The Facebook Comment that Ruined a Life – Dallas Observer
Approximately one hour after Justin Carter posted a sarcastic comment on a Facebook thread, his life began to unravel. The first reaction occurred behind the scenes, in another country. The 18-year-old Carter had no way of knowing that, while he did grunt work at a drapery shop in San Antonio, a person in Canada saw his comments — posted 60 days after the Sandy Hook school-shooting tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut — freaked out and initiated a 24-hour chain reaction of insanity that would wind up with Carter facing 10 years in prison.
We Didn’t Eat the Marshmallow. The Marshmallow Ate Us – New York Times
“In a series of famous experiments in the 1960s and ’70s conducted by the Stanford psychologist Walter Mischel, preschoolers were invited to sit alone in a room furnished only with a small desk. On the desk sat two marshmallows (or equivalently tempting treats) and a bell. The researcher told each child that he had to leave, but that when he returned, she could eat both marshmallows. If she wanted one marshmallow before then, however, she could ring the bell and eat one, but not both. Then the researcher shut the door, leaving the child alone with the forbidden marshmallows.”
Life as a Nonviolent Psychopath – the Atlantic
“After discovering that he had the brain of a psychopath, Fallon delved into his family tree and spoke with experts, colleagues, relatives, and friends to see if his behavior matched up with the imaging in front of him. He not only learned that few people were surprised at the outcome, but that the boundary separating him from dangerous criminals was less determinate than he presumed.”
The Inside Story of Tor, the Best Internet Anonymity Tool the Government Ever Built – Bloomberg Businessweek
“Tor, an acronym for “the onion router,” is software that provides the closest thing to anonymity on the Internet. Engineered by the Tor Project, a nonprofit group, and offered free of charge, Tor has been adopted by both agitators for liberty and criminals. It sends chat messages, Google searches, purchase orders, or e-mails on a winding path through multiple computers, concealing activities as the layers of an onion cover its core, encrypting the source at each step to hide where one is and where one wants to go. Some 5,000 computers around the world, volunteered by their owners, serve as potential hop points in the path, obscuring requests for a new page or chat. Tor Project calls these points relays.”
36 Hours on the Fake Campaign Trail with Donald Trump – BuzzFeed
The notion that he is simply too big — too presidential — for a measly job in the Albany Statehouse has temporarily quelled his insecurity. But after this morning, Trump can no longer escape the fact that his political “career” — a long con that the blustery billionaire has perpetrated on the country for 25 years by repeatedly pretending to consider various runs for office, only to bail out after generating hundreds of headlines — finally appears to be on the brink of collapse.
Hemingway’s Favourite Burger Recipe – BBC
Also notable is the sheer range of items thrown into the mix – India relish, capers, wine, parsley… This captures a “gusto that’s very characteristic” of Hemingway, Spanier says. “It’s indicative of his enjoyment of the pleasures of life,” and also the range of his tastes, from low-brow to high-brow. He was as comfortable on a boat with Cuban fisherman, Spanier says, as he was dining at the Ritz Hotel in Paris. As burgers go, this is quite ritzy.
The Parable of Argentina – The Economist
The real danger is inadvertently becoming the Argentina of the 21st century. Slipping casually into steady decline would not be hard. Extremism is not a necessary ingredient, at least not much of it: weak institutions, nativist politicians, lazy dependence on a few assets and a persistent refusal to confront reality will do the trick.
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Photo courtesy of Dain Sandoval.
