Browser Newsletter 1114
Best of the Moment
Inside The Apple Store
J.K. Appleseed | McSweeney's | 19th September 2013
Notes from a Genius. "From behind the Genius Bar, I can check the customer queue on a laptop or on an iPod I keep holstered on my belt. The wait time hangs over everyone’s head. When customers have to wait more than five or ten minutes for their appointment, they get antsy. When the wait time pushes thirty minutes, they get murderous. Every day, in every Apple Store, people flood to customer service, when what many truly need is therapy"
Fed Recoils As Jobs Evaporate
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard | Telegraph | 18th September 2013
The Fed has made the correct call, in continuing quantitative easing to stimulate the American economy. "The question is whether the public welfare is best served by popping the bubble and allowing Austro-liquidation to purge the toxins, or whether this would be ruinously destructive. Many readers think it is past time to dynamite this edifice. I have much sympathy with this view. Yet in the end, I prefer magic" (Metered paywall)
Deliverables
Paul Ford | Medium | 18th September 2013
"When I speak to groups using a deck I feel safer. It’s not that I won’t know what to say without my deck. I am concerned that I’ll just keep going, that some great unpleasant bundle of gristly self will spill out. The deck is like a cognitive bustle that stops mental leakage. Another reason we use slides is so that people in the audience will have something to focus upon to take their mind off of the fact that you are speaking, and not them"
A Jewel At The Heart Of Quantum Physics
Natalie Wolchover | Quanta | 17th September 2013
I don't understand much of this, but the bits that I do more or less grasp are so tantalising that I recommend it anyway; and I welcome any discovery that promises a simpler universe. Here's the start: "Physicists have discovered a jewel-like geometric object that dramatically simplifies calculations of particle interactions and challenges the notion that space and time are fundamental components of reality"
An Unwanted Guest
Simone Gorrindo | Vela | 16th September 2013
Remarkable personal essay about youth, love, chronic illness, and a near-fatal encounter with an Indonesian jellyfish. "How, at 21, had my existence become so small? Debilitating pain had interrupted the narrative of my life, and I didn’t know how to write the pages that would move it forward and give me momentum; I was frozen, without climax or resolution, the same dull scene on repeat. And what are we without our own stories?"
Video of the day: Drug Driving (PSA)
Thought for the day:
"Learning Python gives you power over computers, but being amazing at PowerPoint is how you gain control over people" — Paul Ford