- Video of the week: What It’s Like to Face a 150 M.P.H. Tennis Serve. I would just be a giant bruise.
- Pens Are Making a High-Tech Comeback.
- How Did the Practice of Women Jumping Out of Giant Cakes Start?
- The Unfollow Cleanse. “I made a rule for myself: If I didn’t want to get coffee with them, they were gone. And it felt great.”
- I was an Invisible Girlfriend for a Month. This is just weird. If you want ‘social proof’ that you’re in a relationship, maybe actually try to have a real relationship, not a made-up one.
- How Gaming’s Breakout Gay Character Came to Be. Aka Dorian from Dragon Age: Inquisition, arguably my favorite character from that game. “No character ever has to justify why they’re straight, white, and male. The moment you make them anything else, you suddenly need reasons why that’s okay…or do you? A certain amount of deliberateness is required to challenge the idea of a default, and while it feels a bit unnatural to do so, it’s absolutely necessary.”
- Famous films re-edited to highlight Hollywood’s race problem, reducing films to every single word spoken by a person of coler. Disappointing. Many are only seconds long, if that.
- Empathy Is Actually a Choice. “If people expected their empathy to cost them significant money or time, they would avoid situations that they believed would trigger it.”
- New York Wants Google Maps to Discourage Left Turns. Good. Left turns are the pits, anywhere.
- Apparently self-aware computers wanting to wipe out humanity is not what we have to worry about regarding AI: The Real Threat Posed by Powerful Computers.
- Time management is only making our busy lives worse. “Time management, we believe, is the solution to our busyness: if we could organize our time better, we’d be less overwhelmed, happier, and more effective. We are completely wrong on all three counts, and it’s damaging our lives and our careers.”
- How one Ontario tobacco farmer’s shift to kale sprouted a booming business.
Things of Note:
Lots of quotables make for a big ol’ list for you today! Some good reading there, though.
As for here, wedding prep continues apace. We started working on our vows, and have honeymoon dates figured out. I put together our table numbers this weekend, and started a rough layout of our seating chart (to be updated as people RSVP) and program. We even went shopping for wedding bands again, and it turns out finding something that looks good with the ring Ian designed for me is trickier than we thought. But even though the wedding to-do list has been giant, I feel like it’s pretty well in hand. I’m hoping that I’m so ahead of the game on the little things (like the table numbers) that I can take it relatively easy the few days before the wedding instead of scrambling. That’s the hope, at least.
What have you been up to this past week?