July 1, 2018
👑 😇 🏀
The King in the City of Angels Under cover of darkness and all by himself, Magic Johnson arrived at LeBron James’ Brentwood house at 9:01 p.m. on Saturday. He knew — he just knew — that if he could look James in the eye and talk to him, they’d connect. They had too much in common for that not to happen. [more inside]
Monster Mashers
47-Second Clip From 'Family Ties' Season 3 Now Available on YouTube
"Touting the prestigious addition to their comedy portfolio, executives from YouTube announced Monday that a 47-second clip from the third season of Family Ties is now available on their video-sharing website." [more inside]
Winner of The White Review Short Story Prize for 2018
"The Great Awake" by Julia Armfield (The White Review, April 2018): "When I was twenty-seven, my Sleep stepped out of me like a passenger from a train carriage, looked about my room for several seconds and sat down in the chair beside my bed. This was before it became so usual, the shadow-forms of Sleep in halls and kitchens, before the mass displacement left so many people wakeful at uncertain hours of the night." Shortlist announcement. Winning story announcement. Two nominees previously.
"Everybody looks interesting in a Hirschfeld drawing"
Al Hirschfeld was an American caricaturist best known for his black and white portraits of Broadway stars and other celebrities. Born in 1903, his career, spanning over 80 years and consisting of thousands of works, made him famous for drawings that were often said to look more like the person they pictured than the actual person himself. His linear calligraphic style captured the essences the people, plays and movies he drew. [more inside]
The World Cup’s Mysterious Path to Russia
NYT's podcast "The Daily" from June 22 [~25m]: The 2018 World Cup is now underway in Russia. The story of how it ended up there involves some names you might recognize: James Comey, Robert Mueller and Christopher Steele. Guest: Ken Bensinger, author of the forthcoming book “Red Card: How the U.S. Blew the Whistle on the World’s Biggest Sports Scandal.” [more inside]
Awesome Text Post* (*not actually awesome)
Linking symmetry and conservation laws, she changed physics forever
"It’s not easy to find quotes of Noether reflecting on the significance of her work. Once she made a discovery, she seemed to move on to the next thing. She referred to her own Ph.D. thesis as 'crap,' or 'Mist' in her native German. But Noether recognized that she changed mathematics: 'My methods are really methods of working and thinking; this is why they have crept in everywhere anonymously,' she wrote to a colleague in 1931." [more inside]
"It's nothing like a broken leg"
"In the last few years I have lost count of the times mental illness has been compared to a broken leg. Mental illness is nothing like a broken leg." [SL Guardian] [TW: Suicidality] [more inside]
Montreal Moving Day: what happens when a whole city moves house at once?
1 July is Canada Day. But in Quebec, which has twice had referendums on independence, it’s when tenancies traditionally end – leading to mayhem on the streets. [more inside]
A Joyous Celebration of the 1×1 Round Eye Tile
Sheep (YouTube, 5:46) is an animated short film created with Lego. It cleaned up at the 2017 Brickfilmers Guild Film Festival, receiving awards for Best Cinematography, Best Story and Screen Play, Best Sound Effects, Best Music Score, and Best Brickfilm. [more inside]
Rethinking journalism through the lens of mediation and psychology
Amanda Ripley of The Atlantic spent three months working with mediators, psychologists, and rabbis to learn how to disrupt toxic narratives and help people open up to new ideas. After spending more than 50 hours in training for various forms of dispute resolution, I realized that I’ve overestimated my ability to quickly understand what drives now people to do what they do. I have overvalued reasoning in myself and others and undervalued pride, fear and the need to belong. I’ve been operating like an economist, in other words — an economist from the 1960s. [more inside]
Economic Science Fiction
Someone once said that it's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.
"But really, once you start looking, economics is everywhere in science fiction":
an extensive interview with the editor of SF magazine Vector all about money, markets, crypto, Le Guin, Doctorow, scarcity and postscarcity, supply and demand, AI economic planning, digital platforms and national deficits, and what the hell economics actually even is.
*Your* Netflix Is Special [SLYT 7min 26 sec]
*Your* Netflix Is Special - infact very individually, especially, catered to *YOUR* personal tastes. It might come as a surprise to you that the Netflix experience you get from using the service is no where universal - and it's not just about what media is available in differing geographical regions. [more inside]
"We will change the world, starting from the very beginning."
Parent coaching, and specifically, home visiting, is not new. The most famous study, which took place in Jamaica in the 1970s, showed that well-trained home visitors supporting poor mothers with weekly visits for two years led to big improvements in children’s cognition, behavior, and future earnings. One group of infants in that program who received coaching in their earliest years earned 25% more than a control group more than 20 years later. But Brazil’s ambition is audacious.
Grass roots LGBT history: a thread
This is a thread about what my friend found in her attic. (Single link Twitter thread by Gavin McGregor, best to read first.) [more inside]
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