February 17, 2017
Neither snow nor storm can keep a dedicated golfer away. But politics can. / The New Yorker
Outdoorsy folk aren’t pleased to learn that their fleece sweaters are damaging the seas. / The Guardian
“Harward called the offer, ‘a shit sandwich.’” Ret. Vice Admiral Bob Harward turned down an offer to replace Michael Flynn as National Security Adviser, citing, according to a GOP official, “a question of clarity regarding the lines of authority.” / CNN
In case you haven’t met him yet, this is Salt Bae, aka Nusret Gokce, the Turkish butcher made famous by drizzling salt off his elbow (whereby Mr. Gokce coils his hand “like a cobra”) onto steaks. / Instagram, The Wall Street Journal
Don’t let the hype fool you: His shock-and-awe executive orders are redundant with existing policies (border wall), and/or addressed matters he has no say over (Keystone and Dakota Access). The only one of substance, the Muslim travel ban, was immediately tripped up in courts. He hasn’t even signed many orders compared to Obama at this point. / Politico
“Repeated bombing-related media exposure was associated with higher acute stress than was direct exposure.” Your weekend white paper: Being exposed to too much news about bomb attacks is worse than being attacked by a bomb. / Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Possibly radicalized in prison, he’d aspired to an attack “in the spirit of Dylann Roof” and was arrested buying weapons from an FBI plant. / wmbfnews.com
Recent drawings from Baltimore artist Beth Brown. / Beth Brown
“He never goes to parties with you—he only meets you after them. You think about going on birth control. He breaks up with you after you get the prescription for the pill. He is the only person you know with a car, so you have to take the shuttle to go into town to fill the prescription. The shuttle is grey and dirty and makes you feel carsick.” Straight college women! Some of the references here may be dated, and whole thing skews white, but here are “the five boys who will take you for granted in college.” / McSweeney’s
Computerized deletion of accounts using bad words won’t work for an app that has to allow for a measure of risqué communication. Instead, real people make the final call, working through cases to ban fake profiles, abusive users, and even people who purposefully don’t show for dates. / New York
A quick profile of the Brothers of Climbing. / Instagram
Related: 28 days of black designers. Unrelated: “Trump Believes All Black People Are Friends.” / 28blacks.com, The Root
From a schadenfreude-ridden tale of a West Virginia school district lunch lady doing what irritating celebrity chef Jamie Oliver tried and failed to do in her district: make children eat healthy food. / HuffPost, YouTube
A gallery of “de-arrests,”—an example of which above—wherein a swarm conspires to overwhelm, trick, or force the freedom of friends in custody. / maskmagazine.com
“A CEO job is welfare for dudes with salt-and-pepper hair.” Management science studies conclude appearance is the only thing CEOs are demonstrably good at. / The Concourse
Why talking about lightning strikes and staircase falls in the context of terrorist attacks is stupid (aka “the bathtub fallacy”). / Bloomberg, Financial Times
“Mr. Trump causes severe distress rather than experiencing it and has been richly rewarded, rather than punished, for his grandiosity, self-absorption and lack of empathy. It is a stigmatizing insult to the mentally ill (who are mostly well behaved and well meaning) to be lumped with Mr. Trump (who is neither).” Scientist who wrote diagnostic criteria for narcissism disorder says to stop suggesting Trump has a mental health disorder. / New York Times
Introducing “library hand,” a penmanship style developed in 1885 for the purpose of keeping catalogs standardized and legible. / Atlas Obscura
“‘Indian techie’ has become like the ‘Florida man’ meme in America: an archetype of incompetent criminality and hapless violence.” From sword attacks to bomb threats, violence by and against technology workers who represent the India’s ascendance bedevils Bangalore, the country’s equivalent of Silicon Valley. / Bloomberg