homeaboutarchivenewslettermembership!
aboutarchivemembership!
aboutarchivemembers!

Quick Links for May 2015

Gallup: Americans continue their shift to the left on "moral issues"
In 2015, texting reigns supreme. "Who saw that coming? The return of the telegram? Pretty much nobody."
In 1938, the NY Times discovered the cheeseburger, then a wacky California foodstuff
BuzzFeed & Eyebeam partner up on The Open Lab; "let's build drones with lasers and show everyone how to make them"
FIFA is finally nailed by US for years of corruption; now do the Olympics!
New kids app: Simple Machines. I'll be fighting w/ the kids over this one. "No, Daddy's playing right now..."
Fascinating how much this robot that learns through trial & error resembles a toddler in trying to figure things out
This oral history of Kevin Garnett reminded me how much I love him
Photos of the eruption of Mount St. Helens from 35 years ago
In 1985, Edmund Hillary and Neil Armstrong visited the North Pole together
Matt O'Leary is having Watson, IBM's robotic chef, cook for him for a week
This is Vin Diesel breakdancing in the 1980s
Truck driving is the most common job across most of the US. What happens when those trucks drive themselves?
Kobe? Shaq? LeBron? No, Tim Duncan is the best NBA player since Jordan.
Karl Ove Knausgaard writes about Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik, who killed 77 people in 2011
Every episode of Mad Men, ranked from good to perfect
100 predictions on how Mad Men will end, "because one of them has to be right"
From the archives of The Atlantic: Tapping a Maple on a Cold Vermont Morning by Ken Cosgrove
Colony collapse disorder continues unabated; over 42% of US honeybee colonies died in the past 12 months
Here's part two of Wired's piece on the downfall of Silk Road. The bit about the actual raid is riveting.
The rate of derailments continues to fall and train travel is still much safer than car travel
Elizabeth Spiers deftly skewers the absurd "Startup Castle" guidelines for residents
Ten writing tips from William Zinsser, author of On Writing Well
Books That Literally All White Men Own. I've read 15 of the 79 and own only a couple.
Ta-Nehisi Coates has a memoir coming out in Sept: Between the World and Me
Belt sander racing is a thing
"Biologists have created chicken embryos with dinosaur-like faces..."
Lots to do on Obscura Day 2015, "An International Celebration of Unusual Places"
Brad Bird's next movie will be The Incredibles 2
What did people ask of 1690s advice columnists? "Q: Dancing, is it lawful?"
"Our Demand Is Simple: Stop Killing Us", the 21st-century civil rights movement in the US
According to a report in the LA Times, conceptual artist Chris Burden has died at the age of 69
Why Not Me? Mindy Kaling's new book is due out in September
Don't fix up La Guardia Airport. Close it down.
Interview with a Hollywood linguist, responsible for creating the fictional languages of Game of Thrones, etc.
Adam Kuban, king of the pizza bloggers, is making his own pies now to great acclaim
Messi "just removed the batteries from Jerome Boateng and tossed him into the recycle bin"
The NY Times is starting a new series on "being transgender today"
How do Scientific American's predictions from 10 years ago hold up? Not good but true scientific progress takes time.
With 2 episodes left, Mad Men might still be on track for Lindsey Green's "Don Draper is D.B. Cooper" ending
PayPill: instead of a password, you'd log into PayPal using an ingestible pill
"Just because genetically modified crops have been deemed safe to ingest doesn't make them safe to grow."
The Ultimate Guide to Pinball: history, pinball today, and strategy from the pros
By any reasonable definition, T. Rex is more closely related to sparrows than to Stegosaurus
The Lost Laughs of Letterman, the best jokes that got cut from the show
Great interview with footballer Mario Balotelli by an 11-year-old; "Are you happy on the inside, though?"
"You can quit the city and...the Internet, but you can never quit telling people how much better you are than them"
Just ordered my Nextdraft t-shirt
Harper Lee is going to write the rest of the Game of Thrones books; "That slow bastard was just taking so long..."
Atul Gawande on the problem of unnecessary medical care
Half of all text on Instagram includes emoji characters
Every Question In Every Q&A Session Ever; "This is more of an observation than a question..."
April 2015 Archives »