Blockbuster, Endurance, Wealth, Medical Ethics, Mark Zuckerberg
One Last Blockbuster Night
Justin Heckert | Ringer | 19th July 2018
A decade after the rest of America gave up on video rentals, the country’s last Blockbuster stores are closing in Alaska. “We lasted longer because of the way we operated the stores. This business went from nothing to an integral part of American culture over the course of five or six years. It lasted 10 to 15, and started dying. And when it started dying, it didn’t take long. Over half of the country was in a video store in a period of about six or seven hours on Friday and Saturday night” (9,300 words)
Kilian Jornet: Too Good to Be True?
Nick Hell | Outside | 12th July 2018
The Spanish ultra-athlete Kilian Jornet has conquered every major endurance event in running, skiing, and biking. Now he is setting records for climbing the world’s highest mountains. But can anybody really climb Everest twice in one week? “When the news emerged that Jornet had climbed Everest not once but twice in a single week, and that he was claiming a new speed record, it seemed extraordinary to the point of confusion. Two ascents, back-to-back? Without oxygen? By himself?” (5,700 words)
Shopping List For The 1%
Andy Beckett | Guardian | 19th July 2018
A brief history of How To Spend It, the weekly glossy for the super-rich published by the Financial Times. “The magazine usually has between 80 and 100 pages. About half of them are advertisements, for the biggest global luxury brands and for more singular commodities, such as art and property. The other pages are a gleaming parade of articles – not always easy to tell from the ads – about the most expensive fashion, travel, food, interior design and other consumer goods imaginable” (5,800 words)
Learning From The Charlie Gard Case
Dominic Wilkinson & Julian Savulescu | Journal Of Medical Ethics | 19th July 2018
Medical ethicists discuss whether British courts were right to stop the parents of a dying infant from taking him to America for experimental treatment. Conclusion: The courts were wrong. Charlie Gard’s genetic condition was so rare — only four known cases in the world — that treatment was bound to be experimental; and no harm would be done to anybody by allowing even futile treatment, since Charlie’s neurological damage already put him “beyond experience” (3,800 words)
An Interview With Mark Zuckerberg
Kara Swisher | Recode | 18th July 2018
Topics include free speech, election-hacking, Russia, Myanmar, China. “I think it’ll take about three years to fully retool everything at Facebook to be on top of all the content issues and security issues. But the good news is we’re about a year and a half in. I do think that by the end of this year, we’ll have significantly turned the corner on a lot of these issues. I don’t think we’re gonna be as good as we would like to next year, either, but I think it’ll be close” (8,400 words)
Video of the day A Day In The Life Of An Ancient Egyptian Doctor
What to expect:
TED-Ed animation. Another sweltering morning in Memphis, Egypt, and the doctor begins her rounds
Thought for the day
Better to be silent and thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt
André Gide
Podcast Hunter S. Thompson | Studs Terkel Archive
Thompson and Terkel in conversation in 1973. Topics include Hells Angels, snakes, Richard Nixon, Colorado
(52m 50s)