How to Be Polite
“Politeness buys you time. It leaves doors open. I’ve met so many people whom, if I had trusted my first impressions, I would never have wanted to meet again. And yet?—?many of them are now great friends.”
Posts Tagged "compelling read"
The Memory Never Forgets: LeBron James and the Gift/Curse of Eidetic Memory
“When an entire life is perpetually available, that life exists, in a sense, forever in present tense. And sifting through a perpetual and onrushing flood of memories? That’s apparently less fun than it sounds. It’s hard, after all, to erase bad memories when you can’t erase any of them at all.”
My Militia Weekend: A Liberal, Female Blogger at the 2014 Alaska Militia, Prepper, and Survivalist Rendezvous
“[…] I really don’t want to exit and reenter ‘the perimeter’ right now. So, after doing a terrain assessment of the inside of my car, and a supply check, I opt for Plan B. I wait for the patrol to go by, and launch Operation ‘Pee in My Travel Mug.'”
Her House of Cards: Molly Bloom, on Running a Private, Weekly Poker Game for Hollywood’s Elite
“He picked up his backpack and followed me into the bedroom, opening the bag as soon as I shut the door. He knew what I wanted: he had $250,000 in cash and another $500,000 in Bellagio chips. As I had explained to him when we met earlier, I couldn’t extend him credit his first time at the game, so by bringing $750,000 he would be able to buy in 15 times that night.”
Shame Eats Earn Shame Tweets: Matt Haughey Attempts to Curb Bad Habits Through Automation and Geolocation
“A few months ago, I got into two bad habits that involve inserting hot garbage into various holes in my body. One is my ears, whenever I continuously listen to today’s hottest pop music on the ‘Pure Pop’ channel in iTunes radio. The other is my mouth, when I started eating fast food fairly regularly.”
An Oral History of The West Wing
Fans of The West Wing, check out this great behind-the-scenes interview with several cast members and writers from the show. It’s been ages since I’ve seen it, but reading this made me want to re-watch the entire series (or at least, the first four), all over again.
The Mathematics of Murder: Autonomous Robots and Choosing Who to Kill
“Your robot, the one you paid good money for, has chosen to kill you. Better that, its collision-response algorithms decided, than a high-speed, head-on collision with a smaller, non-robotic compact. There were two people in that car, to your one. The math couldn’t be simpler.”
Congitive Lode: Succinct Tidbits on Consumer Behavior, Psychology, and Bias
Cognitive Lode is a beautiful and simple site, focusing on what it calls “brain gems for decision makers.” It’s a small listing of some really interesting terms like
the Von Restorff Effect (items that stand out from their peers are more memorable) and Round Pricing Preference (our perception that round numbers are more trustworthy and represent higher quality).
A Walk to the End of the World: One Man’s Trek to “The Far Lands” of Minecraft
“Markus Persson, the game’s creator, planned for these worlds to be infinitely large: if a player kept walking in a single direction, the game would create more of the world in front of him, like an engineer forever laying track for an advancing train.”
Privacy and MagicBands: Disney and the Meat Space Data Race
“Why? Because they don’t want their database to get confused and think that you, a 45-year-old man, rode the teacups instead of your little son Timmy.This is one of the first examples I’ve seen of physical design (e.g., monogramming and coloring) for the sake of digital data purity.”
The Incredible Buddha Boy
“The Hyatt lobby is empty except for rows of Buddha statues: a maze with no guests. The Business Center manageress not only has heard of the boy but is also of the opinion that he is being fed by snakes. Their venom, she says, is actually milk to him.”
The Flying Tomato Would Rather You Not Call Him That Anymore
“When White was 15, he flew to Sapporo for the Toyota Big Air contest. Some of the other riders gathered before the event to discuss dividing the purse – including the winner’s $50,000 and a Japanese car – regardless of how they placed. White refused to go along and won. The promoters gave him an extra $15,000 cash instead of the car. White kept the $65,000 for himself.”
Tom Rasberry, Mike the Hog-a-Nator, and the Crazy Ants That Are Slowly Taking Over Texas
“Entomologists report that the crazy ants, like other ants, seem drawn to electronic devices – car stereos, circuit boxes, machinery. But with crazy ants, so many will stream inside a device that they form a single, squirming mass that completes a circuit and shorts it. Crazy ants have ruined laptops this way and, according to one exterminator, have also temporarily shut down chemical plants.”
An Introvert’s Guide to Better Presentations
“The next step is to realize that those hundreds of pairs of eyes aren’t there to kill you, but to learn from you. They’re not lions and you’re not a zebra separated from the pack, they’re all monkeys and you’re the prettiest monkey and they desperately want you to tell them where the best bananas are located that will turn them into pretty monkeys as well.”
The Allure of Automation in an Imperfect World
“Automation has become so sophisticated that on a typical passenger flight, a human pilot holds the controls for a grand total of just three minutes. What pilots spend a lot of time doing is monitoring screens and keying in data. They’ve become, it’s not much of an exaggeration to say, computer operators.”