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Quick Links for October 2017

October 31
'I Forgot My PIN': An Epic Tale of Losing $30,000 in Bitcoin
This seems timely: impeachment expert Cass Sunstein's new book, Impeachment: A Citizen's Guide, is out
Eye-popping fact of the day: last year, "a new billionaire was created in Asia every two days"
October 30
An interview with a cute couple who have a weekly picnic on the Brooklyn Promenade
Spotify's The Birth of Cool playlist
Man vs. Child: One Dad's Guide to the Weirdness of Parenting by @DougMoe
October 27
Reconstruction: a sequel to Slate's history of American slavery, led by @rebeccaonion and @jbouie, looks amazing
James Gleick (@JamesGleick) on the physics and cultural history of time travel
"Sometime in the next 40 years, robots are going to take your job." More heat than light but still worth a read
Joyce Weisbecker, one of the first video game programmers, built games for the RCA Studio II right out of HS in 1976
October 26
Choire Sicha (@Choire) on what the NYT Styles section is (everything) and is not (everything else)
October 25
Physicists have yet to find any asymmetry between matter and antimatter => This universe should not be able to exist
Four federal employees who quit their jobs after Trump took over share their stories
Ellen Ullman (author of Close to the Machine and A Life In Code) discusses why programmers need the humanities
The 2020 Census could be a demographic and democratic disaster
Positively dynamite: "Here's A Superhuman Volleyball Play From Three Different Angles"
Electric Literature had a contest for 280-character short stories. Here are the winners:
Farewell to the Weirdos' Lounge (the American Museum of Natural History's Morgan Hall of Gems and Minerals)
October 24
Climate change is wreaking havoc on olive and olive oil harvests in the Mediterranean and elsewhere.
The Meaning of a Mustache: how Louis Pasteur, white-collar work, and new cultural norms reshaped masculinity
An interview with novelist (and Pulitzer and MacArthur winner) Viet Thanh Nguyen:
"Liking things before they were cool is good (or at least, not an egregious hipster trait)"
Stevie Wonder to perform "Talking Book," "Innervisions" albums for 2017 holiday benefit
"Consent is a function of power. You have to have a modicum of power to give it."
October 23
ESPN shut down its partnership with Barstool after just a week.
Speaking of "didn't like it," I can't exactly RECOMMEND this Wired feature on AI & intimacy, but it feels important
Molly Sauter reviews Tim O'Reilly's new book WTF. (She didn't like it.)
Hmm, pushing a huge chunk of human emotions, commerce, labor, and politics into a few social platforms is… odd
Craig Mod and Kevin Kelly chat about world travel, the history of photography, and learning how to do things better
It literally means "leafdead."
October 20
Great summary of Halt and Catch Fire. "Computers aren't the thing. They're the thing that gets you to the thing."
1-800-EAT-SHIT Finally Publishes Decades Of Reckless-Driving Data
OMG, there's a baby formula dispenser that uses Keurig/Nespresso-style pods
Unbelievable story: woman gets catfished by someone using a model's photos then ends up falling in love w/ the model
October 19
A love letter to the 747; "the 747-100 was nearly twice as long as the Wright brothers' entire first flight"
Wirecutter Review: The Best Paper Towel for Mopping Up Tears
James Hamblin quit showering and his life continued (I also cut way back on showers and it's been fine)
Kickstarter for a book of 50 handwritten letters that answer the question "What's worth preserving?"
October 18
Leave Me Alone with the Recipes: The Life, Art, and Cookbook of Cipe Pineles
High school football teams from around the country are disbanding
Historians Suggest 'Goodfellas' YouTube Clips May Be Fragments Of Larger Work
Are the Health Plans Trump Promoted Any Good? (Per Betteridge, of course the answer is "no".)
The new version of AlphaGo (which learns from itself, not from humans) beat the old version 100 games to 0
If you leave this open in your browser, it will mine cryptocurrency to donate to Puerto Rican hurricane relief
October 17
George Saunders' Lincoln in the Bardo wins the 2017 Man Booker Prize
"We shouldn't impose a set of rules that will create moral outrage, even if that...seems stupid to economists"
I wouldn't say "Goodbye Gatekeepers" necessarily. It's a changing of the guard allowing temporary gatecrashing.
The Gay Architects of Classic Rock
Noo!!! They're redesigning the Hall of Gems & Minerals at the Natural History Museum in NYC. Goodbye carpeting!
October 16
Noni Noni: a fun toy where you can draw shapes or letters that are converted to colorful 3D visuals
LIGO Detects Fierce Collision of Neutron Stars for the First Time
No Questions Asked: an app-driven guide that challenges participants to get out and experience NYC
October 13
Cameron Russell is sharing ppl's stories of sexual assault in the fashion & photography industries
Grace Bonney of Design*Sponge writes about how the business of blogging has changed over the years
October 12
Joanna Goddard: On Sexual Harassment
The economic repercussions of Dutch tulipmania were actually "pretty minor" and many of the myths aren't true
Due to a little-known provision in US copyright law, The Internet Archive is now hosting books pub'd from 1923-1941
Half the universe's missing matter has just been finally found
Watching Blade Runner for the first time, Sarah Gailey noticed a "not so very strange" world in the film
Always worth a look: the shortlist for the Designs of the Year by London's Design Museum
The Rock Test: A Hack for Men Who Don't Want To Be Accused of Sexual Harassment
A dashboard showing Puerto Rico's recovery status from Maria (still only 17% power & 55% phone service)
October 11
Play Wolfenstein 3D in your browser
A NY Times staff photographer shares How Technology Has Changed News Photography Over 40 Years
Winners of the 2017 MacArthur "genius grant", including @nhannahjones & @trevorpaglen
October 10
Who politicizes guns and gun violence? The NRA.
Sideways tanked its sales, but merlot is on a comeback (every time I see a bottle, I hear that line in my head)
Looking forward to this: Walter Isaacson's biography of Leonardo da Vinci
Elevator etiquette in Japan: "If you are the first to enter an empty elevator, you are the new elevator captain."
Led by David Boies & Larry Lessig, Equal Votes plans to sue the government to get rid of the Electoral College
Amazon is adapting Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash for television
October 6
60 years ago, the launch of Sputnik signaled a new age for humanity
Slashdot celebrates its 20th birthday
October 3
Patagonia has an online shop where people can trade-in or buy used Patagonia clothes
Worth reading: Tyler Cowen's philosophy of interviewing. "Appreciation is an underappreciated art and skill."
It's Decorative Gourd Season, Motherfuckers
"Oxfam rarely responds to humanitarian emergencies in the US and other wealthy countries" but will in Puerto Rico
Annual cost of gun violence in the United States: $229 billion (slightly less than Medicaid spending)
LIGO scientists awarded the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery of gravitational waves
October 2
Josh Marshall: My Mass Shooting Ritual
The Instant Pot is on sale at Amazon today for $70
If Newtown Wasn't Enough, Why Would Las Vegas Be Enough?
September 2017 Archives »
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