Weekend Reading

  • Why Is It You Can Sense When Someone’s Staring at You?
    Say you’re engrossed in a task, scrolling through your phone or reading a book. Suddenly that creepy, prickly feeling grabs hold of you. Someone’s staring. You turn to find out who it is. Be they friend or foe, the feeling itself seems like an eerie sort of 6th sense.
    Wait, what, you mean this isn’t just me?!

  • 80+ Epic Design Fails You’ll Find Hard To Believe Actually Happened
    For the LOLs

  • How Can We Live Beautifully in an Age of Vitriol?
    These are days of snark and bluster. How do we live better and communicate more beautifully?
    Social media is amazing. Social media sucks. Like anything, balance can be found.

  • 30+ diversity and inclusion activists and organisations I look up to
    I’m not a massive fan of listicles, and I feel like they could become exclusionary very easily, but I wanted to talk about a few individuals and organisations I look up to on a daily basis in the space of diversity and inclusion.
    Expand your bubble.

  • Google ‘drops everything’ to fix burger emoji
    Google CEO Sundar Pichai has tasked employees returning to work on Monday morning with one key objective: fix the burger emoji. The tech giant’s big cheese (sorry) stepped in after a tweet from author Thomas Baekdal highlighted inconsistencies in different tech companies’ burger construction.
    Good grief. I mean look how awful it looks. Glad Google is focusing on the important stuff…

  • Why Americans have stopped eating leftovers
    American consumers throw away 27 million tons of food each year, according to the food waste coalition ReFED, clogging landfills, generating greenhouse gasses, and costing the economy an estimated $144 billion. The solution, however, could be simple: get people to eat leftovers again.
    I’m pretty guilty of this. Mostly batch cooking for one = boredom of the same base meal 3/4 nights in a row.

  • France Is Running Out of Butter for Its Croissants
    France’s much-loved croissant au beurre has run up against the forces of global markets. Finding butter for the breakfast staple has become a challenge across France.
    Sacre bleu!!

  • Kate Maltby: Damian Green probably has no idea how awkward I felt
    Westminster is an unpleasant place this week. After the Weinstein scandal we are asking new questions about the sexual abuse of power: all to the good. But for women who work in SW1, especially those of us who are outspoken feminists, everyone has particular questions.
    More reports. How the media is handling this is unsettingly awful.

  • Sony’s Aibo Robotic Dog Is Back, With Some New Tricks
    Sony Corp. is bringing back its iconic robotic dog, aibo. The new version (which Sony is marketing as “aibo” instead of the prior “AIBO”) comes equipped with a powerful computer chip, OLED displays for eyes and the ability to connect to mobile networks.
    But can it fetch me a beer?!

  • The worst Halloween candy can also put you in the hospital if you eat too much
    Even if you’re going to gorge on candy this Halloween, there’s one type you should absolutely only eat in moderation. On Oct. 30, the US Food and Drug Administration issued a reminder that black licorice poses serious health risks if eaten in excess.
    1. It’s liquorice (stoopid merkins) 2. It’s disgusting anyway, who cares?

  • A Japanese convenience store used drones to deliver fried chicken to Fukushima
    Almost seven years after the nuclear meltdown in Japan’s northeastern Fukushima prefecture that was triggered by an earthquake and tsunami, life is very slowly returning to normal. But in some areas, the conveniences of Japan’s ubiquitous convenience stores remain out of reach.
    Whilst it’s a frivolous headline, it has deeper meaning and offers some hope for remote areas

  • The Radical Paintings of Laura Owens
    Serious but friendly, a woman who rarely jokes but readily laughs, the Los Angeles artist Laura Owens, forty-seven years old, was pleasantly dishevelled in mom attire: shirt, baggy shorts, sneakers, big glasses.
    Love or loathe. The attitude is what sells this for me.

  • I spent a week with 8,000 worshippers of the fake, fantastical cult of zumba
    If going to church called for sweatbands instead of prayer books, salsa music in the place of scripture, and a near-insane amount of neon, it might look something like this.
    Ugh. Looks horrific. Sounds horrific. Yeah same reasons ‘religion’ doesn’t sit well with me.

  • Nigella delights the nation by using her spiralizer to make chips 
    When Nigella Lawson pulled a spiralizer out of an enormous wooden cupboard on her new TV show, At My Table, last night, I tensed up. I have loved Nigella for as long as I can remember because she gives us all permission to eat and enjoy food without feeling guilty about it.
    Love or loathe. CARBS ALWAYS WIN

  • Watch a Step-by-Step Breakdown of La La Land‘s Incredibly Complex, Off Ramp Opening Number
    La La Land, writer and director Damien Chazelle’s award-winning Valentine to Hollywood musicals, attracted legions of fans upon its release last December.
    One of my favourite movies of last year, this opening number was incredible.

  • Astro-Matic Baseball: Houston’s Grand Experiment
    In the late 1980s, when people got too drunk and were kicked out of the other casinos in Lake Tahoe, they ended up at High Sierra, a place where there was no such thing as being too drunk. Sometimes they staggered over to a blackjack table manned by a young dealer named Sig Mejdal.
    I’m not a baseball fan, but this is incredible story from a few years ago, that just came true.

  • Inside The Great Poop Emoji Feud
    It’s been a trying year for the world’s most visible institutions. Congressional gridlock, partisan divide, and federal indictments torment Washington.
    Poop? POOP? It’s POO, drop that last P! Whaddya mean I’m focusing on the wrong thing?