johnke.meAfter the previous update by Barry Crist effectively saying “suck it up, losers”, Chef have announced that they would not be renewing their contract with ICE and CBP. More importantly though, it sounds as though they’ll be bringing a moral element to their business decisions from now on. This can only be a good thing.
Ever since the death of The Oyster Review, I’ve been pretty suck for a good source of book recommendations. The Algorithm is good at many things but recommending things that depend on personal tastes and interests is not one of them. Five Books seems like it might be a good replacement though1. It bypasses The Algorithm and asks real live human experts to recommend, as the name implies, five books on a given topic. For example, 5 Sci-Fi books on the future of Europe, or 5 books on The Art of Living.
Come to think of it, could Five Books actually be related to The Oyster Review? “five books” was one of their original features too. ↩︎
Ruby Tandoh gets it. Nigel Slater’s Real Food completely changed my relationship to cooking and I have a special place in my heart for his writing.
In the past few years, I’ve basically given up trusting Amazon reviews. If I’m in the market to buy something, I’ll look for reviews by actual people I trust. thewirecutter hasn’t been 100% successful for me1, but it’s still a lot better than trusting Amazon.
a few people in my office bought their top recommendation for exercise headphones and we saw 100% failure rate within a couple of uses, and saw plenty of people in the comments section reporting the same thing. ↩︎
Instant addition to my bucket list - an underwater restaurant that could double as the lair of a Bond villain:
“If the weather is bad, it’s very rough. It’s a great experience, and to sit here and be safe, allowing the nature so close into you. It’s a very romantic and nice experience.”
(Although can you imagine how sick you’d be if you booked this restaurant and didn’t get a table right by the window?)
A higher number means you’re better at LASERS (technology; science; cold rationality; calm, precise action; mechanisms). A low number means you’re better at FEELINGS (intuition; diplomacy; seduction; wild, passionate action; convincing).
This sounds perfect. I can’t wait to try it out.
Articles talking about how Facebook destroyed the personal, friendly, welcoming internet are fairly common now, but this one by Brian Philips is actually worth your time.
Before I started writing, I did a Google search for “Facebook” and “annus horribilis,” which showed that dozens if not hundreds of media outlets — The Guardian, the BBC, El Mundo, Die Welt, The Atlantic, the Silicon Valley Business Journal — used this phrase, Latin for “horrible year,” to describe Facebook’s 2018. But 2018 wasn’t an annus horribilis for Facebook. It was an annus horribilis for us, the people who actually faced the surveillance and dishonesty and abuse. It was an annus horribilis for us because of Facebook.
To get on my soap box a little bit here, if none of these stories – the Cambridge Analytica story, the whole Russia thing, this most recent one about giving media companies back-room access to personal private data – if none of these stories make you want to delete your Facebook account, then what will? Where is the line for you?
To go a little further: if you haven’t deleted your Facebook account by now, then you are complicit in all of this shit.
Melbourne gave 70,000 trees email addresses so people could report on their condition. But instead people are writing love letters, existential queries and sometimes just bad puns.
This is just lovely. My favourite line is “Hope it all goes well with the photosynthesis”.
I have a friend who wears headphones on long solo runs because, he says, “I can’t spend that much time alone in my head.” I disagree. He can, and he should. Spending that much time inside one’s head, along with the voices and the bats hanging from the various dendrites and neurons, is one of the best things about running, or at least one of the most therapeutic. Your brain is like a duvet cover: Every once in a while, it needs to be aired out.
As someone who can’t do basic household chores like washing dishes or folding laundry without a pair of headphones, this cut me deep.
The best part of The Incredibles 2 wasn’t the story but the amazing world they built. This is a great, tiny peek into the design process behind creating that world.