How the Other Half Lifts: What Your Workout Says About Your Social Class – Pacific Standard
“By chasing pure strength, in other words, packing on all that muscle, I had violated the unspoken prejudices—and dearly held self-definitions—of my social group.”
Why Myers-Briggs Is Totally Useless, but Wildly Popular – The New York Times
“The Myers-Briggs test, for those few who haven’t been called upon to take it, assigns people personality types based on four sets of opposing qualities: extroverted/introverted, sensing/intuiting, thinking/feeling and perceiving/judging. If that sounds unscientific, it may be: Mr. Stromberg writes that the test’s categories were developed without the benefit of any systematic psychological experimentation.”
Musical Gold – The New Yorker
“The Carpenters had the very thing for Allain: a Stradivari violin that had just gone on the market. It was lying in its silk-lined case in the parlour down the hall. The seller, Lauren explained, was “in a liquidity crunch.” Lauren, who was a senior account manager at Google until she and her brothers started the business, four years ago, is shrewd and practical. Discretion about the seller’s identity was necessary, she said: “Our family deals a lot with the three D’s—distress, divorce, and, unfortunately, death.” The violin, which dated from Stradivari’s so-called golden period, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, was in good, if not perfect, condition. The price was in the low millions.”
Mommy Police With Real Handcuffs – Bloomberg
“A week ago, a woman was charged with leaving her child in the car while she went into a store. Her 11-year-old child. This week, a woman was arrested for allowing her 9-year-old daughter to go to the park alone. Which raises just one question: America, what the heck is wrong with you?”
We All Got Trolled – Medium
“To the wonder and glee of his followers online, weev continued to come at them “live from prison,” like some dot-com Johnny Cash, even after he was transferred to another facility, the Allenwood Federal Correctional Complex, a low-security prison in rural Pennsylvania. With his new outlet through SoundCloud, weev felt like he could breathe again; his life behind bars started to take shape. In Allenwood, he befriended a Deadhead in on LSD charges, who taught him how to play Dungeons & Dragonsusing paper dice. He taught members of the Aryan Brotherhood to sing “Springtime for Hitler” from the Mel Brooks movie The Producers.”
I Killed At the Movies – AV Club
“Roger Ebert was very conscious of himself as a performer and a voice, and of the idea that he was transmitting something to his readers and viewers. His mature writing—which became more speech-like after he lost the ability to speak—is laid out like crisp teleprompter copy, so that readers who’d grown up watching him on TV couldn’t help but hear his speaking voice in every review.”
Tungsten: The Perfect Metal for Bullets and Missiles – BBC
“A century or so ago the world had no use for it – it was almost impossible to shape or work the stuff. Yet now we use tungsten to write with, to traverse glaciers, to emit X-rays and to destroy buildings without the use of explosives.”
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Photo courtesy of Stefano Corso.
