Newsletter 904


Hic sunt camelopardus: this historical edition of The Browser is presented for archaeological purposes; links and formatting may be broken.

Tedium Is Torture: What It's Like To Have Severe ADHD

Mike Bebernes | Motherboard | 8 January 2013

"My life is lived between the poles of who I really am and who the Ritalin turns me into. A simple trip to Ikea can either be a productive use of a Saturday or an overwhelming gauntlet of tedium and frustration, depending on whether or not I have prescription methylphenidates in my bloodstream"

Facebook’s Bold, Compelling And Scary Engine of Discovery: The Inside Story Of Graph Search

Steven Levy | Wired | 15 January 2013

"A transformative product gets you to do more of something that you wouldn’t think to do on your own. Thanks to Graph Search, people will almost certainly use Facebook in entirely new ways. it expands Facebook’s core mission — not just obsessively connecting users with people they already know, but becoming a vehicle of discovery"

Tim Wu | New Yorker | 15 January 2013

"No one knows, or will ever really know, what caused Swartz to take his own life. But his suicide, in the face of possible bankruptcy and serious prison time, has created a moment of clarity. We can rightly judge a society by how it treats its eccentrics and deviant geniuses—and by that measure, we have utterly failed"

57th Street Rag

Janet Coleman | New York Review Of Books | 15 January 2013

First in a series of reminiscences by staff members of the New York Review of Books, marking the magazine's fiftieth anniversary. "Through the open doorway (there were no office doors), you could hear Barbara’s great loud peals of laughter on the phone with Edmund, Wystan, Virgil, Vladimir and Gore"

The Real Cuban Missile Crisis

Benjamin Schwarz | Atlantic | 11 January 2013

Unless you are a particularly keen student of the crisis, everything you know about it is probably wrong, by this account. The Russian missiles in Cuba didn't pose a new threat to the United States. Kennedy provoked the Russians, and America's allies were horrified by his brinksmanship

The Smartphone Have-Nots

Adam Davidson | New York Times | 15 January 2013

Brisk, clear account of rival theories about why inequality has widened so much in America over past 30 years. Technological change, say some. Government policies to deregulate markets, say others. Good piece, but would be better still if it risked a more decisive conclusion

Video of the day: The NFL: A Bad Lip-Reading

Thought for the day: “The urge to deliver an uninterrupted monologue is the energy that drives most schoolteachers, storytellers and politicians” — Alastair Gray

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