Jessica Testa has a lengthy article on BuzzFeed this week. The piece focuses on the televised suicide of a carjacker. It’s a great piece of journalism from an unexpected source, BuzzFeed. I don’t normally read BuzzFeed. That’s not a knock against BuzzFeed. They have section titles like “LOL”, “fail”, “wtf”, and “trashy” which tells me they are self-aware. Their articles typically do not appeal to me but this one article restored their position in my RSS feed reader.
A great Kickstarter from Zach Braff. Just sit and watch the money pour in. It went up by $60K in just the few minutes it took me to watch the video. Oh, that video. It’s good.
I grabbed one of the $100 backer spots. There’s 30 days left and it’s 1/3 funded, so I guess I will be headed to NY in 2014 for a special advance screening.
And yes, I used the most link-bait title I could find from the Kickstarter video.
Scruffy Thinking is a really good interview series. But I think I really love this last episode the best.
There’s No Whining on the Yacht
Kanen talks to Aaron Draplin (the creator of Field Notes) about work, success and keeping your head straight. I loved every single sentence of their informal discussion. You want inspiring quotes to model your life after? At least quote people that care about more than their own fortune.
I love this little fact and so hope hipsters bring this style back.
I really like this article by John Wilkins. It’s a good scientific disassembly of some recent theories about the origin of the English language.
History is hard to find, and we never have much confidence in our extensions beyond the data.
American Prometheus is the biography of American scientist Robert Openheimer. It's a wonderful and sad story of a passionate person caught in the machinations of lesser men.
I listened to the 26 hour audio book which is tolerable but not great. As an unabridged audio book it is complete but somewhat disjointed. It was compeling and fascinating none the less.
I can recommend this book to anyone that has the slightest interest or enjoyment of any of the following topics:
Poor Netflix. They’re really taking a beating lately. It’s a little sad. I really believe in what they were doing but recently they lost their way. Which brings me to the odd-ball title of this post.
As a customer, I am not thrilled with their recent changes. So much so, that I put my Netflix account on hold while they try to figure things out. However, I am thrilled with their existence.
"Faster, you bastaaaaaaards!"
The Kingsley Amis Memoirs is now on my reading list. Crushing that it's not on Audible.
Via In The Pipeline
There's been a lot of broken hearts about the edits Lucas has done to the Star Wars Trilogy over the years. In particular, there seems to be an enormous outcry over the new Bluray release. I don't think George Lucas is an idiot. I think he feels entitled to his edits and his vision and doesn't care what the rest of the world thinks. He's also smart enough to know that ANOTHER release of the un-edited Star Wars Trilogy should be come after he's made everyone desperately miss what they saw as children.
