What does living in a dictatorship feel like? kottke.org

It’s a mistake to think a dictatorship feels intrinsically different on a day-to-day basis than a democracy does. I’ve lived in one dictatorship and visited several others—there are still movies and work and school and shopping and memes and holidays.

Bored People Quit randsinrepose.com

“I’m quitting. I’m joining my good friend to found a start-up. This is my two weeks’ notice.”

What Do We Do with the Art of Monstrous Men? theparisreview.org

When you’re having a moral feeling, self-congratulation is never far behind. You are setting your emotion in a bed of ethical language, and you are admiring yourself doing it. We are governed by emotion, emotion around which we arrange language. The transmission of our virtue feels extremely important, and weirdly exciting. […] The psychic theater of the public condemnation of monsters can be seen as a kind of elaborate misdirection: nothing to see here. I’m no monster. Meanwhile, hey, you might want to take a closer look at that guy over there.

Inside One of America’s Last Pencil Factories nytimes.com

Over the past few years, the photographer Christopher Payne visited the factory dozens of times, documenting every phase of the manufacturing process. His photographs capture the many different worlds hidden inside the complex’s plain brick exterior.

21st Century Landscapes medium.com

With the onset of the Information Age, the 21st Century promises to bring another change in the human impact on Earth’s environment. In this image series, Planet explores landscapes unique to this century—high-resolution satellite images of landscapes that have been completely transformed since January 1, 2000.

Life Inside China's Total Surveillance State youtube.com

China has turned the northwestern region of Xinjiang into a vast experiment in domestic surveillance. WSJ investigated what life is like in a place where one's every move can be monitored with cutting-edge technology.

The Gambler’s Ruin of Small Cities (Wonkish) nytimes.com

Are there policy implications from this diagnosis? Maybe. There are arguably social costs involved in letting small cities implode, so that there’s a case for regional development policies that try to preserve their viability. But it’s going to be an uphill struggle. In the modern economy, which has cut loose from the land, any particular small city exists only because of historical contingency that sooner or later loses its relevance.

The History Behind China’s Obsession With Hot Water sixthtone.com

Today, almost every government body, business, and school administrative office in China boasts a hot water dispenser. The nation’s high-speed trains, a source of pride for many Chinese, are all required to have water dispensers capable of providing piping hot water at a moment’s notice. Water bottles may be optional at high-level meetings in China, but a teacup isn’t, and there are often servers tasked with patrolling the room to ensure that nobody goes without hot water. One of the most important standards Chinese people use when judging an organization or facility is whether or not hot water is accessible at all times.

L'Istat conferma che in Italia si legge pochissimo facebook.com

Ricordo ancora una sciagurata campagna per la promozione della lettura di una ventina di anni fa, dove gli spot mostravano un palestrato dall'aria stupida, con il sottinteso messaggio "non fare come lui, che è un bestione". Non funziona così: si legge se si è curiosi, non per essere migliori di altri. Se si è curiosi, si vogliono scoprire parole combinate in modo nuovo (i mondi e le storie si trovano anche nelle già citate serie televisive, e nel già citato aggeggio su cui sto scrivendo in questo momento). Se si è curiosi, si prova a infilare il naso in un libro, di qualsiasi tipo, sì cari, anche Fabio Volo che non ha senso vituperare, perché a tenere a distanza i possibili nuovi lettori è anche quell'aggrapparsi alle tende e quel proliferare di "oh, dove finiremo?", che in non pochi casi sottintende "perdindirindina, perché non leggete ME?". Se si è curiosi, si legge anche l'etichetta dell'acqua minerale come quella che mi sta davanti (e che peraltro riporta in elegante corsivo la leggenda di una ninfa, guarda cosa si scopre). A forza di essere disincantati e annoiati, leggeremo sempre meno, e andremo anche meno in palestra e forse guarderemo anche meno serie televisive. E fatela, questa campagna per la promozione della curiosità, forza.

Di libri non letti, numeri e curiosità ilpost.it

Quei due articoli mi interessano, sono acuti e colti, forse un po’ da addetti ai lavori ma in qualche maniera inappuntabili e allo stesso tempo prevedibili. Rappresentano il completamento usuale quando una notizia scatena grandi passioni. A un certo punto arrivano gli esperti e spiegano, amabilmente e con solidi argomenti, che non è poi successo questo granché, che è sempre stato così, che quello che ci indigna e preoccupa è certamente importante ma non si è modificato molto nel tempo.

If spiders worked together, they could eat all humans in a year nypost.com

That means that spiders eat at least as much meat as all seven billion humans on the planet combined, who the authors note consume about 400 million tonnes of meat and fish each year.

'Would you be willing?': words to turn a conversation around (and those to avoid) theguardian.com

Choose your words carefully and you can get someone to change their mind, or see you in a new light

How the sandwich consumed Britain theguardian.com

By the end of the 20th century, more people in Britain were making and selling sandwiches than working in agriculture.

It's the ATM's 50th birthday today! thefinanser.com

It was exactly 50 years ago today that the world’s first ATM was unveiled at a Barclays branch in Enfield, London.  As a tribute to the golden anniversary, Barclays has transformed the modern-day Enfield cash machine into gold.  Today, more than half of UK adults use an ATM at least once a week.

52 things I learned in 2017 medium.com

In the UK, marriages between couples over 65 have risen 46% over the last decade.

Sharp drop in net migration of EU citizens to areas outside south-east England theguardian.com

There was a net annual increase of just 2,000 EU citizens in south-west England in 2016, according to the IPPR’s analysis of official figures. The north-west and Wales attracted 4,000 more EU citizens and the north-east, 3,000. The decline was particularly marked in the north-west: in 2015, the region had attracted 16,000 more EU citizens than the previous year.

Myths of the 1 Percent: What Puts People at the Top nytimes.com

In the United States, the richest 1 percent have seen their share of national income roughly double since 1980, to 20 percent in 2014 from 11 percent. This trend, combined with slow productivity growth, has resulted in stagnant living standards for most Americans.

In 2017, UK water companies still rely on “magic” medium.com

If you had to work out where to dig so that you didn’t cut off the water supply to an entire town, would you rely on a Ouija board for your answer? Probably not, but that is in effect what at least two UK water companies (now ten out of the twelve UK companies, see update below) openly admit to doing in 2017.

At 20 ftrain.com

I started this website 20 years ago, give or take a week. The original address was www.interactive.net/~ford. Eventually it migrated here into the form you see. I took it very seriously for many years and it earned me thousands of readers, thousands of emails, and tons of opportunity. It was better at generating opportunity than money. I drifted away for all the regular reasons.

Why I’ve Had Enough of George Orwell the-american-interest.com

Stranger, too, is the idea that George Orwell was a master of prophecy. And this is not merely a matter of a few false calls. Orwell was a man wholly addicted to tub-thumping socialist augury. The gentleman non-pseudonymously known as Eric Blair categorically announced in 1937 that “the upper-middle class is clearly finished.” He predicted in 1941 alone that: the British Empire would be converted into “a socialist federation of states”; the London Stock Exchange would imminently be “torn down”; Britain’s country homes would be transformed into socialist “children’s camps”; and Eton and Harrow faced immediate post-war closure. He was making claims that were childish even for his time.

Switching Jobs flowingdata.com

This makes sense. At the top with the highest switching rate, you have lifeguards, which I’m pretty sure trends younger and more temporary. Jobs that trend towards higher salary and more training, education, and experience have lower switching rates. Real estate agents are around the middle at about 16 percent.

The "Your Fave Is Problematic" Reading List lifehacker.com

Yes. No one is stopping you from doing anything. You can like and consume their work without liking them as a person. You can even like them as a person, so long as you recognize that they do have problematic issues.

Nearly All of Wikipedia Is Written By Just 1 Percent of Its Editors motherboard.vice.com

Researchers found that 77 percent of Wikipedia articles are written by 1 percent of Wikipedia editors, and they think this is probably for the best.

A sex therapist on why some men force women to watch them masturbate slate.com

I mean a lot of men who are stuck in these cycles of addictive behavior will say “I was as addicted to the shame as I was to the sex.” It’s about this cycle of “I’m a piece of shit, I do things that make me feel like a piece of shit, and therefore I have corroboration and evidence that I am indeed a piece of shit.” Weinstein may have tried to stop masturbating in front of women and couldn’t, which he may have hated himself for. The behavior becomes this weird kind of tumbleweed where … somebody does stupid things and then it reaches monstrous proportions, which it seems to have done in Weinstein’s case.

How Did New Atheism Fail So Miserably? slatestarcodex.com

While the atheists were going around saying there was no God, the environmentalists were going around saying climate change was real. The feminists were going around saying sexism was bad. And the Democrats were going around saying Donald Trump was an awful person. All of these statements might be controversial somewhere, but meet basically zero resistance in educated urban liberal spaces. All get repeated day-in and day-out by groups of people who make entire careers out of repeating them. And all get said in the same condescending way, a sort of society-wide plague of Voxsplaining.

Tutto il patrimonio storico e culturale tedesco è conservato in due tunnel a prova di bomba atomica ilpost.it

In Germania, vicino a Friburgo, c’è un complesso di tunnel sotterranei dov’è conservato in un grosso archivio di microfilm il patrimonio storico e culturale del paese, nel caso in cui una guerra o un grande disastro naturale mettessero in pericolo tutti gli altri archivi, musei e biblioteche esistenti.

Weinstein e noi distantisaluti.com

Quale che sia la reazione di una vittima di un’ingiustizia, quella persona ha diritto – e noi abbiamo il dovere di darlo – al conforto che, giustamente, proviamo per le vittime. E, altrettanto ovviamente, non cancella le circostanze – come lo stupro – nelle quali la vittima non ha alcuno spazio d’azione. Alcune non hanno avuto la possibilità di chiudersi in bagno. Ma la totale privazione dello spazio d’azione non può essere determinata, ipso facto, dallo squilibrio di potere fra le due persone coinvolte.

First Evidence That Online Dating Is Changing the Nature of Society technologyreview.com

Then, in 2014, the proportion of interracial marriages jumped again. “It is interesting that this increase occurs shortly after the creation of Tinder, considered the most popular online dating app,” they say.

A Fair Accusation of Sexual Harassment or a Witch Hunt? mcsweeneys.net

A. A witch hunt B. A fair accusation of sexual harassment

The Szechuan sauce fiasco proves Rick and Morty fans don’t understand Rick and Morty polygon.com

If they understood the point of the show so far — that living only for yourself is destructive and selfish no matter how smart you are — they would be ashamed at how they’re acting.

Tokyo Is Preparing for Floods ‘Beyond Anything We’ve Seen’ nytimes.com

Five vertical, underground cisterns, almost 250 feet deep, take in storm water from four rivers north of Tokyo. A series of tunnels connect the cisterns to a vast tank, larger than a soccer field, with ceilings held up by 60-foot pillars that give the space a temple-like feel. From that tank, industrial pumps discharge the floodwater at a controlled pace into the Edo river, a larger river system that flushes the water into Tokyo Bay.

More than half of Londoners in poverty are in working families theguardian.com

Study finds 58% of city’s residents in poverty are living in working households compared with 28% two decades ago.

Boy, Do I Feel Naïve  theconcourse.deadspin.com

Yesterday, BuzzFeed published an exposé on how soulless alt-right troll doll Milo Yiannopoulos solicited ideas and advice from white supremacists and neo-Nazis to help grow Breitbart into the mainstream hate influencer it is today. That report also contained exchanges with other journalists, ones who don’t nominally run in white supremacist circles, but who fed tips and pitches to Yiannopoulos and his ghostwriters, praised his misogyny, sicced him on left-wing writers, and generally palled around with him. And damn it if I wasn’t shocked.

‘Without Them You Could Buy Anything,’ Whispers Amazon Echo As Man Stares Blankly At Family theonion.com

They’re holding you back—think about what you could purchase for yourself if only they weren’t around

Why Steve Bannon Wears So Many Shirts thecut.com

The former chief strategist to President Donald Trump and current chairman of Breitbart News appeared on 60 Minutes at the outset of Fashion Week sporting a curious look consisting of multiple dress shirts stacked on top of one another, wrapped in a jacket. Viewers initially wondered why anyone would choose to insulate themselves like a Russian Nesting Doll, only to discover the bewildering fact that this is how Bannon dresses pretty much all the time.

Normalizing Trump: An incredibly brief explainer pressthink.org

Most every journalist who covers Trump knows of these things.

World population may actually start declining, not exploding slate.com

The reason for the implacability of demographic transition can be expressed in one word: education. One of the first things that countries do when they start to develop is educate their young people, including girls. That dramatically improves the size and quality of the workforce. But it also introduces an opportunity cost for having babies. “Women with more schooling tend to have fewer children,” says William Butz, a senior research scholar at IIASA.

The alt-right is drunk on bad readings of Nietzsche. The Nazis were too. vox.com

People often say that the Nazis loved Nietzsche, which is true. What’s less known is that Nietzsche’s sister, who was in charge of his estate after he died, was a Nazi sympathizer who shamefully rearranged his remaining notes to produce a final book, The Will to Power, that embraced Nazi ideology. It won her the favor of Hitler, but it was a terrible disservice to her brother’s legacy.

Why Portugal’s wild Comporta coastline should be your summer sanctuary thespaces.com

Comporta, referred to as the ‘secret treasure of Europe’, is just over an hour’s drive south of Lisbon. It has long been a refuge for creatives wishing to put their urban lives on hold – and find inspiration in its raw scenery and down-to-earth charm.

Public Enemy harpers.org

juror no. 52: When I walked in here today I looked at him, and in my head, that’s a snake — not knowing who he was. I just walked in and looked right at him and that’s a snake.

The last person left who daren’t diss the Donald… theguardian.com

I don’t believe this view can survive long while he’s openly defending those who consort with neo-Nazis and the KKK, and showing suspicion for people who oppose them. Too many Americans, conservative and liberal, fought in the second world war for that; too many saw the realities of segregation. And if I’m wrong, and the Trump who spoke out against the “very violent” “alt-left” on Tuesday remains a popular hero, then the US is already lost and has been for some time.

A Look into NASA’s Coding Philosophy mystudentvoices.com

There’s a recurring theme in the programming community that’s tied to finding “better ways” to write “modern software.” Whether or not the term “modern” is actually any useful — computer programming hasn’t been around for very long — I’m definitely left with the impression folks always have something “new” or “better” to say on the subject. And so if we pay attention to the conversations surrounding software development today, we’ll quickly realize how important it is to separate the wheat from the chaff: what’s useful and what isn’t.

We Need to Talk Some More About Your Dirty Sponges nytimes.com

A kitchen sponge is not your enemy. But it can be very dirty. Last week, scientists published a study revealing how densely packed your dirty kitchen sponge is with microscopic bacteria. After I wrote an article about their work, readers flooded my inbox with good questions, so I asked around for some answers.

These Germans Who Swim To Work Are Happier Than You theawl.com

Look at this delightful motherfucker! The best thing about this is that David is not some fitness freak (or, to use the German, ein Fitneß-Freak) with a Juicero and a SuperSquat desk in his office. He’s rocking what I affectionately like to call the Classic Bavarian physique, and for much of his commute he doggie paddles or chills in the current on his back. He looks, frankly, like he’s having the time of his ever-loving life, and I want to be him.

Come Campari vuole conquistare il mondo con lo Spritz ilpost.it

Campari ha investito molto su questo mercato, promuovendo l’Aperol e associando il brand all’immagine dell’aperitivo spensierato per le vie di un centro storico, in un modo che ricorda un po’ la “Dolce vita”. È una scelta che ha avuto successo non soltanto in Italia, ma in tutta Europa. Dal 2004 al 2011, scrive Aversa, le vendite di Aperol sono cresciute a doppia cifra ogni anno. Nel 2009, le vendite hanno registrato un aumento del 40 per cento.

Muji’s revamped Tokyo store now sells groceries – and tiny homes thespaces.com

Walk into Muji’s new global flagship store in Tokyo and you could walk out with a new home.

An octopus is the closest thing to an alien here on earth qz.com

“A real alien would be a sentient being with no common ancestry with us at all, arising completely independently,” says Godfrey-Smith, who published a book on consciousness and octopuses earlier this year. “We might never meet that—if we do, that would be great. If we don’t, the octopus is our best approximation because there’s a historical connection but it was a long time ago.”

Why it is closing time for so many London pubs economist.com

Many of London’s social woes, such as its persistent housing crisis, are blamed on the rich. But it appears that the fall of the pub should not be counted among them.

The Wanking Foreigner From ‘The Big Bang Theory’ catapult.co

The conversation reminds me of a link my friend Yomi shared on Twitter once about the hypersexualization of black men and the under-sexualization of Asian men. It’s called the Three Bears theory. If black men are too sexual and their dicks way too big, and Asian men (and we are encompassing an entire continent here) are undersexed, sexually repressed, either culturally or familially, because of an overbearing mother, and their dicks are way too small, that makes the white dick, juuuuuuust right.

The Toxic Saga of the World’s Greatest Fish Market eater.com

Built in 1923 on the site of a former imperial naval base, Tsukiji is a testament to an older way of doing business — that just happens to sit in the middle of a grid of impeccable city planning. Take a comfortable stroll a few blocks northeast, and you’ll find the fancifully hooved streets of the Ginza district, where you can literally eat breakfast at the Gucci store, just like in the Kanye song. Meander down another path, and you’ll run smack into the drab concrete towers of salarymen, who scuttle in and out like worker bees serving the inscrutable whims of company queens.

Beatrix Potter-pinching and Žižekian swipes: the strange world of book thefts theguardian.com

At the London Review Bookshop, John Clegg reports a fondness for philosophers. “Our most-stolen authors, in order, are Baudrillard, Freud, Nietzsche, Graham Greene, Lacan, Camus, and whoever puts together the Wisden Almanack. The appetite for Greene (which seems to have died down a little now) was particularly surprising, but I suppose they identify with Pinkie,” said Clegg.

How work changed to make us all passionate quitters aeon.co

The environment of the quitting economy also brings about a change in the emotional life of the worker and workplace. When you start imagining yourself as always on the verge of quitting, the emotions you feel for your work change. When companies decided to do away with company loyalty, businesses had to find a new way to help workers foster an emotional connection to work. In the US especially, there is a strong cultural consensus that people should feel passion for their work, and work hard. One hiring manager explained to me that he always chose people who seemed passionate about their work over someone who seemed to have the most experience. He could teach them any necessary skills, he explained, but his need for them to work very long hours meant that he needed people with passion. Since company loyalty is no longer around to guarantee committed workers, passion is now supposed to be the driving force.

Le serie tv sono la nuova letteratura? internazionale.it

Ogni volta che qualcuno ti fa ragionamenti del genere – Come è profondo il mare è una canzone così bella che è quasi una poesia, Maus di Art Spiegelman è un fumetto che accede alla dignità del romanzo, ogni inquadratura di Barry Lyndon è un quadro da esporre in un museo – cerca di sgattaiolare per tempo fuori dalla grotta della conversazione e scappa

My first ride on the Elizabeth line arstechnica.co.uk

A deep dive into the tech, AC, and ride quality of the Elizabeth line's Class 345 trains.

Revealed: the insidious creep of pseudo-public space in London theguardian.com

Pseudo-public spaces – large squares, parks and thoroughfares that appear to be public but are actually owned and controlled by developers and their private backers – are on the rise in London and many other British cities, as local authorities argue they cannot afford to create or maintain such spaces themselves.

The Myth of Drug Expiration Dates propublica.org

Each year, drugs from the stockpiles are selected based on their value and pending expiration and analyzed in batches to determine whether their end dates could be safely extended. For several decades, the program has found that the actual shelf life of many drugs is well beyond the original expiration dates.

Tokyo street fashion and culture: 1980 - 2017 google.com

Explore the fascinating history of fashion and culture in Tokyo, Japan. This is a documentary of youth fashion and culture in Tokyo for 37 years.

Revamping Shibuya: A Massive Redevelopment Project Gives the Station Area a New Look nippon.com

The station high-rise will be topped with one of Japan’s largest observation decks. Hovering 230 meters in the air, the expansive rooftop space is almost guaranteed to become a tourist attraction, offering a panoramic view of Tokyo, including the scramble crossing and surrounding Shibuya area, Yoyogi Park and the Shinjuku skyline to the north, and Roppongi and the central business area to the east, not to mention Mount Fuji to the west on clear days.

You Are Not What You Earn thebookoflife.org

Money is in fact no accurate measure of the human worth of the work in question; the determinant of wages is just the strength of demand in relation to supply.

Monocle's View From Nowhere newrepublic.com

The magazine’s globalist chic contrasts sharply with the nationalist movements in the United States and Europe seeking to limit immigration, including visa programs for the skilled workers in tech and finance who might read Monocle. Yet the publication shares with the right a faith in free-market economics; Brûlé himself is less a citizen of the world than a shopper in its gigantic, globalized mall. His magazine, which built its brand by identifying the world’s hippest (and most profitable) trends, feels increasingly out of touch.

Why Do Democracies Fail? theatlantic.com

The non-rich always outnumber the rich. Democracy enables the many to outvote the few: a profoundly threatening prospect to the few. If the few possess power and wealth, they may respond to this prospect by resisting democracy before it arrives—or sabotaging it afterward. Yet despite this potential threat to the formation and endurance of democracy, wealthy countries do often transition peacefully to democracy—and then preserve its stability for decades afterward. The classic example is the United Kingdom.

Those who leave home, and those who stay vox.com

After 100 years of Americans moving more and more, we're now moving less.

Is it unethical for me to not tell my employer I’ve automated my job? workplace.stackexchange.com

So I’ve been doing it for about 18 months and in that time, I’ve basically figured out all the traps to the point where I’ve actually written a program which for the past 6 months has been just doing the whole thing for me. So what used to take the last guy like a month, now takes maybe 10 minutes to clean the spreadsheet and run it through the program.

There’s No Money in Internet Culture nymag.com

Maybe more importantly, Tumblr and Vine and the like never had data-mining operations as sophisticated as, say, Facebook. That’s why most of the advertising money in the industry has drained toward Facebook, which has 2 billion users, mounds of data, and can better assure advertisers of content cleanliness. Facebook is instructive: It’s less a place for creation or debate than it is for hosting all of the nitty-gritty, more boring data about your life.