Interesting Reading in the Interweb Tubes
- This is what it’s like to be at war with your body (“This time he settled for dry ice, one of the preferred methods of self-amputation …. The idea is to freeze the offending limb and damage it to the point that doctors have no choice but to amputate.”)
- How The Twilight Zone Predicted Our Paranoid Present (It’s ultimately a show about all the ways you can lose yourself—to paranoia, to greed, to conformity.”)
Irony of the Week
- The organization obtaining a stay of contraceptive coverage under the new health insurance regulations was an order of Catholic nuns. Putting aside that the organization is exempt from the rule, I would not think the existence of such coverage would lead nuns to use it.
Bookish Linkage
- Reading a novel can produce measurable changes in the brain lasting several days
- Author concerned (likely with reason) that reading has become a “specialist activity“
- Are “best of” book lists naked emperors?
- Does SF need defenders?
Nonbookish Linkage
- Devolution is the only way to describe this
- How language helps us understand music without words
- The Internet Archive has created a huge collection of classic video games you can play with using your browser
- Tor gives us a techno-panic timeline
- A history of the chocolate chip cookie
- Replacing New Year’s resolutions with a list of things you’re going to stop giving a fuck about in 2014
Any dog under 50 pounds is a cat, and cats are pointless.
Ron Swanson (Nick Offerman), Parks and Recreation, “Emergency Response”