The snow (such as it was) may have moved on, but that's no reason to go outside when you can stay in and read this lot instead:
Happy invoicing!
- A top Putin critic on how to oppose Trump: “making him look like a loser is crucial” - Chess champion Gary Kasparov, who was arrested twice in Russia for his opposition to Putin, on the problem that is the leader of the free world: ”You have an entirely unqualified president with autocratic instincts and dangerous advisers, who is quite possibly compromised by a malign foreign interest. We gave Putin a chance in Russia, and it was the last free election we ever had.”
- My Grandmother’s Little Room and the Unreality of Memory - Elisa Gabbert on the way memories can deceive us, leading to such phenomena as the Berenstain Bears thing: ”A false memory seems to accrue detail over time, perhaps by borrowing from other memories. We don’t need to posit an alternate reality to get from point A to point B.”
- Inside the crash of Fling, the London startup whose founder partied in Ibiza while his company burned through $21 million - The “hold my beer and watch this” approach to running a business, described with some lovely attention to detail: ”Nardone's Italian father, Remo Nardone — a man in his eighties and Fling's biggest investor — stepped in to try and cool the situation down, one of the employees said. But his son didn't react well. He swore at his father before hurling a partially-open Pret a Manger baguette in his direction. The baguette, believed to be prosciutto ham, narrowly missed and collided with a glass window above his head.”
- A Short Anti-LSD Horror Film Made by the Lockheed Corporation (1969) - "During the late 1960s, the defense contractor Lockheed Corporation took a strange detour into filmmaking and sponsored a series of short films, each examining the perils of a particular hardcore drug." Also available: smack, speed, and downers
- A Visual Guide to Sailor Tattoos - ”Sailor’s tattoos once held significance, and occasionally they still do. In collaboration with Christina Sun at Bowsprite, we’ve put together a compendium of sailor tattoos and their respective meanings.”
- Death in the Forest - The strange world of rare mushroom hunters: ”Pickers grew territorial and, increasingly, they were armed. The sheriff in a neighboring county heard reports of pickers guarding prime patches with shotguns, while some pickers alleged that rivals shot at branches above their heads to scare them off. One recreational mushroom hunter was nearly shot when commercial pickers put a bullet through the door of his car. Paranoia spread through the region, and many pickers began carrying guns simply as a precaution.”
- ITUNES TERMS AND CONDITIONS: The Graphic Novel - "The complete, unabridged legal agreement, as drawn by R. Sikoryak." Drawing it in a myriad of comic artists’ styles is probably the only way to get anybody to actually read the damn thing
- Hundreds of Mysterious Stonehenge-Like Earthworks Found in the Amazon - Not actually in the Amazon, because that’s a river. ”The large geometric, ditched enclosures had long remained hidden by trees. But modern deforestation, in combination with Google Earth technology, have now revealed the presence of the more than 450 geoglyphs.”
- When London’s tube tunnels were painted white - "We’re used to staring out of bright tube trains into dark tunnels, but once, the tunnels were whitewashed in brilliant white paint." If nothing else, the special train that achieved this would be fun to drive through a station at rush hour
- This is Wood: The Sculpture of Matt Johnson - "On view at 303 Gallery in New York, artist Matt Johnson presents 4 cardboard boxes, 5 rolls of painters tape, 2 broken styrofoam chunks, and more garbage… that are all 100% carved and painted wood." Remarkably realistic
Happy invoicing!
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