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We Didn’t Eat the Marshmallow. The Marshmallow Ate Us. – NYTimes.com
“The marshmallow study captured the public imagination because it is a funny story, easily told, that appears to reduce the complex social and psychological question of why some people succeed in life to a simple, if ancient, formulation: Character is destiny. Except that in this case, the formulation isn’t coming from the Greek philosopher Heraclitus or from a minister preaching that “patience is a virtue” but from science, that most modern of popular religions.”
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“Cool URLs don’t change.”
“Assume that people won’t read the instructions.” -
How Did Toast Become the Latest Artisanal Food Craze? – Pacific Standard: The Science of Society
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“Language is fossil poetry” – Ralph Waldo Emerson h/t @gardnercampbell
“The etymologist finds the deadest word to have been once a brilliant picture. Language is fossil poetry. As the limestone of the continent consists of infinite masses of the shells of animalcules, so language is made up of images or tropes, which now, in their secondary use, have long ceased to remind us of their poetic origin. ”
“Language is fossil poetry” – Ralph Waldo Emerson h/t @gardnercampbell “The etymologist finds the deadest word … http://t.co/i3Kvz4cHN5
— Tom Woodward (@twoodwar) January 16, 2014
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“It begins in delight, it inclines to the impulse, it assumes direction with the first line laid down, it runs a course of lucky events, and ends in a clarification of life-not necessarily a great clarification, such as sects and cults are founded on, but in a momentary stay against confusion. “
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I am Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg. Edward Snowden is my hero. AMA : IAmA
“PulvisEtUmbraSumus 358 points 20 hours ago
When did you first become aware that there had been an attempt to seize your medical files from Lewis Fielding’s office, and what was your reaction to the administration going that far?
In general, how aware were you of surveillance and character assassination attempts against your person, such as the attempts to tie you to communist groups in Minnesota as per this conversation between Nixon and John Mitchell?
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[–]ellsbergdPlantiff[S] 364 points 17 hours ago
WOW! That link is absolutely fascinating! (Even though I don’t have the time just now to go through it in detail, as I will shortly). Thank you for the link! I have to ask, where is it from, where did you get it (on the White House transcripts)?
Well, in answer to your question,” -
The New Aesthetic — “Tech Workers, Political Speech and Economic…
“The conflation of individual and corporate identity is widely believed to be the natural output of a dedicated and passionate tech workforce, rather than an artificial and deliberate corporate strategy. Of course, the ideal of the “passionate and dedicated workforce” so cherished in tech culture relies on the image of the workforce as a self-actualized, united body with no dividing line, much less tension, between the power structure and the individual. At worst, the conflation is seen as a symbiotic relationship in which both company and employees gain access to social opportunity – i.e., working for high visibility companies often results in personal visibility for their employees, and vice versa. As employees draw parts of their social identity and capital from the company, so do employers draw the fruits of that social identity and capital back into the company’s economy.”
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Incredibly Complex Triple Exposures Created In-Camera – My Modern Metropolis
“”In order to complete some of these images, I went on a citywide search. I learned how light falls in Seattle, became the ultimate tourist and used all the history books I’d devoured as my guide,” said Yam, “Sometimes I was looking for a metaphor, sometimes a precise moment. Other times, it was just a simple object that carried symbolism. I spent close to 400 hours working on this project. Ultimately, three things were necessary: a lot of patience, a pair of comfortable shoes and a light meter.”
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I wanted to catalog the actual crimes in old Scooby Doo episodes.
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Why Our Brains Make Us Click on Lists : The New Yorker
“Once our attention has been ensnared, we still need to be sufficiently intrigued to read the story. In 2009, when researchers at the University of Athens examined actual readers’ responses to headlines from English-language newspapers in the U.S. and U.K., ranging from hard news to tabloids, they found that people preferred headlines that were both creative and uninformative, like “THE SMELL OF CORRUPTION, THE SCENT OF TRUTH” or “FACE TO FAITH.” They not only rated them as more interesting over-all but also indicated that they would be more likely to read the corresponding stories. List-style headlines often provide that optimal balance of information and ambivalence, intriguing us just enough to click, on the chance that we’ll come across something particularly relevant or exciting.
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