Obviously a lot of the focus of the news has been, rightly, the terrorist attacks in Paris, Beirut and Mali. This list feels frivolous but perhaps it’s good to ‘look away’ for a few moments.
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Secret Chambers, Grain Silos and the Long, Long History of Pyramid Conspiracy Theories
The Giza Pyramid complex, photographed by Eduard Spelterini from a hot air balloon in 1904. (Photo: Public Domain/WikiCommons) In 867 AD, a European monk named Bernard caught a ride on a slave ship out of the southern Italian city of Taranto.
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Noel Gallagher Is Esquire’s December Cover Star
I was born in Longsight in Manchester, which is a really rough-arse part of town. They knocked our street down to build this new-fangled thing called an Asda superstore in the Seventies and we got housed in this place called Burnage, which at the time was quite a leafy suburb.
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Always had a soft spot for this guy. Do we need more ‘rock stars’ willing to be like him? -
Do you overfunction or underfunction in a relationship?
Whenever someone claims there are “two kinds of people in the world” – extroverts and introverts, realists and idealists, optimists and pessimists – you can be pretty sure they’re oversimplifying.
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Can anyone guess which I am?? -
Mothers Of ISIS Recruits Fight Their Own Battles Back Home
In Calgary, between the soccer practices and the hours at her accounting job and the potlucks with the neighbors, Christianne Boudreau spent every spare minute watching Islamic State videos, her nose pressed up against the computer screen.
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The Transformation Of Jack Monroe
Jack Monroe, true to her self-outing last month as transgender “non-binary”, is surrounded by a mountain of masculine/feminine stuff in the small two-bedroom flat she shares with her five-year-old son in Southend, Essex.
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On Gawker’s Problem With Women
The following story — on the treatment of female editors, writers, and managers at Gawker Media — was scheduled to appear on Gawker.com on Friday, November 13. It had been originally written in July, kiboshed in August, reported further in October, and prepped to run in early November.
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Obama is America’s first basketball president, and his love of the game is all over his legacy
Ever since he stepped on to the national political stage, Barack Obama has been accused of being an elusive figure. But when it comes to sports, basketball especially, no one can doubt his conviction or what he stands for. The man just loves hoops.
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I do not share your consensus, and that’s fine
Dare I wade into a post about politics? Actually, the fact that question is even a question is rather the point of this post.
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Why Sarcastic People Are More Successful
Everybody just loves sarcasm. It’s so warm and fuzzy and makes everyone feel nice. So go ahead with those biting quips — they’ll definitely win you friends and admirers! I’m being sarcastic, of course.
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I doubt many of you will appreciate this article, but thought I’d post it anyway. I can explain it if anyone wants.. -
Inside Mark Zuckerberg’s Bold Plan For The Future Of Facebook
Facebook is firing on all cylinders. Now Mark Zuckerberg is looking to the decade ahead, from AI to VR to drones.
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Still Life
Compared with the glistening two-story mansions that surrounded it, the house looked like something from another time. It was only 2,180 square feet. Its redbrick exterior was crumbling, and its gutters were clogged with leaves. Faded, paint-chipped blinds sagged behind the front windows.
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The Doomsday Invention
Last year, a curious nonfiction book became a Times best-seller: a dense meditation on artificial intelligence by the philosopher Nick Bostrom, who holds an appointment at Oxford.
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Inside the World of For-Profit Snuggling
Inside an inconspicuous-looking storefront on a tree-lined street in Portland, Oregon, Samantha Hess prepares to cuddle with a stranger. “Big spoon or little spoon?” she asks the man, who is in his mid-50s. Instead, he opts for a more ambitious position.
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*snuggles* -
What Is Disruptive Innovation?
The theory of disruptive innovation, introduced in these pages in 1995, has proved to be a powerful way of thinking about innovation-driven growth.
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The Empathy Gap Between Paris and Beirut
Hours before the carnage in Paris on Friday, a double suicide bombing ripped through a working-class shopping district in Beirut. ISIS claimed responsibility for the explosions, which caused 43 deaths and hundreds of casualties in the worst bombing to strike the city in a quarter century.
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The Coke bottle’s iconic design happened by sheer chance
The Coca-Cola bottle was born 100 years ago, yesterday, when its iconic contour bottle—heralded as the “perfect liquid wrapper”—was approved for patent on Nov. 16, 1915.
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Unfollow
How a prized daughter of the Westboro Baptist Church came to question its beliefs.
On December 1, 2009, to commemorate World AIDS Day, Twitter announced a promotion: if users employed the hashtag #red, their tweets would appear highlighted in red. Megan Phelps-Roper, a twenty-three-year-old legal assistant, seized the opportunity.
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Not comfortable reading but worthwhile -
You Won’t Live to See the Final Star Wars Movie
Kathleen Kennedy has heard a lot of movie pitches. For decades she worked with Steven Spielberg, producing E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, the Indiana Jones series, the Jurassic Park series. You get the picture.
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The Guy Who Pointed a GoPro the Wrong Way for an Entire Vacation Is the Most Dad Thing on the Internet
The necessary call-and-response nature of the internet means I need to somehow draft an introduction pretending you haven’t already seen this video of an Irish dad using a GoPro, even though we both know you’ve already seen this video of an Irish dad using a GoPro…
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How famous writers and artists wooed their lovers with food
The road to artistic greatness is littered with lovers and cherry pits.
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El Niño could be the most powerful on record, scientists say
Some scientists say their measurements show that this year’s El Niño could be among the most powerful on record — and even topple the 1997 event from its pedestal. Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at Stanford University, called the temperature reading significant.
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Hasbro Now Has a Toy Line For Seniors Starting With a Lifelike Robotic Cat
After already conquering demographics including kids, teenagers, and those technically considred adults, Hasbro is reaching out to that last frontier of consumers: seniors, with a new toy line featuring lifelike robotic companion pets that only need affection, not feeding or bathroom breaks.
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File under NOT FREAKY AT ALL (aka Uncanny Valley) -
Hello, it’s me. On a flip-phone. Samsung unveils clamshell model
We all owe Adele an apology. After the internet mercilessly took the piss out of the flip-phone she used in her video for Hello (a decision the director said was thought through – “it’s so distracting to see an iPhone in a movie”), news has emerged that Samsung is releasing a flip model.
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Creed: The Oscar Contender We Should Have Seen Coming
You’ve heard the story a thousand times. A contender nobody saw coming—a newcomer, an underdog, an oddball nobody knew what to do with—enters the ring in the 11th hour, and blows them all away. It’s the story of Rocky Balboa that won a best-picture Oscar in 1976.
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SELFIE
The revolutionary potential of your own face, in seven chaptersThe one where a woman snaps a picture of herself, by herself.The one where we met three dead photographers who would have loved the iPhone.
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