Friday, July 24th, 2015

1

Less is Finally More

OK, we're obese, our portions are too big, we eat too much junk, we obsess over often ridiculous food fads, and yes, we've all gone through periods where our esophagus acted as a black hole inhaling artificial ingredients and chemical concoctions by the barrelful (I call mine the Funyun Decade). But at least there's this from the NYT: American's are finally eating less. Some of the drop is a result of better education and regulation. And some can be explained by the fact that our daily soda intake is no longer measured in gallons.

2

Curtain Maul

Russell Houser, the person behind the latest mass shooting that took place in a Louisiana theater, has so far been described as a mentally ill, violent, estranged drifter (and most of those descriptions came from his family). He was armed with a semi-automatic handgun.

+ A few hours before the shooting took place, President Obama described the wide availability of guns as his greatest frustration. "If you ask me where has been the one area that I feel that I've been most frustrated and most stymied, it is the fact that the United States is the one advanced nation on earth in which we do not have sufficient, common-sense gun safety laws. If you look at the number of Americans killed since 9/11 by terrorism, it's less than 100. If you look at the number that have been killed by gun violence, it's in the tens of thousands."

+ Adam Weinstein: It's really hard to be a good guy with a gun.

3

Weekend Reads

"Anyone can sleep in the office for a night, a few nights, even most of the time. But to remove the option of escaping the office entirely—that's what makes it heroic in Silicon Valley." Bloomberg's Joel Stein on one employee's thirteen months of working, eating, and sleeping at the Googleplex. (Pro tip: Dave Eggers' The Circle is not intended to be read as a how-to guide.)

+ "The mission: Kidnap a cop at a traffic stop. Jail him (or her, but likely him) at a house in the burbs. Hold their own trial. And then: 'Put a bullet in his head.'" California Sunday Mag's Ashley Powers on The Vegas Plot.

+ From Fusion: Meet a man who has been dating a crowdsourced Internet girlfriend for the last three months.

+ WaPo's Marja Mills: The Harper Lee I Knew.

4

Luca Brasi Jeeps With the Fishes

Following Andy Greenberg's Wired story about the hackers who remotely hijacked a Jeep with him behind the wheel, Chrysler has recalled 1.4 million vehicles. If you have to update software via a recall, maybe you shouldn't be in the software business.

+ A new app promises to tell people if they're too high to drive. (People should also use this app before they participate in social media.)

5

Scaling the Wal-Mart

At least in terms of market cap size, Amazon is now bigger than Wal-Mart. While both companies are in retail, their stories -- from strategy, to company-size, to revenue re-investment -- couldn't be more different. Their competition paints a vivid picture of America's transition to a new way of doing business.

6

Turkish Ignite

In what could turn out to be a significant development, Turkey has taken big steps in the fight against ISIS including airstrikes and arrests. "More important still could be the decision by Ankara to allow US warplanes to strike IS targets from its base in Incirlik."

7

An Issue Tabled

"I am again surrounding myself, as I did when I was a boy, with metals and minerals, little emblems of eternity." In the NYT, Oliver Sacks shares some thoughts on his periodic table, "when death is no longer an abstract concept, but a presence."

8

Tube Job

"The top five YouTube stars have more subscribers than the population of Mexico. Followers of their channels are double the number of all U.S. cable television viewers." And they're starting to make some really big money. As the early Internet stars go corporate, are streaming video's wild west days a thing of the past? From WaPo: The real reasons why YouTube's 5 biggest stars became millionaires.

+ Pro video gamers will now be subject to random drug tests.

9

Bird is the Word

"By the late 18th century, sex, excretion and the parts associated with same had come to be treated as equally profane as 'swearing' in the religious sense." The WSJ's John H. McWhorter takes a look back at the the evolution of profanity (up to, but not including, my 9 year-old son's decision to Instagram a photo of himself flipping the bird).

10

Bottom of the News

Hulk Hogan has been completely erased from the WWE brand (website, reality shows, etc) after a tape surfaced that includes him using racist language. Hogan's first reaction was to post a tweet: "In the storm I release control, God and his Universe will sail me where he wants me to be, one love." (Yeah, one love ... and a leg drop.)

+ Syndicated from Kottke: The Waffle House Index is an informal metric used by FEMA administrator Craig Fugate to evaluate how bad a storm is.

+ Slate explains that everyone loves red candies the best, and wonders why they make all those other colors at all.