Weekend Reading

  • Eimear McBride: ‘My husband shouts “For God’s sake, come down to dinner”’
    By 9.20 I am back at the house, boiling the kettle and starting to slip down into thinking properly. During a novel, this moment doesn’t exist. The novel insists itself through every single thought and out-manoeuvres the need for almost any kind of human interaction.
    Yes. I am STILL writing a novel. No. It’s not done yet.

  • Where Grace Dent Actually Likes to Eat
    Although my job is to heap fulsome praise on high-end restaurants, you’ll hear me often talk in equally florid terms about Pret a Manger. “As a Londoner with no family close by to care for me,” I heard myself say, in earnest recently, “Pret is a matriarchal figure in my life.
    A lot to be said for chain restaurants/outlets, for many reasons.

  • Creative Leadership
    In 1999 I made these four rules for myself to live by.
    As in business, so in life.

  • 20 Million Mosquitoes to Hit Fresno; That’s a Good Thing, Really
    The bug campaign, which starts Friday, is part of a plan by Alphabet Inc.’s Verily Life Sciences unit.
    Clever. But surely this kind of ‘tampering’ is… somewhere down the line, a bad thing?

  • Neiko Primus
    Neiko Primus had been in the gym for close to two hours, his shoelaces scraping the worn wooden floor and his bony arms tired from shooting, before he challenged a taller, stockier kid to a game of one-on-one.
    He certainly has the name to be famous, but yeah… give the kid a break!

  • ataribox
    Just leaving this here…

  • We Are Living in the Coen Brothers’ Darkest Comedy
    The Russians? HAL: Uh-huh. COX: The Russians? HAL: Uh-huh. Russian embassy, yeah. COX: Are you sure? HAL: Hey, the guy was not hard to follow. As you know. COX: Why the fuck would they go to the Russians?! Why the fuck?
    And who doesn’t love the Coen Brothers, right?

  • Apple’s risky balancing act with the next iPhone
    As there always are at this time of year, there are lots of rumors out there about what the next iPhone will be. This year we’re hearing that Apple is going to release a high-priced, next-generation phone in addition to the expected iPhone 7s and iPhone 7s Plus models.
    iPhone Pro is the rumour. Part of me thinks YES PLEASE, part of me hopes Apples confounds

  • Creation and consumption
    There’s a pretty common argument in tech that though of course there are billions more smartphones than PCs, and will be many more still, smartphones are not really the next computing platform, just a computing platform.
    Nicely summarise my one irk with most tech reporting. Tech people have the Curse of Knowledge.

  • Here’s an Abbreviated List of Everything Anthony Bourdain Hates
    Over the Fourth of July, instead of thinking about hot dogs, hamburgers or where he’d placed his half-full can of domestic beer, something entirely different was troubling Anthony Bourdain. Fuck BABY DRIVER.
    I don’t agree with all of them, and HATE is a strong word but have to admire the passion!

  • Men Are Apparently Adopting Ambiguous Pen Names to Sell Psychological Thrillers to Women 
    Title says it all. Really not sure what I think about this.

  • The predictable double standards of the tabloids turning on Louise Redknapp
    Once upon a time, Louise Redknapp was a good girl, loved by all, but particularly loved by men for how fetching she looked in a bikini. No mere Sexiest Woman Of The Year award for Louise – in 2004, FHM named her Sexiest Woman Of The Decade.
    FUCK THIS NOISE! Why can’t people just be left to be people?

  • The Rise and Fall of F. Lee Bailey, the Lawyer Who Set O.J. Simpson Free
    Lee Bailey is forever ready to share brutal opinions on the lawyers who have crossed him over the years. Marcia Clark, who in the midst of a row during the O.J. Simpson trial called him a liar? “A harridan,” he growls.
    Revealing but not surprising, given how he came across

  • The Tastiest Medicine
    Until about middle school, I got an annual ear infection, as well as a bout of strep throat about once every two years. For these ailments, I would inevitably be prescribed what was referred to in my home as “the pink stuff”.
    Hands up if you know what this is about without reading the article? *puts hands up*

  • This Rare Medical Condition Makes You Love Everyone
    Not always. People with Williams syndrome, a rare genetic condition, face problems every bit as challenging as those with autism, from learning difficulties to trouble forming friendships.
    Fascinating article on a condition I hadn’t even heard of.

  • Google Glass 2.0 Is a Startling Second Act
    Don’t call Heather Erickson a glasshole. Yes, that’s Google Glass on her frames. But she’s not using it to check her Facebook, dictate messages, or capture a no-hands video while riding a roller coaster. Erickson is a 30-year-old factory worker in rural Jackson, Minnesota.
    No real surprise this, but a few years ‘proving’ in industry and this kind of tech will swing back into public usage at some point in the future.

  • England Unveils New 10-Pound Note Featuring Jane Austen
    The Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, poses at Winchester Cathedral in England on Tuesday, with the new 10-pound note featuring the image of Jane Austen.
    A woman! The outrage! I bet it’s not even vegan…

  • Don’t Call Me the Girl in the Band
    Nandi Rose Plunkett is a vocalist and keyboardist in the indie rock band Pinegrove. She’s also the singer and multi-instrumentalist behind the synth-pop project Half Waif. I have been making music my whole life.
    Pinegrove are a band I’ve seen twice, this is a great piece from one of the members.

  • Wonder Woman is Great, But There’s a Real-Life Female Warrior You Need to Know About
    As one of the many people who crowded into theaters to watch Wonder Woman this summer, I couldn’t help but notice parallels between the Amazon princess and another, less widely known character: the real-life Chinese Nühanzi woman. Wonder Woman seemed like a breath of cinematic fresh air.
    More proof: women are awesome.

  • Hip-hop is bigger than rock music for the first time, thanks to nobody buying albums
    “Change—shit, I guess change is good for any of us,” Tupac raps at the start of one of his most beloved singles, recorded in 1995 and released the following year after his death.
    Or just a change in consumption, who buys albums of ANY kind these days?

  • Public Service Announcement: You Should Not Force Quit Apps on iOS
    The single biggest misconception about iOS is that it’s good digital hygiene to force quit apps that you aren’t using. The idea is that apps in the background are locking up unnecessary RAM and consuming unnecessary CPU cycles, thus hurting performance and wasting battery life.
    This! Double trouble if you’ve come to iOS from Android. Just SHTAP!

  • The world may have to spend as much as $7 trillion per year to remove carbon dioxide from the air
    The world has been slow to realize the immense financial and human costs of climate change. Would that change if we realized just how much worse it could get?
    The planet is so fucked.

  • Take a trip to Los Angeles’ new internet celebrity summer camp
    Jettzen Shea has a mop of pale blond hair and a voice that rings out like a little bell as he chimes in from the middle rows of Claremont McKenna College’s Pickford Auditorium. “I’m on Twitter,” he says.
    Part me is rolling my eyes HARD. The other part is sitting back and watching the changing of the guard. The internet will still have a lot to answer for in the future.

  • Linkin Park’s Chester Bennington Dead at 41
    Chester Bennington, best known as the lead singer of Linkin Park, has died, TMZ reports and bandmate Mike Shinoda confirms. His death was a suicide by hanging, according to the report. Bennington was 41 years old.
    Awful news. Mental health issues are real, and they don’t give a fuck who you are, rich or poor, famous or unknown. Make sure your loved ones know you are there. As are the Samaritans.

  • Why a Toaster Is a Design Triumph
    The “A Bit More” button doesn’t reinvent the appliance’s form. It finds its soul instead. Last year I fell in love with a toaster.
    It me! Not actually me, but this is totally in keeping with my last post on why I bought a new water bottle. Simple things people. Simple things.