7 Stories To Read This Weekend

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7 Stories to Read This Weekend (Jan. 17)

It is a long weekend here in the U.S., and so it’s no surprise that I got caught up in the fun and forgot to email the newsletter. Oops! But better late than never. Here are seven of my favorite reads from this week. Hope you enjoy them as much as I did.

  • “Mr. (Swipe) Right?” A profile of Sean Rad, one of the founders of hot dating service Tinder, and his dreams of the future. http://bit.ly/1Wbo5Qa
  • “Inside the Secret Sisterhood of Women Who Worked at Playboy.” An interesting and surprising Elle magazine feature.  http://bit.ly/1WkrjAZ
  • “An Interview With Alan Rickman.” This week Alan Rickman, a well-known British actor, passed away after a long battle with cancer. Wonderful obituaries were penned, but I think this interview is a great way of remembering the actor who entered my world as a villain in Die Hard. http://bit.ly/1OqntmO
  • “The 19th Century Plug That’s Still Being Used.” The BBC celebrates the design that first was used in the 19th century and is still going strong in the 21st century. It’s all the more interesting now that there are rumors that Apple is going to do away with the headphone port and jacks and force us to use the lightning port to connect to our headphones. http://bbc.in/1P98hOD
  • “T-shirts Unravelled.” Threadbase, a New York-based startup, “washed, dried, measured and weighed 800 of the most popular men’s t-shirts available online,” and you won’t believe what happened next. http://bit.ly/1n4DCVT
  • “This Lawyer Digs Into the Horrors of Fast Fashion.” Julie Zerbo, the founder of The Fashion Law,  is doing some of the most important work in the world of fashion. Milk magazine profiles her. http://mlk.md/1RYSaBT
  • “This Millennial Might Be the New Einstein.” A profile of Sabrina Pasterski, a 22-year-old MIT graduate and Harvard Ph.D., is being compared to legends such as Stephen Hawking and Albert Einstein. She is currently focused on quantum gravity, and Jeff Bezos is keeping a job open for her, in case she decides to leave academia. http://bit.ly/1Q0T9Qe

A Pico Conversation

  • I just published a conversation with Erik Spiekermann, who is one of the most well-known and creative thinkers in design. A type, information and graphic designer, he is one of my favorite people, and I love my conversations with the man who doesn’t hold back. And he didn’t this time around. Please find time to check it out.

In addition, here are some of my writings from this week:

Posted on

7 Stories To Read This Weekend

I hope everyone is having a great weekend and enjoying the slow pace that comes with the holidays. I am enjoying my Christmas break and taking time to slowdown and think about what comes next, both personally, professionally and philosophically. More on that in the coming weeks, but in the interim, here are seven stories that might be worth reading during this long holiday break.

  • Who will claim you? This memoir of placelessness by Akwaeke Emezi, a recent recipient of a 2015 Morland Writing Scholarship will touch your heart and make you wonder about the world, its border, ethnicity and most importantly, about being an immigrant of the soul. One of the best things I read this week. http://bit.ly/1MeQeyt 
  • Let’s stop pretending that we give a damn about climate change: Christie Aschwanden, an independent writer and essayist writes about the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change that recently concluded in Paris. The historic agreement generated a lot of headlines, but as she explains nothing really has changed. It “contains no binding targets and is essentially just an aspirational document,” she notes and adds,”this new agreement provides only empty words until the member states decide to take real action.” My feelings exactly. http://bit.ly/1Os3ZRW
  • The Siege of Miami: Elizabeth Kolbert, one of my favorite writers brings climate change to a level that most people can understand. Alternatively, nothing like falling real estate values give Americans a reality check.  http://bit.ly/1IP1d6Q
  • The Commercial Zen of Muji: Muji is a well designed, minimalistic and brandies version of Japanese Zen lifestyle, that exists mostly in a catalog. Fuji “is a neat paradox, like a Zen koan: massive minimalism through perpetual growth,” writes Silvia Killingsworth for the New Yorker. http://bit.ly/1Ppn320
  • The Transatlantic Data War: Europe is fighting back against the NSA. Foreign Affairs magazine investigates. This has big implications for Silicon Valley giants. http://fam.ag/1NBaoa2
  • Is Facebook luring you into being depressed? A very good question. http://bit.ly/1lZygL8
  • ISIS is a revolution: Argues Scott Atran, a director of research in anthropology at the CNRS, École Normale Supérieure, and a senior research fellow at the University of Oxford. Writing for Aeon magazine, he points out that it is “dynamic, countercultural movement of world-historic proportions spearheaded by ISIS,” and why the world (especially the west) is underestimating this revolution. A very sobering essay. http://bit.ly/1IZaIAq [Additional reading: Inside the surreal world of ISIS propaganda machine. http://wapo.st/218GQrf]

Here are a couple of things I wrote:

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