’s Guide to Meaningful Productivity
    I bought the original iPhone the summer it came out. That was 8 years ago, and this internet-connected pocket computer has been within arms reach ever since. It’s awesome because I can do so much from just about anywhere at any time. But it’s terrible for the very same reason.
    Read: http://ift.tt/1TqjwkO
  • How Email Became The Most Reviled Communication Experience Ever
    Email wasn’t always a source of fear and loathing. What happened? And what can we do about it—really? It wasn’t until I heard that a colleague had nuked his personal email account—on purpose, for good—that it hit me: Email is the most reviled personal technology ever.
    Read: http://ift.tt/1fciARk
  • Honor System Exploited On Scottish Island That Had Been Crime-Free
    The crime rate on the small Hebridean island of Canna, Scotland, skyrocketed overnight this week, when thieves looted a shop that had used the honor system. Locals say it’s the first theft on the island in decades.
    Read: http://ift.tt/1QDVmVl
  • How could they?
    ‘When I was 14 years old, this guy beat me down in the streets. And my stepfather took his life right in front of me. And I felt good about it, really.’
    Read: http://ift.tt/1FocbYd
  • A boy’s lost stuffed tiger goes on an airport adventure
    TAMPA — Hobbes the stuffed tiger went on an adventure at Tampa International Airport. The plush toy, which belongs to 6-year-old Owen Lake, was left behind in the Tampa airport as Owen and his family traveled to Houston recently for a family member’s high school graduation.
    Read: http://ift.tt/1G9jaFe
  • LeBron, Authority, And Power Basketball
    Friend-of-The-Classical and University of Michigan literature professor Yago Colás wrote a post at his blog about the gathering authoritarian blowback against LeBron James in the wake of his crazily heroic, ultimately futile push in the NBA Finals, and the way we see and don’t see authority on the court.
    Read: http://ift.tt/1K1Y5E7
  • The inexplicable story of Steve Gosskie and featherbowling
    Featherbowling for Dummies – Step inside Cadieux Cafe, one of the few locations in the world that houses the unique sport known as “featherbowling.”
    Read: http://ift.tt/1fl1qkM
  • Constructing the World’s Biggest (Disassemblable) City
    Every four years millions of Hindus celebrate the Kumbh Mela, the Festival of the Urn.
    Read: http://ift.tt/1HsNa3S
  • ‘Claim Your Own Dancefloor’
    On the last day of 1977, as New York City’s landlords were finding greater profit in torching certain neighbourhoods than owning them, Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards went to a party.
    Read: http://ift.tt/1egOUBZ
  • Swole Without a Goal
    They’re the chosen few, the yokozuna. Kakuryū Rikisaburō, Hakuhō Shō, Asashōryū Akinori…. Seventy-one in number by some counts, they’re sumo wrestling’s elite, named after the braided length of rope that wraps, confection-like, around each tectonic waist.
    Read: http://ift.tt/1RLHV0C
  • How Minions Destroyed the Internet
    Do you know what Minions are? I’m serious. I keep thinking that I know what Minions are, and then I’ll lose three hours on poorly maintained Facebook pages and Pinterest tags and emerge from my trance sweaty, short of breath, and somehow more baffled than I was before.
    Read: http://ift.tt/1GEvSPI
  • After Supporting Inclusion Of Transgender Girls, Girl Scouts Crowdfunding Campaign Exceeds $250K
    Girl Scouts has just come out in support of transgender girls with an inspiring new crowdfunding campaign. The Girl Scouts of Western Washington accepted a $100,000 donation, but later learned it came with a stipulation: the money could not be used to support transgender girls.
    Read: http://ift.tt/1IONZka
  • Don’t Touch That Dial — Cuepoint — Medium
    Back when I was walking uphill both ways to school we had this old fashioned thing called a radio. It had a dial for volume, a dial to change the channel, and a few buttons to save preset stations. You’d listen to music for awhile. A DJ would come on and tell you a bit about the music.
    Read: http://ift.tt/1NwEY3q
  • Tennis serve in slow motion
    At 6000 fps, you can see just how much the racquet flattens a tennis ball on the serve.
    Read: http://ift.tt/1JxBX4l
  • “SHARK!” by Peter Benchley – November 1967
    Note: Alfred Bester, senior editor of Holiday, encouraged Benchley to turn this article into a novel; Benchley took his advice and wrote Jaws. ONE WARM SUMMER DAY I was standing on a beach near Tom Never’s Head on Nantucket.
    Read: http://ift.tt/1NwzsgJ

Comments

Comments are closed.