• Why salad is so overrated. I have been saying this for years!!! Now science backs me up. “As the world population grows, we have a pressing need to eat better and farm better, and those of us trying to figure out how to do those things have pointed at lots of different foods as problematic. There’s one food, though, that has almost nothing going for it. It occupies precious crop acreage, requires fossil fuels to be shipped, refrigerated, around the world, and adds nothing but crunch to the plate.”
• No, You Do Not Have to Drink 8 Glasses of Water a Day.
• Why Americans Are Less Likely To Interact With Their Neighbors Than Ever Before. True. But also, at least in our case, it’s because none of our neighbors are near our age.
• Why We Hate Cheap Things. “For most of human history, there truly was a strong correlation between cost and value: the higher the price, the better things tended to be – because there was simply no way both for prices to be low and quality to be high. Everything had to be made by hand, by expensively trained artisans, with raw materials that were immensely difficult to transport.”
• It’s official: if you’re middle-aged and not sleeping enough, you’re rotting away. Lovely.
• It’s Not Just Cosby: Hollywood’s Long List of Male Scumbags.
• The Forever-Doomed Eastern Europe of Our Imaginations.
• In Conversation with Quentin Tarantino. His films are hit or miss with me, but I really enjoyed this interview.
• My Husband; Five Reasons I Am Not Lucky to Have Him. Agreed, 100%.
• Related: Why Most Men Think They’re Over-Working as Parents When, Quantitatively, This Isn’t True. “Men constantly over-estimate their performance in the areas of household work and childcare (and just about everything else too) because society congratulates them for doing these things at all.”
• Shelf catering: tourists offered chance to run a bookshop on holiday. OMG, I so want to do this. Ian is less enthused about the idea.
• When did parents get so scared? “When you were a kid, you probably spent hours outside and unsupervised. It’s not that way anymore.” True.
• Related: The Coddling of the American Mind. “In the name of emotional well-being, college students are increasingly demanding protection from words and ideas they don’t like. Here’s why that’s disastrous for education—and mental health.”
• The Good Listener: Are Tall People Obligated To Stand In The Back At Concerts? It sure would be nice.

Things of Note:

Today marks the start of September. Which, among other things, means I get married THIS MONTH. !!!! Actually, most everything is taken care of by now. August was NUTS, but productive, so now I can [try to] relax for the next very few weeks before the big day. The shops are going into vacation mode today, and I’m going to schedule a few book reviews, but otherwise this blog will probably also go quiet for a few weeks. Have no fear, though! There will be an explosion of picture posts when the wedding and honeymoon have passed.

Speaking of honeymoon, for some of our time we’ll be staying in Airbnb rentals. Neither the boy nor I have ever used Airbnb before, so we’ll see how this go. But what better way to get a bit of European charm on vacation than by staying in an actual home? We picked places that had good pictures, good locations, and good host reviews, so fingers crossed!

Now to go hunt down those last pesky RSVPs.

What will you be up to in September?