Self­-Management

“You can’t cross the species barrier but, by bumping up against it, you can learn things.” In The New Yorker, Joshua Rothman surveys ventriloquism of the soul. “Tolstoy’s animals teach us to be good,” he explains. “Joyce’s teach us to be alive.” [via aldaily.com]

Possibly the world’s most important story at the moment? American middle-class impoverishment, or as the author—himself afflicted—calls it, financial impotence.

Guilty, very guilty as charged. This study says those who call out grammatical errors are in fact scientifically ‘jerks’.

Derek Sivers’ MusicThoughts. Prepare good friends for a bombardment of enhanced civility.

I scrolled straight past the recent entries at The Setup and clicked only on Charlie Lloyd’s based on his job description. And I guessed right. “At work we’re on small MacBook Pros with maxed-out RAM and external monitors on standing desks,” he writes. Check. “I do my coding and writing in TextMate.” Check. Since he passes these tests of sameness with me, the rest is all gold.

Max Edwards, a 16-year-old writing in The Guardian. What a dude. [Update 8 days later: the man is already gone.]

A new theory for why Buddhist meditation makes us feel good.

So Bikram has lost the first of the many cases against him filed by women for various sexually-related offences. All I know is that his teachings are great and that he plays the guru, speaking in fanciful exaggerations, making mercurial observations. And it seems he was unable to switch off this character even in front of a jury.

A story and video of a young reporter kind of blown away, so to speak, by some new VR porn demoed at CES. [Via DrudgeReport]

A professor of medieval history laments the contemporary propensity to be surveilled just as Europeans were by the Church. [Via aldaily.com]

Turns out we’re happier watching funny cat videos online and unhappier logging in to Facebook.

From the paradoxical title to the illustrations, the style and the actual point itself and its ramifications, Charles Davies’ “Why Your Purpose is a What not a Why” is perhaps the best philosophical piece I can remember reading online.

Nice piece by a watch aficionado yet to remove his Apple Watch. [via DaringFireball.net]

A 21-year Finnish study (not that they’re biased) has concluded that the sauna is great for middle-aged men’s health, the UK Daily Mail reports. Among 2,315 men aged 42 to 60 from eastern Finland, a sauna 2–3 times per week was associated with a 24% lower risk of death and 4–7 times per week with a 40% lower risk!

Don Johnson speaks and oh my.

A fearsomely refreshing list of what the author has learned in her 40s. Enjoyable if you’ve reached the age, and I wonder if edifying for those yet to.

Here’s your treat for today: Montaigne on drunkenness [new link, find it in the contents].

There are a number of sexual harassment and sexual assault cases against Bikram. Sounds like he kind of lost the plot.

On the Grant Study, a longitudinal study of the happiness of the best and the brightest.

The squat, the perch—a reminder that we are not designed to defacate in seating position.

Leon R. Kass on The Ten Commandments is the opening essay at the new http://mosaicmagazine.com.

Why, by the William Shatner School of Toupological Studies.

Cary Grant’s 1963 op-ed in This Week magazine on dressing well.

Surely the definitive article about internet wunderkind Aaron Swartz. Only eating white or yellow food seems a glaring sign that not everything there was quite right.

Moving piece about the writer’s father, a sportswriter, who could not give up cigarettes.