The Procrastination Doom Loop—and How to Break It – The Atlantic
“When scientists have studied procrastination, they’ve typically focused on how people are miserable at weighing costs and benefits across time. For example, everybody recognizes, in the abstract, that it’s important to go to the dentist every few months. The pain is upfront and obvious—dental work is torture—and the rewards of cleaner teeth are often remote, so we allow the appointment to slip through our minds and off our calendars. Across several categories including dieting, saving money, and sending important emails, we constantly choose short and small rewards (whose benefits are dubious, but immediate) over longer and larger payouts (whose benefits are obvious, but distant).”
The Brutal 35-Year War Between Sony, Stephen Popovich & Meat Loaf – Billboard
“When CBS claimed it was entitled to recoup some $6 million in expenses for “Bat Out of Hell” and all the other albums put out by Cleveland International, Popovich’s partners walked away, leaving him the sole owner of the label. Meanwhile, “Bat Out of Hell” continued to sell year after year. Sony Music reissued the album in CD format after acquiring CBS in 1987, and sales spiked again. Popovich still never saw a royalty check. (The album’s creators evidently fared no better. In a 1993 interview for Q Magazine, Steinman said of himself and Meat Loaf, “We haven’t been paid on ‘Bat’ since 1980.”)”
How to Be Polite – Medium
People silently struggle from all kinds of terrible things. They suffer from depression, ambition, substance abuse, and pretension. They suffer from family tragedy, Ivy-League educations, and self-loathing. They suffer from failing marriages, physical pain, and publishing. The good thing about politeness is that you can treat these people exactly the same. And then wait to see what happens. You don’t have to have an opinion. You don’t need to make a judgment. I know that doesn’t sound like liberation, because we live and work in an opinion-based economy. But it is. Not having an opinion means not having an obligation. And not being obligated is one of the sweetest of life’s riches.
The Kennewick Man Finally Freed to Share His Secrets – Smithsonian
“The skull, while clearly old, did not look Native American. At first glance, Chatters thought it might belong to an early pioneer or trapper. But the teeth were cavity-free (signaling a diet low in sugar and starch) and worn down to the roots—a combination characteristic of prehistoric teeth. Chatters then noted something embedded in the hipbone. It proved to be a stone spearpoint, which seemed to clinch that the remains were prehistoric. He sent a bone sample off for carbon dating. The results: It was more than 9,000 years old.”
I GHOSTWRITE CHINESE STUDENTS’ IVY LEAGUE ADMISSIONS ESSAYS – VICE
“I’m a black market college admissions essay writer, and over the last three years I’ve written over 350 fraudulent essays for wealthy Chinese exchange students. Although my clients have varied from earnest do-gooders to factory tycoon’s daughters who communicate primarily through emojis, they all have one thing in common: They’re unable to write meaningful sentences.”
The real world is undermining Silicon Valley’s apolitical fantasyland – The Washington Post
“Most of the time, tech companies would simply rather disengage from the squabbling that’s characteristic of Congress and city hall. George Mason University researcher Adam Thierer calls this the principle of “permissionless innovation”: When businesses don’t have to justify their experiments to anyone, they can simply focus on building the next great tool or platform. This is the bedrock of startup culture, in which low barriers to entry allow the best ideas to bubble to the top whether you’re a college dropout or have a Ph.D hanging on your wall.”
The Vaccine Truthers: why parents shun life-saving shots – Toronto Life
“A new generation of parents are refusing to vaccinate their kids. They’re convinced the shots are far more dangerous than the diseases they’re meant to prevent, and they’re willing to become social pariahs to prove it.”
___
Photo courtesy of Travis Nep Smith.
