“There is, I think, a broader moral here. In every area of life, we underrate the merits of desperation, and persistently overrate the advantages of free choice. We insist that we ought to all be equal, free to make the choices we want and find the partners we need.
In fact, people who have this kind of freedom rarely use it well.” Adam Gopnik explains why short men make better husbands.

+ NYT: The Brown sisters have taken forty portraits in forty years.

+ The Coast Guard had to rescue a man who was running across the ocean in a bubble. (Related: Facebook’s $19 billion acquisition of Whatsapp is now official.)

+ HP is splitting into two companies. One called HP, Inc and one called Hewlett-Packard Enterprise. Seriously. Both companies will retain the initials HP. And some consulting company probably got millions for that decision.

+ A new statue has immortalized Edgar Allan Poe in Boston. The only problem is that Poe hated Boston. So the according to the artist, “he faces away from the Frog Pond to represent his disdain for Bostonians.” (Maybe they should have just put the statue in Yankee Stadium.)