Weekend Reading

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  • Smurfette’s Roots
    When we were kids, my brother collected plastic Smurf figurines. While they were all fundamentally the same (blue body, white pants and white hat, except for Papa Smurf, who sported a red hat and white beard), each had different accessories based on their archetypal traits.
    I collected these too, in fact, in my younger rebellious days, I think I shop-lifted Papa Smurf!
  • Survival of the Friendliest
    Violence has been the sire of all the world’s values,” wrote poet Robinson Jeffers in 1940. “What but the wolf’s tooth whittled so fine the fleet limbs of the antelope? What but fear winged the birds, and hunger jeweled with such eyes the great goshawk’s head?”
    It’s nice to be nice!
  • TV show contestants spend year in wilderness – with no one watching
    After a year cut off from modern life in the Scottish Highlands, imagine re-emerging to find a world where Donald Trump is US president, Britain has left the EU and Leicester won the Premier League.
    I remember this show starting but wow, what a weird world it is for them now.
  • What happens when you stare at the sun?
    Lovecraftian monsters really do exist. There are vast burning demons, things from far beyond our tiny world, things that you can’t even look at without going incurably mad. A being that is absolutely here but whose immenseness extends out into the cosmic distance of a fevered incomprehension.
    Someone should write a song about this.
  • The only line comedy shouldn’t cross is the no-laughter line
    In 1996, the late American comedian George Carlin opened his set at the Beacon Theater in New York with a blistering question: ‘Why is it that most of the people who are against abortion are people you wouldn’t wanna fuck in the first place?’
    If you enjoyed this, find a copy of the documentary The Aristocrats.
  • How Cyril the Swan became the UK’s most notorious mascot
    The future looked bleak for Eddie Donne. In March 1998, he was 21 years old and living in Swansea, a gray, industrial seaside city known ironically as the Welsh Riviera.
    BUT WHY CYRIL?
  • A Place of Absorption
    It’s hard to know what to do when someone says, “this is the knife I was going to use to kill you.”
    Harrowing article.
  • Why Millennial Pink Refuses to Go Away
    Even if you haven’t heard of Millennial Pink, or didn’t know that it went by this name (it’s also known as Tumblr Pink and Scandi Pink), you’ve seen it.
    Go away? When did it arrive?!
  • This Object Has Been Sprayed With the World’s Blackest Material, and It’s Freaking Us Out
    Well, we’ve finally cracked it. Scientists have finally figured out how to paint a portal to another dimension, as prophesied by Loony Tunes’ the Roadrunner. Who wants to try driving a (very small) truck right through that gaping void circle?
    Yup. Freaking me out too!
  • Before and After Chuck Berry
    Chuck Berry himself would be the first to admit he didn’t invent rock ’n’ roll, but he came to define it in a series of iconic singles made between 1955 and 1959.
    Wasn’t aware of some of this, legendary stuff.
  • There are people who spend their time yelling at the Mars Curiosity rover on Twitter
    Have we actually been to Mars? For a small segment of the population, the answer is no, and they like to tweet at the Mars Curiosity rover claiming it’s all a hoax.
    Ahhh internets, never change.
  • Ode to a Bloody Mary: A Perfect Blend of Restoration and Celebration
    The first bartending gig I ever had was in Madison, Wisconsin. I was twenty years old, knew nothing about spirits or cocktails, and only wanted to do, say, and look as cool as the older bartenders I admired. But if I wanted to accomplish that, I needed to work brunch service.
    Not a massive Bloody Mary fan but love the geek factor.
  • When Every Day Is Groundhog Day
    On the first night of previews for Groundhog Day the musical, as the lights go down, it’s safe to say that most of the audience already knows the story that’s about to unfold.
    I may have posted this link before.
  • Winners of the 2017 Sony World Photography Awards
    The Sony World Photography Awards, an annual competition hosted by the World Photography Organisation, has announced the winners of its Open categories and National categories for 2017. This year’s contest attracted 227,596 entries from 183 countries.
    *throws camera in the sea*
  • The Squid
    For my money, there are two (large, public) companies that most interest me right now. I find them to be the most fascinating and exciting companies in the broader tech sphere. Amazon and Netflix.¹ Amazon is obviously already an absolute behemoth. It’s the whale.
    It’s easy to forget just how massive Amazon is these days.
  • Domino’s has already outperformed every tech stock, now robots will deliver its pizzas
    Over the last decade, the stock price of Domino’s Pizza has crushed that of Apple, Google, Amazon, and Facebook mainly because it stopped making pizza that tasted like cardboard. Now it’s innovating on the labor front with plans to test robots as substitutes for your friendly pizza delivery guy.
    I don’t have shares in Domino’s but I do frequently ‘invest’.
  • The Disease of More
    Success is often the first step toward disaster. The idea of progress is often the enemy of actual progress.
    I’ve been working on less for a while now, it is possible.
  • 50 Reasons Why Everyone Should Want More Walkable Streets
    As more cities try to improve walkability–from car-free “superblocks” in Barcelona to heat-protected walkways in Dubai–a new report outlines the reasons behind the shift, the actions that cities can take to move away from a car-centric world, and why walkability matters.
    Alas, nothing in this article about removing hills…
  • Read This Before You Ever Make Fun of Comic Sans Again
    Albert Okura lives and breathes the legend of Ray Kroc – he even bought the first McDonald’s location – and he won’t stop until his own franchise is a household name.
    There is always a flip side.
  • This Bonkers New Coffee Has 300 Percent More Caffeine Than Your Morning Starbucks
    I think the title speaks for itself here.
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