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The Age Of Acceleration Culture

Scott Timberg | LARB | 21st June 2018
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Martin Amis talks about Larkin, Auden, Nabokov, Hitchens and himself. “Novelists write the kind of books they’d like to read. I just imagine that I’m reading what I’m writing. When you enter a novel, you don’t want to be frozen out by having 15 characters introduced at once. And you should give the reader a bit of air: after a couple of pages there should be a bit of clear white space on the page, not clogged for the reader with your impulsive vividness and fertility and all that” (3,850 words)

Athletes Push The Limits Science

Christine Brennan | National Geographic | 21st June 2018
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Track and field records have levelled off since the introduction of random drug testing in 1987, suggesting that athletes have largely optimised the undrugged human body. New and better equipment can still mean new and better times: Springier track and high-tech shoes account for almost all the difference between Jesse Owens’s 1936 100-meter record and Usain Bolt’s 2009 100-meter record. But the “next frontier” is the mind. Can athletes “train the brain like the body”, to drive the body harder? (5,100 words)

The Trouble With Johnny Depp People

Stephen Rodrick | Rolling Stone | 21st June 2018
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Car-crash profile of Jonny Depp, drunk, depressed and divorced in addled middle age. “One of the most famous actors in the world is now smoking dope with a writer and his lawyer while his cook makes dinner and his bodyguards watch television. There is no one around him who isn’t getting paid”. How much longer the payroll can run is another matter, since Depp’s accountants say he is broke. “It’s insulting to say that I spent $30,000 a month on wine, because it was far more” (10,500 words)

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Bird life and bird song from Oostvaardersplassen, a nature reserve in the Netherlands. Generally awesome (5’47”)
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You should never doubt something that no one is sure of

Roald Dahl
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