Autumn starts this week. Yes, it's not even started yet - that miserable weather outside is actually summer 
Best stay inside with a little erudite reading instead:
Bonus dinner link from norrahe: Stew glorious stew! Because what could be better when it’s cold and wet?
Happy invoicing!
Best stay inside with a little erudite reading instead:- Still There - Olia Lialina’s research project at Rotterdam University looks at the archaeology of the early WWW, examining the ruins of Geocities, Rotterdam Internet cafés that still find many customers among immigrant communities, and the social networking site Hyves, much used by immigrants from Arab countries, whose design ethos is redolent of Geocities and MySpace at their most flamboyant: ”I think the main reason users pay for a Gold membership is that it allows them to spy on their visitors and see who has checked out their profiles. Although, when there’s the possibility of using 40 kinds of smileys instead of the standard 15, the temptation to upgrade increases proportionally.”
- The selling of the Krays: how two mediocre criminals created their own legend - Duncan Campbell argues that the notorious twins weren’t actually very good gangsters, they just had killer PR: ”’Their big mistake was posing for me,’ [David] Bailey told the BBC last year. ‘If you’re a real gangster nobody knows who you are.’”
- Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas: A Complete Oral History - Speaking of gangsters, Goodfellas is twenty-five years old this week. Here’s thoughts from five years ago garnered by interviewing nearly sixty of the people involved: ”Warner Bros. now had to put them on the payroll, and they wanted their Social Security numbers. The wiseguys said, "1,2,6, uh, 6,7,8, uh, 4,3,2,1,7,8—" "No, that's more numbers than you need!" They just kept reciting numbers until they were over. Nobody ever figured out where that money went or who cashed the checks.”
- Power of the Placebo - Erik Vance on the research that is helping us understand why “nothing works”: ”Scientists are increasingly recognizing the placebo response as an authentic neurochemical reaction in the brain. In the past decade, imaging studies have opened up the possibility that scientists will soon understand the mysterious phenomenon and even harness it in clinical practice — unleashing the power of, well, nothing.”
- The Man Who Got No Whammies - "On May 19, 1984, before a live studio audience for the game show Press Your Luck, a squirrely-looking, gray-bearded 35-year-old named Michael Larson leapt from behind his podium and squealed with joy. For the contestant, the show’s catchphrase, “Big bucks, big bucks, no Whammies!”, had just come to fruition: in an era where no single contestant ever won more than $40,000 — not even those competing on ever-popular The Price In Right, or Wheel of Fortune — Larson had earned $110,237 ($253,000 in 2015 dollars)." By watching hours of video, Larson had cracked the not-so-random process behind the game, and took CBS to the cleaners
- I Tried Biking the Entire Length of the Los Angeles River. It Was a Disaster. - You’ll have seen the LA river in films like Terminator 2, its broad concrete culverts used for car chases. Hillel Aron tried to cycle along its 51-mile length: ”I knew I'd probably have to break it into two trips — I'm not Lance Armstrong — but two 25-mile bike rides didn't seem that bad. What could go wrong? As it turns out, everything.”
- “This Is a Shady Business We In, Fam” - Twitter is cracking down on “parody” accounts, and the people who’ve been making money (none of which they seem to have spent on a dictionary that defines the word “parody”) off them are annoyed, as such people usually are when their worthless scams are halted: ”Common White Girl is not a real girl: Her avatar is a still from Cinderella and her ponytail gripe was cribbed verbatim from an actual woman’s blog, plagiarized like so many of her other tweets. She—I mean, it—is one of hundreds of accounts that brand themselves around celebrities (like Will Ferrell), characters (like Tina Belcher of Bob’s Burgers) or even just floating personality traits (like bitchiness). They call themselves ‘parody’ accounts, and furiously tweet whatever they think will earn them more followers in their chosen ‘niche.’”
- Hit Charade - Talking of scams, here’s the truth behind the songs in the pop charts: ”The biggest pop star in America today is a man named Karl Martin Sandberg… Sandberg grew up in a remote suburb of Stockholm and is now 44. Sandberg is the George Lucas, the LeBron James, the Serena Williams of American pop. He is responsible for more hits than Phil Spector, Michael Jackson, or the Beatles. After Sandberg come the bald Norwegians, Mikkel Eriksen and Tor Hermansen, 43 and 44; Lukasz Gottwald, 42, a Sandberg protégé and collaborator who spent a decade languishing in Saturday Night Live’s house band; and another Sandberg collaborator named Esther Dean, 33, a former nurse’s aide from Oklahoma.”
- Menstruation… in SPACE! - "In the early days of space flight, menstruation was part of the argument that women shouldn’t become astronauts." Spoiler alert: it was a stupid argument
- Pits & Pyramids - Sam Kaplan creates amazing structures out of biscuits and sweets. Fruit Polo, anyone?
Bonus dinner link from norrahe: Stew glorious stew! Because what could be better when it’s cold and wet?
Happy invoicing!
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