I am Bharathwaj from 2IIM. I have taken 7 CAT’s in the last 10 years, have been associated with CAT Preparation since 2015. I have managed to score a 99.21 percentile in the Verbal Section of CAT 2019. I attribute my score to Reading from a wide variety of sources and ability to not be under pressure during the exam (having completed an MBA helps in handling pressure, but to know more about my take on how to handle pressure better, head on here).
What is this CAT Reading List?
This CAT Reading list is created by me, as a result of spending several thousand hours in reading thousands of articles and picking articles that can help a CAT Aspirant in VARC Preparation for CAT, and has about 400+ articles in this collection. Most of the articles in this list are going to be much longer than your passage that appears in CAT. It is done intentionally to help one retain the understanding from reading an article and not facts. It is a collection of all articles I have shared across since 2018 on a daily basis. This will also get updated as and when I post new articles. We are also planning to have a weekly list of articles.
How to Make use of CAT Reading List?
Bookmark this CAT Reading List page. (press ctrl + D if on a PC, or press the star on the right of the url bar, if on chrome either on mobile or pc). Keep coming back to it on a daily basis. Reading everyday helps tremendously in your CAT Preparation in two ways to start with:
1. Your VARC Prep takes care of itself.
2. You get more time to spend on Quantitative Aptitude and DI LR Sections.
This page provides you with meticulously curated articles to improve your English Comprehension, especially if you are preparing for Management entrance exams such as CAT, XAT, IIFT etc.
Find articles classified broadly under 6 different major categories. Click on the Category button to view collection of hand picked articles under that category. You can also scroll down to find recent articles from each category listed under tabs.
Reading List – This Week
Bharath’s Reading List | This Week | November 01st Week 2025
Reading list from last week of November! In case you have missed any of the articles from 01st week, check out this post! Read on to Nail CAT VARC!
Categories listed are:
- Technology, Industry and Science (part 1 50+ articles | part 2 60+ articles)
- Psychology and Philosophy (part 1 48 articles | part 2 40+ articles)
- Humans and Culture (part 1 60+ articles| part 2 60+ articles)
- Politics, Law and Crime (part 1 50+ articles| part 2 20+ articles )
- Economy and Business (part 1 20+ articles)
- Fiction and Others (part 1 8 articles)
This is a part of our initiative (Bharath’s Reading list) to document all articles that we keep sharing through our reading list. This blog post contains articles shared in the last week. The articles are from a wide variety of topics and will also be updated inside the individual topic list as well. Keep this link open in a browser. Click on individual articles available below. Read them to improve your CAT VARC Preparation in the long run. There are no shortcuts when it comes to CAT VARC preparation. Persistence is the key to getting a great VARC Percentile in CAT. All the articles that I shared in the last week are listed below date-wise. https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-56544239 https://integraloflife.com/article-power-ideology-culture Sign up as a trial user to sample 40 hours of CAT Content for free. Follow us on Instagram for our Daily ‘Reading List Rewind’ (where we post quizzes based on the day’s article) and hilarious memes. Happy Reading and Best Wishes! This post contains loads of articles categorised under Psychology and Philosophy. These are handpicked articles over the course of years for CAT Aspirants. This is the last of 2 posts. Click on the following link to go to the previous post: LINK here. Every Article will have blurb, either written by me or an extract from the original post (mostly the latter) followed by the link to reach the article. The Value of Being Wrong A journey in releasing expectations Parasitic Whiteness on and off the couch The framework of life for anxious beings When Your Job Fills In for Your Faith, That’s a Problem When it comes to lasting romance, passion has nothing on friendship. “What Know-It-Alls Don’t Know, Or The Illusion of Competence” “The First Authoritarian. Popper’s Plato” “primordial love “Wait, that pen is doing WHAT?” “Ultimately, few have the training and understanding to know what counts as a serious examination of evidence under conditions of patchy knowledge. The rest of us engage in confirmation bias, seeking out what we regard as the most credible voices that have defended what we are already disposed to believe.” “Social media and many other facets of modern life are destroying our ability to concentrate. We need to reclaim our minds while we still can” “Doctors are of course trained to view every problem through the lens of disease. But what happens when artists do the same?” “For the first time in my life, the crushing anxiety of trauma overtook me, my body on such constant high alert that I literally didn’t sleep for weeks and later had to be briefly hospitalized myself, the staff shoving adult coloring books in front of me as my milk leaked onto everything, teenage depressives staring with wide eyes at the growing saucer stains on my shirt.” “Imagination isn’t just a spillover from our problem-solving prowess. It might be the core of what human brains evolved to do.” “If humans were to disappear from the face of the Earth, what might dogs become? And would they be better off without us?” “War and Peace through a different lens” “Our beliefs and emotions seem so personal to us, but they’re connected to what people around us do. Our minds change, sometimes without our understanding why. We can suddenly start to question something we once took for granted. It might be something trivial, like whether or not women over 30 should wear leggings, or something more profound, like whether anyone has the right to voice an opinion about what women over 30 should wear.” “For 50 years, Enthusiastic Sobriety programs have promised to help teenagers kick drug and alcohol addiction. But former followers say ES doesn’t save lives – it destroys them.” “Help is a funny word. My first interactions with it were almost always ones of violence. A character in a movie cried for help. Someone was hurt, always. They needed help. They needed help now. The way they needed help was obvious. They were trapped under metal. They were physically crushed. A bone was broken. Blood was on their clothes. If help didn’t arrive soon, then the help would arrive too late. And then there were tears. And there was no helping those.” “Empathy is, at heart, an aesthetic appreciation of the other” “NIETZSCHE: The Übermensch (Overman)” “Other People’s Despair | Mending the Social Fabric Won’t Fix the Suicide Crisis” “To learn from a psychedelic trip, explore the dreams that follow “Deep Intellect “What a Cult Steals from You “Under pressure: why athletes choke “Hi, Dear “The Most Dangerous Censorship “Doing the Naked Macarena “Imagine you could insert knowledge into your mind: should you?” ”The Epidemic of Isolation Among Young Men ”How to gain more from your reading ”The Hazards of a “Nice” Company Culture” “The Talk “The Omnipresence of Work “Recognising the rhythm in addiction offers new ways to escape it “When Your Disorder Doesn’t Exist “The Sexual Identity That Emerged on TikTok “If you think you’ve got a porn addiction, you probably haven’t” “The Identity Hoaxers “The Weak Case for Grit “It’s not a temporary affliction: It’s the millennial condition. It’s our base temperature. It’s our background music. It’s the way things are. It’s our lives. “Stereotypical portrayals too often focus on the rituals and portray none of the nuanced, often agonized thinking behind them. Consequently, it’s become common—and even acceptable—for anyone who likes things in order or who keeps a clean house to use the OCD label to describe themselves. “What Makes You You? “How to speak in public “The superpower of tomorrow? Being “indistractable” Learn how to take back control of your attention span” “The Pascal of the North‘Philosopher of the Heart’” “The Science Behind Miracles “The Internet of Beefs” “The overall summary of all of this is that they’re bad forgetters,” he said. And forgetting is what humans do; often what we need to do. “A Deeper Longing “The mystery of the Gatwick drone “In Nyāya philosophy only some debates are worth having “In the chaos of raising a toddler there lies a path to nirvana “Commodity of Doom “The problem with love is deciding who’s doing the dishes” “How to Stop Feeling Crushed for Time “How a Bizarre Claim About Masks Has Lived on for Months “Now you see it “What We Lose When We Hide Our Smiles Behind a Mask” “Denham offered his sign in 1575. A mirrored question mark, he hoped, would flag up a rhetorical question, making it easier to get the drift of the writer’s intention. But it never caught on.” “Kierkegaard on Why Anxiety Powers Creativity Rather Than Hindering It “The self of self-help books is adrift from social and economic facts” “Is Everyone Depressed? “Why it pays to be grumpy and bad-tempered” “The Role of Cognitive Dissonance in the Pandemic “Army Ranger School Is a Laboratory of Human Endurance. “The privilege of boredom “There have always been drug addicts in need of help, but the scale of the present wave of heroin and . . “ “A touch of absurdity can help to wrap your mind around reality “How to Master the Invisible Hand That Shapes Our Lives” “I share dozens of links on Twitter and Facebook. But how many do I read in full? How many do I share after reading the full thing? Honestly—and I feel comfortable saying this because even mom’s stopped reading at this point—not too many.” “Impostor syndrome: do you sometimes feel like a fraud? “Splendid isolation: how I stopped time by sitting in a forest for 24 hours “Gradually, the notion of nostalgia attached itself almost exclusively to soldiers—Swiss mercenaries being very popular hires in armies across the continent and doctors being a regular part of army life. It would take a little more than two centuries for doctors to figure out that there might be something more than a mysterious nerve disorder causing young men whose sole job was dismembering other humans and dying gruesomely to yearn for the comforts of home” “If we are to settle the Solar System astronauts will have to travel for months and years. Are these missions too taxing for human minds?” “If society is fractured today, if we truly care less about one another, some of the blame lies with the values parents have elevated. In our own lives, we’ve observed many fellow parents becoming so focused on achievement that they fail to nurture kindness. They seem to regard their children’s accolades as a personal badge of honor—and their children’s failures as a negative reflection on their own parenting.” “Nothing has all of the ingredients for the emotional breakdown recipe quite like a pandemic-induced global shutdown. Lack of face-to-face socializing and general social isolation? Check. Financial uncertainty and mass unemployment? Check. Lack of regular exercise, sunlight, and access to basic necessities? Check. High uncertainty of one’s safety and security in the near future? Check. Tons of free-time to refresh news feeds five thousand times per day? Double check.” “What is wrong with this picture? Why do modern ‘evidence-based’ treatments fail to produce better outcomes? Indeed, why do things seem to be getting worse, with many forms of suffering, even suicide, on the rise? “More than five tonnes of Calpol is sold every day – and more than 12 million units each year. Other brands cost half the price, but Calpol has 70% of the market for children’s pain-relief medicine, which is three times the share of its nearest competitor and 50 times more than the next most popular brand of paracetamol. For British parents, Calpol is overwhelmingly the drug of choice.” “Jacob is just one of a growing number of people seeking inspiration from business schools rather than poetry in the quest to find the right partner. This hard-headed attitude is evident in the practical turn that romance’s ardent lexicon has taken in recent years. We look for partners, not soulmates. We avoid deal-breakers. “Are you in the right headspace to receive information that might hurt you?” reads a recent meme, advising people to ask loved ones for consent before making demands on their emotional labour.” Brilliant writeup on life and What is important. CAT Aspirant or not, this is a must read. “In this vehicle that dwarfed even the beefiest of men, Schwarzenegger saw a business opportunity. He contacted AM General, the heavy-automotive manufacturer behind the Humvee (the military vehicle on which the Hummer is based) and other purpose-driven vehicles, to communicate his adoration. He was sure the Hummer needed to be made available for purchase to regular people, and though the company was initially hesitant, the Hummer was introduced to the civilian market in 1992.” “In a famous experiment, when participants were presented with evidence counter to their political beliefs, areas of their brain associated with physical pain became more active — it’s as if being wrong physically hurts.” “PICTURE THIS: everyone in your life is obsessed with ice cream, and you just don’t understand the hype. You’ve tasted it, and maybe you’ve even enjoyed it from time to time, but you don’t actively crave it like the people around you seem to—nor do you centre your life around it like they do. “Can’t wait to get some ice cream!” they effervesce in tweets and Facebook posts, and you wonder why. Dates with potential romantic partners, and even get-togethers with friends, often seem organized around the acquisition or discussion of ice cream, pushing you further into an isolation that feels like your own doing.” “I know I’m not alone. We all know that person: there’s the child minder who is always late, the colleague who misses every deadline, even if just by a few hours, the friend you must tell to arrive 30 minutes earlier than she needs to for your lunch reservation.” “The most surprising result of the study was that the non-demanding task was actually better than doing nothing,” Schooler says. Why this is so, however, is less clear. “My best guess is that if you’re engaged in a non-demanding task, it kind of prevents you from having long trains of thought,” Schooler posits. “It’s sort of churning things up, stirring the pot, so you’re not maintaining one thought for a particularly long time. There are a lot of different ideas going in and out, and that sort of associative process leads to creative incubation.” “From now on, he always consults the dice. Since it has six sides, he gives it six options. The first is to do what he has always done. The five others depart more or less distinctly from this routine. Once it has been subjected to the dice, even the most anodyne choice – that of a film, a restaurant – opens a vast array of possibilities for putting your routine behind you.” “Ironically, accusing others of virtue signalling might itself constitute virtue signalling – just signalling to a different audience. Whether it should be counted as virtue signalling or not, the accusation does exactly what it accuses others of: it moves the focus from the target of the moral claim to the person making it. It can therefore be used to avoid addressing the moral claim made.” Brilliant passage that delves deep on solitude, herd mentality, moral stance, introspection, leadership and many other ideas in a beautiful, coherent way. Must Read. “They would follow him from room to room, everywhere he went in the house, and lie down next to him while he slept. Crawled on, dribbled on, kicked, elbowed and kneed: these occurrences were all treated with a resigned fatalism. The fingers in the eye they received on a daily basis would be shrugged off with an almost Zen-like calm. In many respects, they were better parents than me. If my son so much as squeaked during the night, I would instantly feel two cold noses pressed in my face: get up, you negligent father — your son needs you.” “I broke this cycle when my daughters were born and I realised that it would be irresponsible to stop treatment because being a good father meant having a stable mood. It was a purely pragmatic decision, made without resolving the existential issues that antidepressants had raised for me before. That being the case, I do not write with the fervour of the newly converted, although sometimes I speculate about how much smoother my life would have been had I decided much sooner to stick to the antidepressants.” “Never underestimate the willingness of a man to believe flattering things about himself.” Samuelson was not a behavioral economist, but he clearly recognized that people’s self-assessments were often higher than warranted by objective evidence. In surveys, for example, more than 90 percent of people describe themselves as above-average drivers. The same self-assessment was reported by more than 80 percent of drivers surveyed while they were in the hospital recovering from accidents, many of which they had surely caused themselves. “The worker is the hamster, consumer culture is the hamster wheel. People are tricked into believing that Furbies, iPads and all those other pointless goods and services are necessary for a happy and fulfilled existence. A sense of ‘meaning’ has been replaced with instant, short-term, on-demand happiness.” Freud believed that, over the course of human history, humankind had suffered three ‘great outrages upon its naïve self-love’. First, there was Copernicus, who, with his finding that the Earth revolved around the Sun, showed that we were not at the centre of the Universe; second, there was Charles Darwin who, with his theory of evolution, showed that we emerged from the animal kingdom, and did not exist apart from it; last, there was Freud himself (he was never one for modesty), via whom psychoanalysis had shown that man was ‘not even master in his own house’ due to the massive effects of the unconscious. Vohs, who has studied the effect of choice on consumers for many years, found in a recent project that even making pleasant choices can deplete one’s mental resources, making a person less able to concentrate later. At night, the sky is a watercolor wash. Sunset tries to push in but day resists, never giving over to real darkness, instead smudging the blue over the glaciers peach and mauve. Waterfalls of glacial rock glow rose and coral in the perma-dusk. Clouds roll in just to catch the pinkish light. Distant peaks are scoops of sorbet. Everything seems impossibly far apart, held together precariously in any moment by the eye, always about to drift even farther. Lunch usually consisted of salad. I would choose three different vegetables or fruits. The first thing I would do was smell the items for freshness and run my fingers over them—a process that filled me with a mixture of delight and disgust. “These are pure enough,” I used to say to myself. Then I would go about washing each one, cutting them in a set order, weighing each portion, and methodically arranging the foods on a plate. A phobia is generally considered “an exaggerated usually inexplicable and illogical fear of a particular object, class of objects, or situation”. Forget about RC. Forget about reading practice. Forget about CAT. Read this brilliant and short write-up about scarcity, abundance and generosity. “I don’t understand how people…live. It’s amazing to me that people wake up every morning and say, ‘Yeah, another day, let’s do it.’ How do people do it? I don’t know how.” “Flashback to early capitalism: the Protestant ethic sucked up happy-go-lucky peasants and churned out industrious wage slaves. Flash forward to digital capitalism, which sucks up helpless little babies and churns out Facebook slaves who labour for the likes and turn the conversation to themselves at every opportunity. Brilliant perception of death and grief. Will make lot more sense if you have ever lost someone close to heart. “Three features of the definition stand out: the outsider status of intellectuals, their extraordinariness or even their singularity, and their politics.” “He’s driving his truck, saying “Taco should be a verb.” The taco, he says, is heated on the griddle, and the counterman slides meat onto it and sauces it and hands it to you and you eat it, all in one extended motion. “I know it’s overly romantic,”” “Take Immanuel Kant’s elegant formulation of how to do the right thing: act in ways that could be generalized to universal principles. You’ll choose the right thing to do, every time, if you ask yourself: If everyone acted in this way, would the world be a better place? Reason will always guide you to the right answer, and to its corollary, which is that we should treat others never as means but always as ends in themselves. The narcissist, in contrast, always chooses to act in exactly such a way that if everyone were to follow suit, the world would go straight to hell.” “More practically, the idea of niksen is to take conscious, considered time and energy to do activities like gazing out of a window or sitting motionless. The less-enlightened might call such activities “lazy” or “wasteful.” Again: nonsense.” “At the time, this was a radical idea – and it still is. It essentially suggests that the brain makes no distinction between a broken bone and an aching heart. Rejection, it tells us, actually hurts. “Today, with the pollution that new technologies have brought to our information ecosystem, this distinction is no longer so easy to make. And this is the real problem, and danger, of satire: not that it mocks and belittles respect-worthy pieties, not that it “punches down,” but that it has become impossible to separate it cleanly from the toxic disinformation that defines our era.” “Narcissism gives you the confidence to believe you can achieve great things. It’s hard to imagine someone other than Steve Jobs having the grandiose vision of creating Apple. And we’re all drawn to that confidence — it’s why narcissists are more likely to rise up the ranks of the corporate elite and get elected to political office. But alone, narcissism is dangerous. Studies show that tech companies with narcissistic CEOs have more fluctuating, volatile performance.” “My dissatisfaction was whiny and irrational, as I well knew, so I kept it to myself. When I thought about it—which I did, a lot—I rejected the term midlife crisis, because I was holding a steady course and never in fact experienced a crisis: more like a constant drizzle of disappointment. What annoyed me most of all, much more than the disappointment itself, was that I felt ungrateful, the last thing in the world I was entitled to be.” “This terrorism takes the form of what psychologists call ‘intrusive thoughts’ — unwanted, painful thoughts or images that invade one’s consciousness, triggering profound fear and anxiety. This is the ‘obsessive’ part of OCD, and it can arise in even the most mundane circumstances. Sitting here typing, for example, I sometimes feel modest pain in my fingers, and my mind kicks into gear: You’re typing too much and causing permanent damage to your hands. Feel those little irritations at the second knuckle of your left ring finger? Those are the harbingers of arthritis. This is how it starts.” ““If you stop logging into Facebook, you’re not going to get the shakes and start vomiting and going into physical withdrawals,” Baumer says. It’s more like a gambling problem, he says, because “it’s less a question of addiction and more a question of impulse control.”” “If you tell me to calm down, I probably won’t. The same goes for: “be reasonable,” “get over it already,” “you’re overreacting,” “it was just a joke,” “it’s not such a big deal.” When someone minimizes my feelings, my self-protective reflexes kick in. My body, my mind, my job, my interests, my talents—these are all “mine”—but nothing has quite the power to declare itself as “mine” as a passionate emotion does. When waves of anger or love or grief wash over me, that emotion feels like life itself. It wells up from an innermost core, like my voice, which it usually inflects. And so if you move to tamp it down, I parry by shutting you out: I erect walls around my sanctum sanctorum, to shield the flame of my passion—my life—from your soul-quenching intrusions. Who are you to tell me what I can and cannot feel?!” “In her book on international adoption, historian Karen Dubinsky writes about rumors circulating in Guatemala that foreigners abduct local children and turn them into sex slaves or steal their organs. Illustrating the power such falsehoods can have, tourists have been lynched as a result of the accusations.” Generally, when authors base their articles on research from studies,, I am cynical. But this is an idea that I definitely buy into – Anger leads to more anger. Anger, and as an extent, emotions can be contagious. “He says when he wrote those angry tweets, he was in a bad place, angry at himself for letting his health deteriorate: “It was easy to snap back and snarl.” But Beatty says the empathy shown toward him changed him. He has begun to think, “People are good.” He realizes that politics divide people, but one on one, “people are caring, generous, helpful.” “ “You cannot convey the pure concussive terror of a panic attack in words either, the sense that all your bones are thrumming a bad, insistent chord. I have tried to explain why I must leave the restaurant, why I must have an aisle seat at the show, why sometimes my throat seizes so powerfully I can’t even drink water. Some friends and family members understand; others don’t; and I hide my phobias when I can.” “What is workism? It is the belief that work is not only necessary to economic production, but also the centerpiece of one’s identity and life’s purpose; and the belief that any policy to promote human welfare must always encourage more work.” When we are living in a world where we don’t have time for boredom, We might even get existential crisis if the sitcom that one’s watching gets over. I can’t remember a time in the last five years or so when I was bored. I do remember times when I was bored in my childhood and had lot of time to just be with my thoughts, imagination, creatures in my head and fantasy lands. Oh I wish I can get those back. “You are bored. And I’m going to let you in on a little secret about life. You think it’s boring now? Well, it only gets more boring. The sooner you learn it’s on you to make life interesting, the better off you’ll be.” “I have read that Tinder users agree that one should “swipe left’” (i.e. reject) on any prospective mate or hookup who proclaims a fondness for, among other writers, Kurt Vonnegut, Ernest Hemingway or William S. Burroughs. I couldn’t care less about the first two of these, but Burroughs is very important to me. He played a vital role in shaping how I see the world (Cities of the Red Night, in particular), and I would want any person with whom I spend much time communicating to know this. I believe I have good reasons for valuing him, and would be happy to talk about these reasons.” “I still have the memory of what it’s like when the depersonalisation lifts. Those are periods of such indescribable joy. They’re memories I try to hang on to when things get tough – memories of just sitting at my tiny kitchen table in my flat, without feeling the need to achieve or function or engage. Just being. Just living.” “Wolf does not mean to suggest that non-moral equals immoral: just because something doesn’t have anything to do with morality (playing tennis, for instance) it does not follow that it is therefore morally bad. The point is that morality is, intuitively, focused on issues such as treating others equally, and on trying to relieve suffering. And good things these are: but so is holidaying with a friend, or exploring the Alaskan rain forest, or enjoying a curry. Moral goodness is just one aspect of the good things in life and, if you live as if the moral aspect is the only aspect that matters, then you are likely to be very impoverished in terms of the non-moral goods in your life. And that means missing out on a lot.” “It had become, in Clark’s words, “transparent equipment.” And the physiological effects of losing that equipment were acute: my heart began to race in the Verizon store when the employee told me he was deactivating my phone, and in the following hours and days, I would frequently find myself reaching for my iPhone, the way a girl reaches for a non-existent ponytail after a drastic haircut. Of course, I would gradually begin to notice not being able to use Google Maps or post to Instagram, but the physical sense of loss was instantaneous and intense. I literally felt a part of me was missing.” This post contains loads of articles categorised under Humans and Culture. These are handpicked articles over the course of years for CAT Aspirants. This is the last of 2 posts. Click on the following link to go to the previous post: LINK here. Every Article will have blurb, either written by me or an extract from the original post (mostly the latter) followed by the link to reach the article. Japan’s Cold War education policy used religion to ‘make’ the ideal humans needed by its nascent economy Facial hair is biologically useless The Indian driver turned union leader is brushing shoulders with top politicians and giving ride-hailing firms a run for their money. 340-pound penguins were once normal—and maybe they will be again someday. Supreme Court of India on Demonetization – A Farce in Three Acts Prince Harry’s memoir is the UK’s fastest-selling nonfiction book ever. Too busy to read it? All the love, rancour, drugs and petty fights are here Teleporting and psychedelic mushrooms: a history of St Nicholas, Santa and his helpers As a manager, a central part of your job is to develop people. But when you delegate a task to someone — with no prior training — simply because you are unavailable to do it, their chances of succeeding are slim What a year at the University of Oxford taught me about South Asians Yes the problem is porn: A response to Chanel Contos The massacre at Montreal’s Polytechnique school, fueled by misogyny, is not a horrifying memory confined to a bygone era – rather it seems like a foretelling of things to come I bid goodbye to my boxes Sustainability is about value creation as much as it is about resilience The private rebellions of Indian women A Surprising Side of Carl Sagan Monday School It is one of the best sites excavated after a century. All the artefacts unearthed are excellent. The Loneliest Man in the World April showers hopes for maybe this time, flowers A televangelist, a TikTok bride, and the ever-present camera Celebrity chefs, food writers, and home cooks have sneered at pre-cut produce. They’re dismissing those of us with disabilities. Nobody Likes To Be Told What To Do Nazi or KGB agent? My search for my grandfather’s hidden past We’re Crossing the Threshold of Survivability — And There’s No Going Back Are you a baby? A litmus test Without meds, my back and hip are, to my surprise and delight, nearly pain-free We’ve become convinced that if we can eat more healthily, we will be morally better people. But where does this idea come from? Nate still hadn’t returned to the campsite. As the sunlight faded behind the mountains, the cool shadows creeping down their slopes, I pictured the clothes he had been wearing Five million payphone calls are still made each year in the UK. Who is making them – and why? Flour Trip “Shanghai Lockdown Diary: The Quest for Food Brings an Apartment Complex Together “The Willy Wonka of Pot “A day in the life of (almost) every vending machine in the world “The Artful, Subdued Translations of Modern Pop” “Athletics, IQ, Health: Three Myths of Race “Boomers Could Never Survive High School Today “How we lost our sensory connection with food – and how to restore it To eat in the modern world is often to eat in a state of profound sensory disengagement. It shouldn’t have to be this way” “Beautiful Lies “The Magic of the Japanese Convenience Store Sandwich” “How Filipino Sailors—and Coconuts—Helped Create Mexico’s National Drink” “What TikTok videos have in common with Victorian parlour games” “Khansama “The Second-Book Problem An investigation into the enduring popularity of the watch brand that wears the crown What Was the TED Talk? | Some Thoughts on the “Inspiresting” “A new study blames flawed research and a confounding mistrust of common sense” “I’ve realised that very often the way I think things should go just isn’t right, to be honest. So I’ve become more open to experiencing things as they actually are, and not trying to control everything. It’s the same with acting. You can prep all you want, and it’s fun thinking about how this person’s going to react and whatever, but — and I don’t want to sound like a cunt here — but now I’m better at just letting the movie be what it wants to be. I’m more excited to discover how things are going to transpire in life.” “A personal history of how the internet came home, became magazine fodder, and changed a life” “I dug into my family history and discovered a tale of supernatural evil, buried treasure, and paranoia” “It is a movie of the interregnum, one that could have been auto-generated by it.” “The frequent temptation to compare India in 1757 (when British rule was beginning) with India in 1947 (when the British were leaving) would tell us very little, because in the absence of British rule, India would of course not have remained the same as it was at the time of Plassey. The country would not have stood still had the British conquest not occurred. But how do we answer the question about what difference was made by British rule?” This article is an exhilarating and a provocative read. History matters. As we debate slavery and dispute the role of empire, we have become accustomed to constant sparring over the past. As we seek new, sustainable ways to organize our world, we need to understand the full range of ways our ancestors thought and lived. And we must certainly question conventional versions of our history which we have accepted, unexamined, for far too long. “Our survey suggests most people don’t even know what the culture war is” “Why is Arkansas the driest state in America? Where do morality and geography crystalize?” “These aspirations and pressures are reflected in a scene from the hit 2020 web series Panchayat. Two parents in a village are arguing about what to call their newborn son. The mother likes the traditional-sounding ‘Aatmaram,’ but the father wants ‘Aarav,’ after Twinkle Khanna and Akshay Kumar’s son.” “Debates about truth and deception have value, but they obscure the fact that documentaries have always been more akin to essays than articles. It would be hard to hold up an essay as proof of anything at all, except perhaps consciousness. They are dramas of a mind, or often several, learning, searching, and making things cohere.” “For the K’iche’ Mayans, animals were not lower beings but neighbours, alter egos and a way to communicate with the gods” “Archaeological excavations across Tamil Nadu are reigniting the debate about India’s early history and the dawn of civilisation in the subcontinent.” “Where Will Everyone Go? “How Nickelodeon Created Its Slime-Drenched ’90s Style “Typos, tricks and misprints “I wrote in 2000. “Anybody with the right degree, job, and cultural competencies can join.” That turned out to be one of the most naive sentences I have ever written.” “If You Can’t Find a Spouse Who Supports Your Career, Stay Single” ““They stand quietly,” wrote Lightman, “but secretly they seethe with their anger. For they must watch measured that which should not be measured. They must watch the precise passage of minutes and decades. They have been trapped by their own inventiveness and audacity. And they must pay with their lives.”” “How an Ancient Kingdom Explains Today’s China-Korea Relations “How a False Sense of Security, and a Little Secret Tea, Broke Down Taiwan’s COVID-19 Defenses” “An Archaeologist on the Railroad of Death “A delivery driver’s tale “The Untold Story of Napoleon Hill, the Greatest Self-Help Scammer of All Time” “The Time Everyone “Corrected” the World’s Smartest Woman” “Learning to Forgive My Distant Father “Shostakovich’s symphony played by a starving orchestra “The Snack Shack Blues “Futurology: how a group of visionaries looked beyond the possible a century ago and predicted today’s world” “Officially, India Has the World’s Second-Worst COVID-19 Outbreak. Unofficially, It’s Almost Certainly the Worst” “Yuri Gagarin’s boomerang: the tale of the first person to return from space, and his brief encounter with Aussie culture” “The harmful ableist language you unknowingly use “The Dig “The student and the algorithm: how the exam results fiasco threatened one pupil’s future “The triumph of bedroom pop “‘I’m the Doctor Who Is Here to Help You Die’ “For 40 Years, This Russian Family Was Cut Off From All Human Contact, Unaware of World War IIIn 1978, Soviet geologists prospecting in the wilds of Siberia discovered a family of six, lost in the taiga” “What Are Magazines Good For?” “Trump Hotel Employees Reveal What It Was Really Like Catering to the Right-Wing Elite “Ayahuasca: a psychedelic murder story “The BBL is the fastest growing cosmetic surgery in the world, despite the mounting number of deaths resulting from the procedure. What is driving its astonishing rise?” “How Being a Workaholic Differs from Working Long Hours — and Why That Matters for Your Health” “How Capitalism Drives Cancel Culture “the common meal “The rise and fall of the Zoom penis “Unlocking the Mystery of Paris’ Most Secret Underground Society (combined) “VEGAS ON THE BLACK SEA “Were Neanderthals More Than Cousins to Homo Sapiens? “My Experiments with Matrimony “Over the last forty years, academics have tried, without much success, to superimpose the idea of the Vikings as peaceful traders on the berserkers-and-horned-helmets tradition.” “Virtual Influencers Make Real Money While Covid Locks Down Human Stars “The Stages of Gentrification, as Told by Restaurant Openings “A Critic for All Seasons “Was Ramesses II really that great? “Braving the goblet of fire “mow the tiles “Marmalade: A Very British Obsession “Now More So Than Ever “The Unbearable: Toward an Antifascist Aesthetic” “What Milk-Sharing Communities Reveal “How Aztecs told history “Celebrity Culture Is Burning “The Strange Saga of Kowloon Walled City Anarchic, organic, surreal, this enclave was once among the most densely populated places on Earth.” Why good teachers allow a child’s mind to wander and wonder. “The Things We Can’t Control Are Beautiful “Not Your Server “With dismay, I will watch as Americans express their willingness to forfeit their civil liberties in the name of new surveillance measures, violating Ben Franklin’s grievously forgotten saying, “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” “ “Tearing Down Statues Won’t Undo History “The fascinating objects of fascism “The War on Coffee “Until recently, scientists and collectors had captured fewer than a hundred specimens of the earless monitor lizard, Lanthanotus borneensis, since the species’ 1877 discovery. Among reptile enthusiasts, its rarity and mystique have earned it a grandiose nickname: “the Holy Grail of herpetology.”” “How Elders Make Us Human. Article shared by Barack Obama on 10th June. “Why Is the Human Brain So Efficient? “There is a Clock ringing deep inside a mountain. It is a huge Clock, hundreds of feet tall, designed to tick for 10,000 years. Every once in a while the bells of this buried Clock play a melody. Each time the chimes ring, it’s a melody the Clock has never played before. The Clock’s chimes have been programmed to not repeat themselves for 10,000 years. Most times the Clock rings when a visitor has wound it, but the Clock hoards energy from a different source and occasionally it will ring itself when no one is around to hear it. It’s anyone’s guess how many beautiful songs will never be heard over the Clock’s 10 millennial lifespan.” The disturbing return of scientific racism “If the desire to procreate is one of the most powerful of human urges, so too is the desire to know our own identity. In the complex calculus of reproductive medicine, the achievement of a baby is considered the end–a success–when in fact it’s just the beginning. Long-term scientifically controlled studies on the psychological and emotional effects of donor conception have not been conducted.” “It was a time when male behavior on Wall Street was particularly noxious. “Women started getting jobs … and men did everything they could to make them feel like they didn’t belong,” says Susan Antilla, author of Tales From the Boom-Boom Room, a history of women in banking. That meant parades of strippers in the office, Playboy centerfolds hung up at the desks, care packages for female employees containing dildos or calzones shaped like penises. It could also mean verbal abuse or sexual assault.” “In an increasingly urbanized world, few people still ride horses for reasons beyond sport or leisure. However, on horseback, people, goods, and ideas moved across vast distances, shaping the power structures and social systems of the premechanized era. From the trade routes of the Silk Road or the great Mongol Empire to the equestrian nations of the American Great Plains, horses were the engines of the ancient world. “Panama disease, an infection that ravages banana plants, has been sweeping across Asia, Australia, the Middle East and Africa. The impact has been devastating. In the Philippines alone, losses have totalled US$400m. And the disease threatens not only the livelihoods of everyone in this US$44 billion industry but also the 400m people in developing countries who depend on bananas for a substantial proportion of their calorie intake.” “The Ad Hoc Committee of the Harvard Medical School to Examine the Definition of Brain Death was formed in 1968. Deliberating in private, the 13 men – 10 doctors, one lawyer, one historian and one theologian – put all the stakes on the brain, deciding that those who have a heartbeat and breath (even if machine-controlled) could still be considered dead. Six months later, without public discussion or fanfare, they had produced ‘brain death’, a new category of knowledge and being that would upend everything anyone knew about the end of human life. “ “This is no less bonkers and a lot more good-hearted than the five talks I’ve just sat through where people in suits declared, and I am barely paraphrasing, that bitcoin will go up forever, taking everyone in the room with it until we leave this mortal plane and ascend into the ionosphere where ICOs rain chocolate money and there is no death.” “My grandfather designed a house that reflected the modernist sensibilities of his time: glass-and-cinder-block exterior, stained-wood walls, and a fireplace mosaic depicting the developmental life cycle of the honeybee. The living room was open, and two towering walls of books there told the story of one generation’s liberated secularism—Richard Feynman, Alfred Kinsey, Iris Murdoch, Bertrand Russell, and the art of Native American tribes. In time, my grandparents raised three boys, grew marijuana on their roof, and went to see the Mamas and the Papas sing in Monterey.” “When she picked up her grandmother from a nearby mobile park, the morning sky had turned dark; the street ahead of her was illuminated orange and red by the flames lining the road and the brake lights of gridlocked cars. She was one of thousands fleeing Paradise, California, as the Camp Fire consumed acres by the minute. It would later be recognized as the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in modern California history.” “IN NEW YORK CITY AND throughout the country, the professional-managerial class is hunkered down and making the best of a bad situation: working remotely, enjoying time with their families, making sure their children stay up on their schoolwork, finding ways to work out, exercising self-care, and catching up on all the shows they’ve wanted to binge-watch. This could be told as a story about the wonders of technology and capitalism. Social media, communication platforms, delivery services, and streaming entertainment make life under quarantine more bearable and productive. But such a narrative would miss the main story.” “What does a writer do when his words stop working? I don’t know. All I know is that I am churning inside and everything I knew is windskipping like brown willow leaves in a winter gale. I am afraid and sometimes I am excited. I feel like something is waiting for me, and I don’t know what, but I fear that I do know, I fear that I am being called, and I am taking too long to answer. But who is to say how long it should take?” “This Indian TikTok star wants you to know his name. Two years ago Israil Ansari was working as a handyman and didn’t even own a smartphone. Then things started to go crazy” ““If you’re gonna mute yourself and not show video, why are you here, bro?” the host scolds about a dozen people on the call. In the chat running down the side of the screen, teenagers who do not know each other are amicably exchanging Snapchat handles and attempting to break off into cliques. Someone writes, of course, “I’m tryna see some titties,” to which someone says out loud, “Oh my god, who the hell said I’m tryna see some titties.” The host starts playing one of Kanye West’s songs about Jesus, and everyone starts yelling in irritation. Someone spills White Claw on their laptop. The flashing red circle that indicates that someone is recording the call starts flashing, and everyone yells again.” “The downside is, of course, that this would give legitimacy to a terrifying new surveillance system. If you know, for example, that I clicked on a Fox News link rather than a CNN link, that can teach you something about my political views and perhaps even my personality. But if you can monitor what happens to my body temperature, blood pressure and heart-rate as I watch the video clip, you can learn what makes me laugh, what makes me cry, and what makes me really, really angry.” Super interesting, super well written, super long read. Must read. “I looked through the window to see whether the men inside were mean. I had this suspicion that I could tell by looking at them, which is how you can tell if men are mean in the movies. But in real life men can behave very well for a while and then suddenly hurt you and then behave well again. I knew this but was ignoring it. I had rent to pay. I got in the car and eyed the locks, checked the door handles, considered my escape.” “Two countries, thousands of families, and a 16-year quest to identify a silent man in a bed” “History’s largest mining operation is about to begin. It’s underwater—and the consequences are unimaginable. Mining companies want access to the seabed beneath international waters, which contain more valuable minerals than all the continents combined.” “On the maps, green areas, rated “A,” indicated “in demand” neighborhoods that, as one appraiser put it, “lacked a single foreigner or negro.” These neighborhoods were considered excellent prospects for insurance. Neighborhoods where black people lived were rated “D” and were usually considered ineligible for FHA backing. They were colored in red. Neither the percentage of black people living there nor their social class mattered. Black people were viewed as a contagion.” “The goal of the torturers was to vent sufficient emotional fury to avenge their dead kin while simultaneously restraining themselves from killing the captive until the appropriate moment dictated by Indian spiritual beliefs. Indians sometimes treated their captives with meticulous politeness throughout the long ordeal of their execution. A Huron explained to a French missionary: ‘We have nothing but caresses for them a day before their death, even when our minds are filled with cruelties, the severity of which we afterward find all our pleasure in making them feel.’ Such decorum was in keeping with the significance that Indians attached to the rituals of torture and execution.” “Today, China uses almost half the world’s concrete. The property sector – roads, bridges, railways, urban development and other cement-and-steel projects – accounted for a third of its economy’s expansion in 2017. Every major city has a floor-sized scale model of urban development plans that has to be constantly updated as small white plastic models are turned into mega-malls, housing complexes and concrete towers.” “Monogamy was coupled with the idea that only a married woman was eligible to bear children. Many women were unable to find husbands from among the limited ranks of men with farm land. They too remained on the family farm as unmarried dependents or sought their fortunes in the town or in domestic service on the estates of the nobility. Legitimacy laws rendered the children of unmarried women without legal rights to a livelihood at all. Indeed, a punitive stance against illegitimate children and their mothers provided incentives for single and hence ineligible women not to have children.” ““Did you read about what happened in Kashmir?” they’d say to each other on a day like February 14, 2019, when a suicide bomber drove a car full of explosives into a group of Indian Army convoys. They’d pause and ponder, dipping biscuits into chai and then comment from afar — in the air of faux expertise — on the details of a mysterious region that seems, these days (and perhaps, one could argue, since its inception) to only exist in the news. Then, after a few moments of discussion, they’d transition into more neutral territory, like the weather in Gujarat, before any great disagreements broke out.” Ruan itself might come from an ancient Chinese state of the same name, or maybe from the ancient lute-like instrument also called a ruan. Who knows? Either way, it seems likely that some mid-level Chinese bureaucrat, in seeking to figure out who actually lived in his newly conquered Vietnamese territory, simply decided that everyone living there would also be named Ruan—which became Nguyen.” “A picture that comprises figure and ground requires an enclosed field. Without an enclosure, the space around its figure(s) will not necessarily read as part of the picture; enclosure is, therefore, the originary act that gives rise to the picture but also limits it. Nothing says this enclosure needs to take the shape of a rectangle, but the history of Western art, at least, makes the rectangle look like a virtually inescapable anatomical limit.” “I used to read stories about men like him and they are heroes to me. Clearly her grandfather is a hero to her as well, and she is going to make him quite proud. This connection with a WWII vet through his amazing granddaughter is a gift. One of many I receive on an almost daily basis in this amazing institution. I think it’s worth taking a moment here and acknowledging that this thing we now call “PTSD” has always been around. Some of us veterans escape it while others, like me and likely this gent in the airplane, felt the sting of it.” “Between 30 and 45 paparazzi work Britney on any given night. The expensive cars they drive reflect the fact that Britney Spears—her marriages, custody battles, fights with her mom, new boyfriends, Starbucks runs, trips to the hospital—is a bigger and more lucrative story than Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton or John Lennon and Yoko Ono. History’s best-publicized celebrity meltdown has helped fuel dozens of television shows, magazines, and Internet sites, the combined value of whose Britney-related product easily exceeds $100 million a year, and helped make Britney Spears the most popular search term on Yahoo once again in 2007, as it has been for six of the past seven years.” “AAA estimates that forty-nine million Americans will be traveling at least fifty miles by car to Thanksgiving this year, while Airlines for America anticipates thirty-one million will fly between November 22 and December 3. The environmental impact will be brutal, and the stress of handling all those irate passengers is a heavy burden for airport workers. Some mayhem is expected, but thanks to the labor of always overworked and frequently underpaid transportation workers, most travelers make it home in time for turkey.” “Ramsey Orta filmed the killing of Eric Garner. The video traveled far, but it wouldn’t get justice for his dead friend. Instead, the NYPD would exact their revenge through targeted harassment and eventually imprisonment—Orta’s punishment for daring to show the world police brutality.” “On December 1, 2009, to commemorate World aids Day, Twitter announced a promotion: if users employed the hashtag #red, their tweets would appear highlighted in red. Megan Phelps-Roper, a twenty-three-year-old legal assistant, seized the opportunity. “Thank God for aids!” she tweeted that morning. “You won’t repent of your rebellion that brought His wrath on you in this incurable scourge, so expect more & worse! #red.”” “Gerald Blanchard could hack any bank, swipe any jewel. There was no security system he couldn’t beat.” http://bit.ly/2WX4PgC “He is a man without a country, a family and a home. For more than a decade, Merhan Nasseri has been living in terminal one at Charles de Gaulle airport, waiting. For what, he doesn’t know anymore” “Luckier performers have made a success out of flouting conventional morality. In a notorious appearance on Late Night with David Letterman 1994, Madonna (whom Letterman introduced by dryly observing that she had “slept with some of the biggest names in the entertainment industry”) smoked a cigar and said “fuck” 13 times. Letterman faux-innocently asked, “You realize this is being broadcast, don’t you?”” “With all these piercings in their bodies and the kavadi on their shoulders, devotees walk for the better part of the day under the tropical sun until they reach the temple. This walk is done either barefooted on the scorching asphalt or in shoes made of upright nails. When they finally reach their destination, the pilgrims must carry their heavy burden (often weighting over 100 pounds) up 242 steps to where the temple is located. This remarkable tradition is performed by millions of Hindus around the world each year, including in Mauritius.” “At its heart, laughter is a tool to triumph over fear. As we grow older, our senses of humor become more demanding and refined, but that basic, hard-wired reflex remains. We need it, because life is scary. Nature is heartless, people can be cruel, and death and suffering are inevitable and arbitrary. We learn to tame our terror by laughing at the absurdity of it all.” “In any minority group, the most prominent members are expected to somehow speak for the entire constituency. But, if the burden of being Constance Wu seemed to weigh heavily, it was also evidently not something that she felt she could renounce. The day of the “Simple Man” makeup session, we wandered the scruffy beachfront of Kaiaka Bay, picking our way through cow bush and sugarcane ferns to the water’s edge.” “This view informed René Descartes, who in the 17th century situated the soul (for him, the mind) precisely in this tiny mid-brain structure, which he imagined to be something of a thought valve; he called it ‘the seat of the soul’.” “A blood clot had formed in a part of their son’s brain stem called the pons, causing a stroke right at the juncture where his body met his mind. Erik was suffering from an extremely rare and permanent condition known as locked-in syndrome. “Bottom line is that he has no control over any of his muscles,” the doctor told them. “He’ll never move and he’ll never speak.” Otherwise, the accident had spared virtually all of Erik’s conscious and unconscious processing systems. His memory, his reason, and his emotions were all intact. He could see and hear and feel–and feel pain–but he would never again have any way of communicating.” “Not everything he says is true, not everything he says is false,” says Biella Coleman. Auernheimer deploys a peculiar rhetorical strategy that he’s learned to work to his advantage: he peppers his conversation with bizarre but true facts and historical references—he has an encyclopedic knowledge of ancient Greek history, world religions and contemporary U.S. anti-government extremists, among other things—then hits you with dubious details about his own life. The idea is that the overwhelming strangeness of the world will make you more receptive to the relatively banal stuff Auernheimer makes up about himself. “Would you like bottle service at one of our dance-floor tables? That’ll be another $10,000. How about a 30-liter bottle of champagne to share with a dozen women you’ve never met? $250,000. How about we get Kim Kardashian to come? $100,000. Devin Friedman explores the world, adds it all up, and explains the mysteries and the pitfalls of the hottest club on the planet.” “In truth, I was on the fence. Children felt like both a way to jump-start my real life and a way to end it. I wasn’t afraid of being a mother, and I didn’t think I’d be a bad one. I just wanted to be other things so much more. As a journalist, my days rarely followed a nine-to-five schedule. I found purpose in my work and couldn’t imagine rearranging my days to include breastfeeding and diaper changes. I knew it was possible to be a mother while maintaining a career, but I had little desire to take on the challenge. I didn’t see children as a punishment or a burden. But I also did not see them as a gift.” “Evolution is a nice, big idea. It connotes the glacial pace of an unmeditated act unfolding upon species, concepts, and ecosystems. It certainly doesn’t usually get branded as a feeling. But a couple months ago I felt this thing. Maybe a little like what a mommy feels when her fetus kicks the wall crossed with how the baby feels when it gets its pre-K diploma, and the best word I can come up with for it is evolution. Not the glacial kind, but the real-time, Matrix-flavored kind. I was too busy barreling through the wicked pipe of a 30-milligram Adderall to think about it much when it happened, though.” ““Indians don’t ‘fall,’ Debie. We don’t marry by accident. We choose. Choose to marry, choose to love. We’re not powerless like Americans.” The following is a brilliant article from Caitlin Flanagan of The Atlantic from 2006. “Nothing pulls at the imagination like extremes – overwrought banquets and orgies, epic battles, devastating natural disasters, glorious human triumphs. Our omnivorous appetites find extravagant feasts awe-inspiring and enviable, and occasionally disconcerting.” “Immediately, as if drawn by the call of the Sirens, many of Delphine’s 4.1 million followers flocked to her newly established store, where her so-called “Gamer Girl Bathwater,” which she sold for $30 per jar, sold out instantly. The story went viral, with media outlets alternately deriding Delphine’s fans for their naïvete and applauding her for her marketing savvy; “Perhaps it is that same search for cosmopolitan virtue that still drives the droves of us, the Erasmus kids hastily spending bureaucrat stipends on wine and metro tickets, the Iranian post-docs gazing at stars in newly-built astronomy labs, to here, year after year. In spite of the ever-greater ticking of rent prices and the fact that the Champs-Élysées is now roughly 75% luxury chain stores and two-story McDonald’s franchises, Paris retains a mystique that resists disillusion down to its very essence.” “Microbes are everywhere, but we take their presence on phones, keyboards, and toilet seats as a sign of filth and squalor. They fill our bodies, helping us to digest our food and safeguard our health, but we view them as adversaries to be drugged and conquered.” “Among the dismantled rigs, lifeless pyrotechnics, and bowed heads of Burners absorbed in cleaning, we are here trying to answer a simple question: How, after so many years, could Burning Man throw an event of such chaos, and yet leave the desert without a trace? What leads thousands of people in such an extreme environment to consistently engage in cooperative behavior at a scale seldom seen in society?” “He says that a “failure to teach the growing child age-appropriate limits” produces a child who is “self-centered and immature, unable to delay gratification or to tolerate not having his or her way.” Such a child sees all her wants as needs, and reacts to unmet needs by way of a display of outrage (the temper tantrum). McIntosh notes that hardships such as divorce, family strife and mental disorders (on the part of either child or parent) make such behavior more likely;” “It was only 100 years ago, after all, that scientists first invented the “intelligence quotient” to measure someone’s intellectual potential. Their success relies on the fact that many cognitive abilities are correlated. So your ability to perform spatial reasoning or pattern recognition is linked to your maths ability and your verbal prowess, and so on. For this reason, IQ is thought to reflect a “general intelligence” – a kind of underlying brainpower.” “Today’s post is different. This is a link, not to an article, but for a wonderful podcast. This was a beautiful, eye opening and thorough listen. Talks about human beliefs, belief change and cognitive dissonance. Studying Earth’s global biosphere together, Margulis and Lovelock realized that it has some of the properties of a life form. It seems to display “homeostasis,” or self‐regulation. Many of Earth’s life‐sustaining qualities exhibit remarkable stability. The temperature range of the climate; the oxygen content of the atmosphere; the pH, chemistry, and salinity of the ocean—all these are biologically mediated. All have, for hundreds of millions of years, stayed within a range where life can thrive. There is that — the incremental forward movement on the toes that, if prolonged for any length of time, always elicits ecstatic applause from the audience. But there is the added image, central to ballet, of the female dancer posed on her toes with the support of the male consort who is then turned, fast or slow, in pirouette — a perfect doll-like figure displayed dramatically for the male gaze (To appropriate the phrase used most commonly in critique of classic narrative film). I am now 68 years of age but when I was 21, in my final year at university, I became aware of major problems then facing the world – war, poverty, acid rain, ozone depletion, desertification, deforestation, species loss, civil and military uses and abuses of nuclear power, pollution, population growth, consumerism and the climate crisis. I was determined to devote my life to helping solve these problems. Before my job, when people would ask me what I did and I’d tell them I was a writer, I felt like a fraud. The reality of freelancing is often waiting months for cheques and payments to arrive. It means knowing that one month you’ll be in demand, and the next month your inbox could be empty. The ebb and flow of the job left me too scared to even call myself a writer out loud to other people. Yes, I had been published—but that didn’t mean I would continue being published or that the people who’d publish me would even have jobs in a month. Sontag’s own style was monstrous; inspiringly monstrous. We’re used to hearing this term ‘monster’ as an insult. But the monster – a figure of excess, difficult to absorb culturally – confronts us with the limits of our own powers, and forces us to rise to the level of what the text, or the time, demands from us. “Small wonder that so many of us become at least mildly depressed, while others succumb to more serious forms of mental illness. The brutality of the journey also exacts its toll in more visible ways: I watched as certain of my colleagues gained or lost alarming amounts of weight in short periods. Graduate school is unkind to the body, a time of monastic restraint so vise-like and lasting, your inborn eagerness for touch can dwindle to what William Blake called the “shadow of Desire.”” “What starts as an innocent article about nostalgia, becomes a fantastic thought provoking read! “Homeless individuals present one of empathy’s most difficult tests. Acknowledging their experiences is painful; it induces guilt; it damages our sense that the world is just. Circumstances like these tip the balance in empathy’s tug-of-war, favoring avoidance. Rapanui songs expressed “the surprise of being alive and also the sadness of life.” “The new motto says: “If you experience something — record it. If you record something — upload it. If you upload something — share it.”” “The reason dogs make good pets is in large part because they have this innate behavior of finding somewhere to sit and wait for food to arrive, which is exactly what our pet dogs do. Their niche is scavenging food from humans. They are like ravens and foxes that scavenge food from wolves or humans. Where is that dog food supply? Look for humans, and there it is. Why are dogs nice to people? They are the source of food. Dogs find some food source that arrives daily and they sit there and wait.” “The only thing stopping you from listening to a podcast is you. Just plug in, pick the show, and play it: there’s no flipping through stations, no snatches of song or prayer, no scraps of news, and no chance you’ll settle on something without knowing what it is. There’s nothing intrusive, accidental, surprising — no static, no interference — and it’ll cut out all the other unwanted noise of life, too. An unbroken stream of sound, a stealth multitasking machine, the podcast has no natural predators.” Fantastic, long read about a cult/not a cult?? ?. Must read. “In short, humanists have spent centuries acquiring a distinctive interpretive expertise, and they are right to feel that research on cultural history would be more meaningful if it were built on that foundation. But there is, alas, another side to this story, less likely to be popular in history and English departments. While scientists usually do a better job if they work in collaboration with humanists, it must be admitted that today they can often make genuine contributions to historical understanding with or without our assistance.” “In a fairly undisguised etymology, the word “influence” comes from the Latin for “inflow,” which provides an image of the way that, every second, our thoughts now stream into one another’s pockets. The same image evokes our anxieties about hostile foreign states penetrating our defenses. Influence is a challenge to sovereignty, both political and personal; to admit to being influenced is to give up the attractive idea that, as individuals or societies, we are entirely self-contained.” “A gay, 31-year-old Brit with frosted hair, Yiannopoulos has been speaking at college campuses on his Dangerous Faggot tour. He says trolling is a direct response to being told by the left what not to say and what kinds of video games not to play. “Human nature has a need for mischief. We want to thumb our nose at authority and be individuals,” he says. “Trump might not win this election. I might not turn into the media figure I want to. But the space we’re making for others to be bolder in their speech is some of the most important work being done today. The trolls are the only people telling the truth.”” “Apps take this consolation to a new, interactive level. When you swipe in Todoist, you experience a moment of resistance that the designers have intentionally added to generate “a fleeting sense of accomplishment.” Such features, Gregg argues, create an “aesthetics of activity” that makes the apps so appealing. If you can focus on checking items off a list (or adding them to a spreadsheet), you’re absolved from having to think about why you’re doing them.” “That film grossed over a billion at the box office, with its sequel – the culmination of over a decade of interconnected superhero cinema – on track to do even better. So you think I’d be hoping that those left standing would survive for another decade of adventures. But, actually, not so much. It’s going to hurt, but it’s time for them all to cop it. Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, Black Widow and Hawkeye. Especially Hawkeye.” “Anthropologists have found that across diverse cultures, tattooing is a way to advertise or emphasize one’s identity. Tatau follows the pattern. “Tattooing is still something important in a man’s life or in a woman’s life in terms of marking their belonging to the community,” Galliot says.” ““If you’re spending all your time as a Twitch broadcaster or creating memes, that is work,” says John Ahlquist, an associate professor at the University of San Diego’s School of Global Policy and Strategy, who has done research on the changing nature of work. “People that are trying to earn a living on these platforms are recognizing how vulnerable they are on an individual basis with respect to the platform, and so they’re turning to this tried-and-true model of collective action.”” “Eighty percent of women living in communist East Germany always reached orgasm during sex, according to the Hamburg magazine Neue Revue in 1990. For West German women that figure was only 63 percent. Those counterintuitive findings confirmed two earlier studies, which East German sex researchers had published in 1984 and 1988. Those had found East German women reported high levels of sexual satisfaction outpacing those in the West.” Wonderful writeup of an ethnomusicologist, about his long winded struggle to understand why some parts of Kenyan drumming was incomprehensible to his White brain, in spite of being reasonably adept at the art form. Very engaging article. Must Read. “But as I went through one failed relationship after another, falling in and out of lust and love with various men whom I had ascertained to be my soul mates, I began to question my concept of true love. I began to recognize the gradual fade of fiery passion in the early days of a relationship, replaced by a sort of complacent companionship a few years in, where I would find myself disproportionately upset about socks left on the floor and remnants of beard shavings around the sink.” “Norwegian black metal, though, is inseparable from its history. This month sees the release of Lords of Chaos, director Jonas Åkerlund’s intense dramatisation of events, focusing on the friendship and fatal rift between Aarseth (played by Rory Culkin) and Vikernes (Emory Cohen). It is bruising and brutal – when it screened at the London film festival last November, a man vomited, a woman fainted and an ambulance was summoned.” “I suspect some degree of fatness has been present in all human societies, except for those on the brink of survival or living in truly extreme environments. I suspect that obese people have been sometimes revered, sometimes reviled, and perhaps sometimes just accepted without shame. But recent ethnographic research in Fiji and elsewhere strongly suggests that cultural attitudes toward fatness are less diverse now than they were in the past.” “Reading the engaging and well-told life story of a First Lady, then, cannot but feel a bit like reading an obituary. This is particularly true when the woman is Michelle Obama, a woman who undoubtedly had potential that could not be realized within the constraints of the choices she made. Feeling this way is less a feminist preference for one set of choices for another, and more of an exposition of how the gendered arrangements of President and First Lady, East and West Wing, impose suffocating constraints on the women who occupy this role.” “All of the scents blend together into something barely noticeable, with the occasional whiff of something delicious. We each live in a world of scents that go unnoticed in the backgrounds of our lives; they hum at the edges of our ability to perceive them. It can be a “big blur,” says Christophe Laudamiel, a French master perfumer who is based in New York and Berlin. It doesn’t have to be. “If you are trained, if you are an expert, you can discern things in the noise that you don’t discern if you haven’t practiced before.”” This post contains loads of articles categorised under Politics, Law and Crime. These are handpicked articles over the course of years for CAT Aspirants. This is the second of 2 posts. Click on the following link to go to the previous post: LINK here. Every Article will have blurb, either written by me or an extract from the original post (mostly the latter) followed by the link to reach the article. The rise and fall of the Soviet Empire II: Why russia’s “Twilight War” in Ukraine will be its last A raft of evidence shows that caste discrimination has been imported from India to the United States. Leaders try to fix every problem — like poverty and education — but end up getting nothing done Far from demanding accountability from Qatar, South Asian governments have often been mute spectators to the plight of workers and their families at home. Farmer suicide numbers have fallen not because of policies to ease their plight, but due to a ban on the kind of pesticides, they consumed to end their lives. On a remote island in Maine, a group of friends thought they witnessed one man killing another with an axe. But no one was ever arrested. In a small town far out at sea, justice sometimes works a little differently. A growing mortality gap between Republican and Democratic areas may largely stem from As the pandemic rages across the country, one team of fact-checkers contends with a post-truth dystopia. Newly revealed Vatican documents uncover a long-held secret: As war broke out, Pius XII used a Nazi prince to negotiate with Adolf Hitler. By enacting simple laws that make guns safer and harder to get, we can prevent killings like the ones in Uvalde and Buffalo The ‘disturbed areas’ and ‘illegal migrants’ of today’s India were yesterday’s ‘scheduled districts’ and ‘criminal tribes.’ The line between the past and present is straighter than you think. Leaked draft of Supreme Court ruling signals a seismic shift in American politics and law. Will ‘Russia’s Google’ turn into ‘Russia’s Tencent’? “A Long Road to Nowhere: 10 Years of the Kim Jong Un Regime ever Again “The Foreigner “Smashed “No One Has Addressed WHY Russia Invaded Ukraine (So I’ll Do It) “High crimes and cabals “The Economic cost of a Russia-Ukraine war” “Francis Fukuyama: Will We Ever Get Beyond The Nation-State? “Who would benefit from the Russia-Ukraine war?” “The 20th-Century History Behind Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine “Those born later “Doctor Who “Punjabi men abandoned by their NRI wives don’t have law or officials on their side. They lose their marriage, money, and Canada dreams.” “When children didn’t follow orders or learn quickly enough, their teacher would put them into a stress position they call “the motorcycle,” the children say. Aysu and Lütfullah demonstrate: two arms stretched out front, knees bent in a half-squat, which they held for several minutes.” “Gary Hersham has been selling houses to the very rich for decades. At first, £1m was a big deal. Now he sells for £50m, £100m, even £200m. What does it take to stay on top in this cut-throat business?” “Ajmer gangrape and blackmail case was a toxic mix of political patronage, religious reach, impunity, and small-town glamour. Thirty years on, closure still seems far.” “Amazon has amassed a vast amount of sensitive personal information on its customers. Internal documents reveal how a former aide to Joe Biden helped the tech giant build a lobbying juggernaut that has gutted legislation in two dozen states seeking to give consumers more control over their data.” Analysis: Racist labour exploitation continues in multicultural Canada. “How do you convince truckers to work when their pay isn’t guaranteed, even to the point where they lose money?” “Pavin Chachavalpongpun on the Strange Death of King Ananda Mahidol” “Anonymous users generate most toxic abuse and conspiracy theories online. The right to be anonymous should be curtailed” “Though small, this study is the only one of its kind in India that explores the barriers that women with disabilities encounter while accessing abortions and other sexual and reproductive healthcare services. While the study focuses largely on physical barriers, there are other overarching information and attitudinal barriers that prevent women from accessing these facilities.” “Democracies are no longer as worried as they once were about offending a fragile Beijing.” “India has big plans for new nuclear power plants. What does it plan to do with the old ones?” “India refused to take him. It had no reason to. Budlakoti was never an Indian citizen, nor did he have special grounds to become one. He had no connection to the country and barely spoke Hindi. He had lost his eligibility for Indian citizenship when his parents, deciding to make their home in Canada, opted against registering him with India. Budlakoti had become, in effect, stateless.” “The model is simple: gut the staff, sell the real estate, jack up subscription prices, and wring out as much cash as possible.” “After police failed to solve his son’s murder, Francisco Holgado infiltrated the local criminal underworld in pursuit of those responsible. He became a national hero – but at what cost?” “By chasing sensational stories of missing white women, the media distorts the truth” “Megan Lundstrom understands more than most the conditions that force women into dangerous situations—she also has the key to help them escape” “Regan’s heart was racing, but he walked unhurriedly as he approached the turnstiles. He looked at the security guards who milled around at the front desk, chit-chatting among themselves as people streamed out of the building on their way home. Regan knew that the guards had the authority to stop anyone for a search. There was a chance, however slim, that one of them would want to look into his gym bag, rifle through the clothes and discover the classified documents concealed underneath.” “Rebecca Raffle came to Indianapolis from Los Angeles with dreams of building a cannabis empire. She introduced herself as a West Coast #girlboss, SEO ninja, LGBTQ Family, and avid baker. But she was altogether something different.” “Fraud on the Farm: How a baby-faced CEO turned a Farmville clone into a massive Ponzi scheme “How Big Tobacco Set the Stage for Fake News “The Spine Collector For years, a mysterious figure has been stealing books before their release. Is it espionage? Revenge? Or a complete waste of time?” “A year on from Beirut explosion, scars and questions remain “The man who stole a hotel: How Timothy Durkin took control of Sooke Harbour House “HOW THE U.S. TRIGGERED A MASSACRE IN MEXICO “The Inevitable Weaponization of App Data Is Here “THE TRUTH BEHIND THE AMAZON MYSTERY SEEDS ”Private Israeli spyware used to hack cellphones of journalists, activists worldwide “THE MOST SENSELESS ENVIRONMENTAL CRIME OF THE 20TH CENTURY “In Ponzi We TrustBorrowing from Peter to pay Paul is a scheme made famous by Charles Ponzi. Who was this crook whose name graces this scam?” “An innocent man spent 46 years in prison. And made a plan to kill the man who framed him. “The Testimony Hundreds of children from Bihar’s Gaya district had been trafficked to Jaipur’s bangle workshops. Then, a group of boys escaped against all odds.” “He’d Waited Decades to Argue His Innocence. “Collusion, machinations and alleged links with UPA minister: The dark world of ex-IL&FS chairman unmasked! “Last week’s deadly attack on a Bamako hotel was only the latest example of the government’s weakness, which has fostered a dangerous climate of sectarianism” “How the Elderly Lose Their Rights After a stranger became their guardian, Rudy and Rennie North were moved to a nursing home and their property was sold.” “The Sad End Of Jack Ma Inc. “The Grand Prix in Baku is Formula One’s Hypocrisy on Display” “The Tenant From Hell: How a serial fraudster took advantage of Toronto’s red-hot real estate market” “China Targets Muslim Women in Push to Suppress Births in Xinjiang “Operation Car Wash: Is this the biggest corruption scandal in history? “Jackpot “Nationalism Kills “My friends and I have agreed to call each other every day just to mark ourselves present, like roll call in our school classrooms. We speak to those we love in tears, and with trepidation, not knowing if we will ever see each other again. We write, we work, not knowing if we will live to finish what we started. Not knowing what horror and humiliation awaits us. The indignity of it all. That is what breaks us.” “The Roots of Route 66 “Memories of a Scandal-Ridden Theme Park “India’s Dangerous Myanmar Policy “Aches on a Plane “It was an unusual coincidence, one that presented a difficult choice. Mossad agent Rafi Eitan described the missed opportunity to an interviewer from Der Spiegel almost fifty years later: “The Dark Side of America’s Gleaming Skyscrapers “The Rise and Fall of Toronto’s Classiest Con Man “The Untold History of America’s Zero-Day MarketThe lucrative business of dealing in code vulnerabilities is central to espionage and war planning, which is why brokers never spoke about it—until now.” “Brand India “Ayahuasca: a psychedelic murder story “‘I Miss My Mom’: Children Of QAnon Believers Are Desperately Trying To Deradicalize Their Own Parents “McKinsey Settles for $573 Million Over Role in Opioid Crisis Regulating journalism to death “Killer, kleptocrat, genius, spy: the many myths of Vladimir Putin Our souls are dead’: how I survived a Chinese ‘re-education’ camp for Uighurs “MeWe Sold Itself on Privacy. Then the Radical Right Arrived. “Both GRE and TOEFLL offered a ‘home edition’ of the test. While ETS claimed that the exam will retain its quality and legitimacy, fraudsters have found their ways.” “Then the men crash into each other again. That is what the internet is like, wherever you are. It is loud; childish; desperately commercial; militaristic; incredibly rich but shockingly dysfunctional; and most of all, it is deeply annoying.” “Why The Gandhis Must Go Now “Secret Amazon Reports Expose the Company’s Surveillance of Labor and Environmental Groups” “Catch my grift “The Birth-Tissue Profiteers “Here’s How Scientists Want Biden to Take on Climate Change “‘It’s been so, so surreal.’ Critics of Sweden’s lax pandemic policies face fierce backlash” “How Donald Trump Lost The Election “DATA IS THE LIFEBLOOD OF A FUNCTIONING GOVERNMENT. OVER THE PAST FOUR YEARS, THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION HAS DESTROYED, DISAPPEARED OR DISTORTED VAST SWATHES OF THE INFORMATION THE STATE NEEDS TO PROTECT THE VULNERABLE, SAFEGUARD OUR HEALTH AND ALERT US TO EMERGING CRISES.THIS IS AN ACCOUNTING OF THE DAMAGE” “Ramos kept saying he wanted to be like Uber—just flood the market with devices and figure out regulations later, Bruno said. Soon, Phantom would have a monopoly over one country in particular.” “Survivors of an International Buddhist Cult Share Their Stories “Why Farmers Are Protesting Against Laws Which Will ‘Supposedly’ Help Them” “How one man spent 34 years in prison after setting fire to a pair of curtains” “I’ve Been Fired. If You Value Academic Freedom, That Should Worry You” “The inferno and the mystery ship “Death at Delta Sig: Heiress Wages a Million-Dollar War on Frats “How to Make Government Trustworthy Again “The Bizarre Bank Robbery That Shook an Arctic Town As one of the northernmost settlements on earth, the Norwegian hamlet of Longyearbyen has become a magnet for adventurous souls looking to start a new life. But when an unsettling crime happened, it brought home a harsh reality: in the modern world, trouble always finds you.” “The Past Decade and Future of Political Media: The Ascendance of Social Media” “Why would someone steal the world’s rarest water lily?” “By rewriting history, Hindu nationalists aim to assert their dominance over India” “Better Off Deadbeat: Craig Cunningham Has a Simple Solution for Getting Bill Collectors Off His Back. He Sues Them.” “Vladimir Putin Is Ready For His Next Act “Tinder, Sailor, Hooker, Pimp: The U.S. Navy’s sex trafficking scandal in Bahrain” “Pepsi’s $32 Billion Typo Caused Deadly Riots “The Secret, Absurd World of Coronavirus Mask Traders and Middlemen Trying To Get Rich Off Government Money “The Trouble with Oxy “Tom Justice was once a cyclist chasing Olympic gold. Then he began using his bike for a much different purpose: robbing banks.” “When I was fourteen, I had a relationship with my eighth grade history teacher. People called me a victim. They called him a villain. But it’s more complicated than that.” “On the Trail of a Silver Thief “The unbelievable tale of a fake hitman, a kill list, a darknet vigilante… and a murder. “Documents available to the public and reviewed by OneZero — including transcripts of courtroom testimony, sworn statements, and more than 1,000 pages of records produced from a federal hate crime prosecution — reveal that Patton actively participated in white supremacist groups in his youth and was involved in the shooting of a synagogue. In an interview with OneZero, one of the people involved in that shooting confirmed Patton’s participation. Patton has not previously acknowledged this chapter of his life in public.” “Early Italian fascism broke from socialism only on the grounds of nationalism. The Italian dictator Benito Mussolini proposed giving women the vote, lowering the voting age to 18, introducing an eight-hour workday, worker participation in industrial management, heavy progressive capital tax and the partial confiscation of war profits. Of course, he also advocated extreme nationalism and Italian expansionism, but the pro-worker aspects of his programme are striking.” Click on the link, and then disconnect from the internet (airplane mode) to be able to read this fabulous article. “Except for the colored rectangles superimposed on each student’s face. “ID: 000010, State 1: Focused,” read a line of text in a green rectangle around the face of a student looking directly at the blackboard. “ID: 000015, State 5: Distracted,” read the text in a red rectangle—this student had buried his head in his desk drawer. A blue rectangle hovered around a girl standing behind her desk. The text read: “ID: 00001, State 3: Answering Questions.” “Millions Are Hounded for Debt They Don’t Owe. One Victim Fought Back, With a Vengeance “Although no one tracks big cat ownership in the U.S., it’s estimated that there are likely more pet tigers in America than there are left in the wild. What’s more, depending on the species of cat, federal oversight is either limited or nonexistent. In some states, it’s easier to buy a lion — a 400-pound predatory killer — than it is to get a dog.” “The once formidable British state is being rapidly reinvented, and on a scale not seen before. Acting with emergency powers authorised by parliament, the government has tossed economic orthodoxy to the winds. Savaged by years of imbecilic austerity, the NHS – like the armed forces, police, prisons, fire service, care workers and cleaners – has its back to the wall. But with the noble dedication of its workers, the virus will be held at bay. Our political system will survive intact. Not many countries will be so fortunate. Governments everywhere are struggling through the narrow passage between suppressing the virus and crashing the economy. Many will stumble and fall.” “So, what does this mean for me? It isn’t clear yet how the social credit system will play out for foreigners in China. My sesame-credit score is a paltry 570 and China Rapid Finance hasn’t made its social scores available to view yet. There is, however, already a feature on WeChat that has been rolled out in Hebei province. It shows you the deadbeats in your vicinity—a literal map, dotted with clickable icons of anyone within 500 meters of you who has failed to pay back a loan recently.13 It also shows their national ID numbers and explains why they’re being named and shamed.” “Two decades earlier, in 1996, Montwheeler had been charged with kidnapping a previous wife and their son at gunpoint. He was found “guilty except for insanity,” which meant he avoided incarceration but would remain under state jurisdiction for the maximum possible sentence. In his case, that was 70 years. “Here we are 20 years later,” says Les Zaitz, the publisher of The Malheur Enterprise, which has covered Montwheeler’s story extensively. “Very quickly the question becomes, ‘What’s this guy doing loose in Malheur County?’ “ “U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials have been permitted to run facial-recognition searches on millions of Maryland driver’s license photos without first seeking state or court approval, state officials said — access that goes far beyond what other states allow and that alarms immigration activists in a state that grants special driver’s licenses to undocumented immigrants.” “It’s an intentionally dramatic claim, directed not only to Israeli voters but also to the U.S., Europe and even some Arab states that were once enemies. And it is an argument that has animated his entire political career. By advancing Israel’s military prowess, Netanyahu believes, a country about the size of New Jersey with a population roughly the size of New York City has secured a unique place in history. A strong and innovative military, he argues, combined with an embrace of capitalism, has translated into globe-spanning success in technology, business and diplomacy. It’s a major achievement, in Netanyahu’s telling, worth the considerable costs. “I don’t look at my survival,” he tells TIME. “I look at the survival of the country, its durability, its future.”” “As the world has been repeatedly told, India has more than 400 news channels that broadcast news 24X7, far more than any other country on earth. But what is remarkable here is not so much the giant medium, but the invisible, yet incredibly effective, work that has gone into creating an audience that is primed for the message before it even arrives. The stunning swiftness and reach of the new social media are often credited with — or blamed for — the spread of bigotry. This is unfair, for most of that credit belongs to those who tutored the addressees to receive the message without the slightest trace of scepticism. This is no mean achievement in a country where, until yesterday, people prided themselves on their scepticism and wore their cynicism on their sleeves. The same suspicious lot are now eager consumers of the most crudely concocted fake news and alternative facts.” Brilliant encounter of defectors from the hacking arsenal of North Korea. ““It was the intelligence coup of the century,” the CIA report concludes. “Foreign governments were paying good money to the U.S. and West Germany for the privilege of having their most secret communications read by at least two (and possibly as many as five or six) foreign countries.”” “THE ROCK THAT FELL TO EARTH “Microsoft had shifted at least $39 billion in U.S. profits to Puerto Rico, where the company’s tax consultants, KPMG, had persuaded the territory’s government to give Microsoft a tax rate of nearly 0%. Microsoft had justified this transfer with a ludicrous-sounding deal: It had sold its most valuable possession — its intellectual property — to an 85-person factory it owned in a small Puerto Rican city.” “After the Soviet Union collapsed, Ukraine had no significant domestic energy production and desperately needed gas for winter heating. Russia was (and still is) a major natural gas producer. Firtash built a niche for himself by serving as an intermediary between state-owned Russian gas giant Gazprom and the Ukraine market. From this perch, he emerged as a classic post-Soviet oligarch.” “For some of these teens, Parkland was not an isolated incident. When Wilson was in sixth grade, a friend of hers was shot and killed; she said she remembered watching the news reports and seeing how “a person’s life can kind of be washed away.” Hope Kahn, who is 18, told me she oversaw a spread in her high school paper dedicated to a teacher who was murdered at the beginning of Kahn’s junior year.” “The Mongolian government granted Trump Jr. a coveted and rare permit to slay the animal retroactively on Sept. 2, after he’d left the region following his trip. It’s unusual for permits to be issued after a hunter’s stay. It was one of only three permits to be issued in that hunting region, local records show.” “The Wenzhou crash killed forty people and injured a hundred and ninety-two. For reasons both practical and symbolic, the government was desperate to get trains running again, and within twenty-four hours it declared the line back in business. The Department of Propaganda ordered editors to give the crash as little attention as possible. “Do not question, do not elaborate,” it warned, on an internal notice. When newspapers came out the next morning, China’s first high-speed train wreck was not on the front page.” Wonderful Longform on Gaile Owens and her getting on to the death row. http://bit.ly/2QiRmP6 Picks up from where the previous article ended. Also has a short synopsis for those who missed the previous article. “How did it happen? How did a freedom-loving people decide to give up a private right that had been freely exercised by millions since the first European colonists arrived in the New World? How did they condemn to extinction what was, at the very moment of its death, the fifth-largest industry in the nation? How did they append to their most sacred document 112 words that knew only one precedent in American history? With that single previous exception, the original Constitution and its first 17 amendments concerned the activities of government, not of citizens. Now there were two exceptions: you couldn’t own slaves, and you couldn’t buy alcohol.” “Three hours later, the mood has changed. The gas masks go on one at a time, protester by protester, around each head and over each mouth, tightened until secure. Some of the assembled put on goggles, to help protect against tear gas, and a few fasten helmets, helpful when police batons swing and rubber bullets fly. After what began as a peaceful protest, the demonstrators are now preparing for the inevitable moment when the peace will end.” “In the fall of 2001, a nation reeling from the horror of 9/11 was rocked by a series of deadly anthrax attacks. As the pressure to find a culprit mounted, the FBI, abetted by the media, found one. The wrong one. This is the story of how federal authorities blew the biggest anti-terror investigation of the past decade—and nearly destroyed an innocent man. Here, for the first time, the falsely accused, Dr. Steven J. Hatfill, speaks out about his ordeal.” “He pressed a thick index finger against Fulton’s temple, hard, then leaned in close to Fulton’s ear and murmured a series of threats: The IRA hunts down all snitches and executes them. Two quick bullets in the brain. Remember the boy from County Armagh who left behind the pregnant wife. Remember the boy from County Louth who left seven children mewling for a father. Remember them all.” “This mentality now spans the entire political spectrum and pervades societies around the world. A recent survey found that the majority of people globally believe their society is broken and their economy is rigged. Both the left and the right feel misrepresented and misunderstood by political institutions and the media, but the anger is shared by many in the liberal centre, who believe that populists have gamed the system to harvest more attention than they deserve. Outrage with “mainstream” institutions has become a mass sentiment.” “On the Thursday morning, when Ursula had been missing for more than 36 hours, the phone rang in the Herrmann house. When Ursula’s parents picked up there was silence, and then a short, familiar jingle, which they recognised from the traffic bulletin on the Bayern 3 radio station. More silence ensued, and then the jingle played again before the caller hung up. Three more similar calls – baffling and sinister – followed over a period of hours. A team from the local police department, now stationed inside the Herrmann home, began recording the calls.” “Glass shattered high above Seventh Avenue in Manhattan before dawn on a cold November morning in 1953. Seconds later, a body hit the sidewalk. Jimmy, the doorman at the Statler hotel, was momentarily stunned. Then he turned and ran into the hotel lobby. “We got a jumper!” he shouted. “We got a jumper!”The night manager peered up through the darkness at his hulking hotel. After a few moments, he picked out a curtain flapping through an open window.” “He culls them from a larger pool, testing and probing until he finds the most vulnerable. Clay, for example, first put himself in a place with easy access to children—an elementary school. Then he worked his way through his class. He began by simply asking boys if they wanted to stay after school. “Those who could not do so without parental permission were screened out,” van Dam writes. Children with vigilant parents are too risky.” “The raids are part of the ongoing Operation Synthetic Drugs, a highly coordinated and choreographed sweep through central Ohio. The target of this operation — which has received assistance from the DEA and the FBI — is a strand of a relatively obscure but insidiously metastasizing illegal substance marketed under the name “bath salts,” a deceptively innocuous moniker used to disguise the drug as a benign household product.” “After the 2016 election, much was written about the Trump campaign’s use of new Facebook tools to “microtarget” voters, sophisticated data analytics and rapid-fire testing of thousands of campaign ad permutations. Parscale was hailed as an innovative “genius,” an impression he encouraged. “I understood early that Facebook was how Donald Trump was going to win,” he told Lesley Stahl, of “60 Minutes,” in 2017. “Twitter is how he talked to the people. Facebook was going to be how he won.”” “With that style, Hong Kong police became known for managing large demonstrations, such as rallies to decry the Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989 and a 2003 march to oppose a bill defining treason and sedition. The territory’s policing was so respected that Hong Kong officers trained British forces in crowd control.” “By most estimates, though, Sinaloa has achieved a market share of at least 40 percent and perhaps as much as 60 percent, which means that Chapo Guzmán’s organization would appear to enjoy annual revenues of some $3 billion — comparable in terms of earnings to Netflix or, for that matter, to Facebook.” “At the time, I had been reporting for years on Koch Industries, one of the largest and most confusingly complex private companies in the world. Its annual revenue is larger than that of Facebook, Goldman Sachs and U.S. Steel combined, and it makes everything from gasoline to nitrogen fertilizer to nylon, paper towels and windows. For all this complexity, one business inside Koch Industries remains more important than the rest — processing and selling fossil fuels.” This post contains fabulous longform articles categorised under Economy and Business. These are handpicked articles over the course of years for CAT Aspirants. This post contains articles I had shared in 2018 and 2019. Every Article will have a blurb, either written by me or an extract from the original post (mostly the latter) followed by the link to reach the article. Dow said it was recycling our shoes. We found them at an Indonesian flea market Why is China’s inflation rate low compared to the US, Europe and Britain? The head of Instagram has a vision for using Web3 to shift power from tech platforms to content creators—which he says will ultimately benefit both. A tempor‘The casino beckons’: my journey inside the cryptosphere “DAOs Are Coming For The Movies “America’s culture wars distract from what’s happening beneath them “The Real Potential of NFTs “Is the pizza tax absurd?” “‘The shops are gone’: How Reliance stunned Amazon in battle for India’s Future Retail” “Could mining gold from waste reduce its great cost?” Has India Tech’s Golden Decade Arrived? “How economists have botched the promise of widely distributed prosperity—and why they have no intention of stopping now” “Setting aside the decade or so lead that Netflix has on its rivals for everything from viewing data to its catalog, pretty much every move Netflix makes is driven by making its streaming service as addictive as possible, which, again, costs money.” “In today’s Finshots we see why Tesla is yet to make its debut in India” “Oakland, California is piloting a program to provide all residents with basic access to mobility” “This unequal society is a staple of “Cinderella” stories in which protagonists are displaced into poverty and abused by those with wealth and power until they regain their place.” “When I first met him he was in his early forties: tall, confident, handsome. The son of a Jamaican immigrant father and a schoolteacher mother, he had been educated at Harvard and Stanford Law School. He had hosted on MSNBC, and worked at McKinsey and Goldman Sachs. Ozy’s backers were some of the most powerful people in Silicon Valley, including the reclusive billionaire Laurene Powell Jobs. If you met Watson you understood why: he was intoxicating.” “A precarious job market and student debt has recent grads feeling hopeless” “Modeled after the cricket league, the program is engineered to boost productivity during the Diwali season.” “Overworked and underpaid developers are helping fuel Istanbul’s mobile gaming bonanza.” “The CBC interviewed myself and other Canadian Shoppers about the unilateral decision to slash batch earnings, the lack of communication, the “defective” ratings system and tip theft just to name a few.” “The expected expansion of cities in the developing world poses a number of challenges, including the necessity of generating decent jobs for their growing populations and providing them with adequate urban services in terms of housing, water and sanitation, transportation, electrification, nutrition, education, and health care.” “I Asked Experts Why Carmakers Can’t Just Transition To Newer Chips In Stock. Here’s What They Told Me – It’s a classic case of two industries that have conflicting needs but still have to work together.” “What’s striking is how much riskier bitcoin is to all of the other currencies with the exception of the Venezuelan bolivar. Bitcoin is about four times riskier than the Brazilian real, and a similar order of magnitude as the bolivar.” “International students are also the product of a system that has blurred the lines between immigration and education in an unofficial, ad hoc arrangement meant to appeal to potential immigrants while avoiding any responsibility for their settlement. It’s a system that is quietly transforming postsecondary institutions, which have grown dependent on fees from foreign students and therefore on the shadowy world of education agents who deliver them. And it’s a system built on attracting teenagers like Kushandeep from small villages across the world, taking their money, and bringing them to campuses from small-town Nova Scotia to suburban BC with lofty promises for the future but little regard for what actually happens to them once they arrive.” “Delivery Workers, Trapped in the System “The disastrous voyage of Satoshi, the world’s first cryptocurrency cruise ship “Cryptoassets as National Currency? A Step Too Far” “Why has the gig economy been a disappointment? “The Most Fascinating Profile You’ll Ever Read About a Guy and His Boring Startup “The ‘customer is king’ motto has invisibilised the food delivery rider “The man who stole a hotel: How Timothy Durkin took control of Sooke Harbour House “Karen Russell: A Brutally Honest Accounting of Writing, Money, and Motherhood” “First It Was An Assassin’s Creed Expansion, Now It’s Ubisoft’s 8 Year Nightmare “The Headache of ‘Crypto Colonialism’ “Fired by Bot at Amazon: ‘It’s You Against the Machine’Contract drivers say algorithms terminate them by email—even when they have done nothing wrong.” “Riches in space “The Future of the Economy is Even More Dystopian Than You Think “Been Down So Long It Looks Like Debt to Me “The creator economy is running into the Apple Tax — this startup is fighting back “Can we make the future worth the fight? “India’s Super Rich Want Ordinary Citizens to Donate to Their COVID Fundraisers “What a Gambling App Knows About You “Modi’s Grand Insurance Scheme Prioritises Profit Over Farm Losses “The Mystery Monk Making Billions With 5-Hour Energy” “High score, low pay: why the gig economy loves gamification “These Mothers Wanted to Care for Their Kids and Keep Their Jobs. Now They’re Suing After Being Fired” A wonderful take on reading fiction by Christine Seifert. A must read for all MBA Aspirants. “How a real-life monopoly made Monopoly the world’s biggest board game “YouTube’s Spammy Sex Bots Make a Ton of Money “The Government Has $3 Trillion of Economic Grift on Its Hands 2 articles today on one important, recent phenomenon where David beat Goliath in the stock market (at least for a very short span of time). “What’s Next for Parler? Ask the Porn Industry. “A person with a chain saw can cut 10 times as many trees in the same time as a person using older methods. Logging companies did not use this invention, however, to shorten the workweek by 90 percent. They used it to cut 10 times more trees than they otherwise would have. “Lashed by the growth imperative, technology is used not to do the same amount of stuff in less time, but rather to do more stuff in the same amount of time,” Hickel writes. “In a system where technological innovation is leveraged to expand extraction and production, it makes little sense to hope that yet more technological innovation will somehow magically do the opposite.”” “Xbox: The Oral History of an American Video Game Empire “Inside India’s booming dark data economy “Private gain must no longer be allowed to elbow out the public good “The Big Lessons From History “The Ad-Based Internet Is About to Collapse. What Comes Next? “Apple, Google and a Deal That Controls the Internet “What’s Really Holding Women Back? “Why we should bulldoze the business schoolThere are 13,000 business schools on Earth. That’s 13,000 too many. And I should know – I’ve taught in them for 20 years. By Martin Parker” “The Gambler Who Cracked the Horse-Racing Code “The notion of ethics in business can be traced back to the earliest forms of bartering, based on the principle of equal exchange. Countless philosophers and economists have examined the topic, from Aristotle and his concept of justice to Karl Marx’s attack on capitalism. But the modern concept of business ethics dates back to the rise of anti-big business protest groups in the United States in the 1970s. ” “A rocker’s guide to management “Cryptocurrency Will Not Die. “Mukesh Ambani Won the World’s Most Expensive Sibling Rivalry “‘If one of us gets sick, we all get sick’: the food workers on the coronavirus front line. “The untold story of Stripe, the secretive $20bn startup driving Apple, Amazon and Facebook “For a generation, Americans have been outsourcing work to India, where companies like Infosys grew bigger than Facebook and Google combined and created a new middle class. It seemed as though the boom would last forever.” “My zits didn’t show up with much esprit de corps until I was in my twenties, but in an effort to get ahead of embarrassment, my mom ordered Proactiv—the “easy three-step system that works for all ages and all skin types”—for my brother and me one lazy afternoon when we had the TV tuned to the infomercial channel. It was a whole ordeal. Someone over eighteen had to call a 1-800 number, and the phrase “check or money order” was involved. When the bottles arrived, I used the system once and got a rash in the shape of a beard around my jawline, an early but indelible lesson that anything describing itself as a “system” will come with some measure of pain.” “Since Uber launched in Argentina in 2016, taxi drivers have come out in force, torching ride-share cars, beating drivers, and shaming passengers. And they’re still angry.” “The 1918 calendar reform was an abrupt, one-off change, designed to signal the irreversibility of the leap from the ancien régime to the new. Undoing the revolution would now mean literally turning back time—which is what some upper-crust characters attempt to do in Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky’s 1929 novella Memories of the Future when they ask the inventor of a time machine to take them back to the days of serfdom.” “It is said India reforms only in crisis. Hopefully, this otherwise unmitigated tragedy will help us see how weakened we have become as a society and will focus our politics on the critical economic and healthcare reforms we sorely need” “Even before the latest shock, gas operators were reeling from self-inflicted wounds. They had taken on too much debt and drilled so many wells that they had flooded the market with gas, sending its price into a tailspin.” “None of us ever expected to be emergency workers; the idea of an ‘essential worker’ is a totally new concept that no grocery store bag boy considers when they drop off an application,” a current Whole Foods worker who prefers to stay anonymous told me. “There’s all of this rhetoric around how we’re just as important as the doctors, and yes, that’s true, but we’re getting paid way less, and medical workers have a little bit more of an idea of the risks that they are setting themselves up for. . . . We’re not used to this shit.” “Throughout all this, Neumann was being Neumann. His private jet trips may have involved some incidental transportation of marijuana across international borders, his wife may have fired employees for their bad vibes, and the company may have ended a meeting announcing layoffs with a performance by a member of Run-DMC.” “Today, China uses almost half the world’s concrete. The property sector – roads, bridges, railways, urban development and other cement-and-steel projects – accounted for a third of its economy’s expansion in 2017. Every major city has a floor-sized scale model of urban development plans that has to be constantly updated as small white plastic models are turned into mega-malls, housing complexes and concrete towers.” “Javier’s father jokes that once his son leaves home, he’ll be stuck with only women. “And, God willing, my last remaining son will pass the border safely,” the elder Hernandez says. “I’ll be left with pura mujeres (only women at home).” In the decade since I met the Hernandez family, their modest hacienda-style home — several tin-roofed rooms scattered around an inner courtyard — has improved thanks to the buying power accrued through remittances sent from the U.S. Erika, one of the three Hernandez sisters still living in the area (the fourth immigrated), gives me a tour, saying that a new room will be added there, where now the ox and sheep are tied to a post.” “In technology and software, the employees are the company. They are the intellectual property. There’s no machinery. The people are both the labor and the capital. And so, if the employees want to go a certain direction and they are united, well then, I don’t think there’s a CEO in the world that could defy their entire employee base.” “Prices of voice calls had started drifting lower from 1999 itself. From 16 rupees a minute to 6 rupee a minute to 2 rupees a minute to virtually zero by 2016-17 after the new big player Jio entered the market, voice, which was the bedrock of profitability of telecom companies, started contributing almost nothing towards revenues from 2017. Data became the principal contributor of revenue. Yet, the Average Revenue Per Unit (ARPU), which was about Rs. 1600 in 1998 got down to only Rs. 72 per month in March 2018. Profitability of the telecom companies tanked.” “Hurrying across the marble floor of Hospital Angeles, I approached a receptionist and explained that my husband needed ankle surgery. She gave me the names and office numbers of two different orthopedic specialists who happened to be in that day. I could just drop in, she said; a hospital staffer would get a wheelchair and bring my husband up once I made my selection. At that moment, I felt like we were part of the 1%, getting the best health care available in a country where we weren’t even citizens.” “It is a case of capitalism at its most hyperactive and brazenly inventive: take a freely available substance, dress it up in countless different costumes and then sell it as something new and capable of transforming body, mind, soul. Water is no longer simply water – it has become a commercial blank slate, a word on to which any possible ingredient or fantastical, life-enhancing promise can be attached.” “To understand what has gone wrong, we need to start first with the centralised nature of the current government. Not just decision-making but also ideas and plans emanate from a small set of personalities around the Prime Minister and in the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO). That works well for the party’s political and social agenda, which is well laid out, and where all these individuals have domain expertise. It works less well for economic reforms, where there is less of a coherent articulated agenda at the top, and less domain knowledge of how the economy works at the national rather than state level.” “While China is the biggest consumer of both products, the United States follows close behind as the world’s second-largest consumer of oil and the third-largest user of sand. Depending on its market price, crude oil is often the first or second most exported good in the world by value. Today’s relatively low prices put crude oil exports in second place, after automobiles. At the end of 2015, the U.S. government rescinded a forty-year ban on the export of crude oil from the States, and since then the country has aggressively reentered the global oil market, becoming the world’s third-largest exporter of petroleum and its refined products, behind Saudi Arabia and Russia.” “The bank was searching for a way to escape this bind, and found it in Janklow. “We were in the poorhouse when Citibank called us,” the governor recalled in a later interview. “They were in bigger problems than we were. We could make it last. They couldn’t make it last. I was slowly bleeding to death; they were gushing to death.”” “Today’s global economy has an insatiable need for raw materials. That’s as true for China’s rise as it is true for the maintenance of America’s economy. With China exporting some 40% of its GDP, Americans need to understand that behind that Made in China tag at Wal-Mart is a mutually reinforcing death spiral. We are beginning to overwhelm our host.” Short but brilliant read on student debt. “Boris Johnson will kiss hands the next day, not elected by us, not with our consent, no “one nation” unifier but leader of a dysfunctional, disunited kingdom. He will get the usual goodwill poll bounce: May and Gordon Brown had theirs. Skipping spring-heeled across the Downing Street threshold, full of vacuous optimism and “let the sun shine in” self-intoxication, he may bring smiles to the faces of admirers.” ““My input costs shot up from 4,000 to 15,000 rupees [$62 to $235],” remembers Manam’s brother Veeranjaneyu, who still works as a farmer. “The yield increased a little, but not nearly enough to cover the increase in input costs. And my crops sold for less money than before. I was forced to take out six lakhs [$9,412] in loans from private moneylenders. The loan has been a horrible burden on my life.” Much detailed version of Anil Ambani’s Journey. Worth reading. “Anil Ambani – whose surname is so powerful in India that when Ambani sneezes, the who’s who in India catches cold – was asked by the top court of the land to clear his dues or risk going to jail. In a country, where the rich and powerful rarely follow the rule book especially when things go wrong, the Supreme court’s decision is both ground-breaking (for the masses) and earth-shattering (for the classes).” ” Even with training, some said, it is exceedingly easy to revert to the original biases. “Brands like Glossier and Milk have garnered impressive cult followings, thanks to their social media-friendly packaging and refreshing approach to beauty. But, by and large, most brands seem to be all about finding the next trendy ingredient, featuring it in their products and convincing us that their formula is better than the others on the market. “The following is from an old article from 2015. The article is not just factual, but also opinionated. One can expect to see similar articles in the CAT. It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages. “The United States cannot win its tariff war with China, regardless of what President Donald Trump says or does in the coming months. Trump believes that he has the upper hand in this conflict because the US economy is so strong, and also because politicians of both parties support the strategic objective of thwarting China’s rise and preserving US global dominance. The world of work is undergoing a massive shift. Not since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution in the 18th and 19th centuries and the Information Age that followed in the last century has the scale of disruption taking place in the workforce been so evident. An oft-cited 2013 study from the University of Oxford predicted that nearly half of American jobs—including real-estate brokers, insurance underwriters, and loan officers—were at risk of being taken over by computers within the next two decades. Just last fall, the McKinsey Global Institute released a report that estimated a third of American workers may have to change jobs by 2030 because of artificial intelligence. Neat article that pokes around with questions that are supposedly Common sense. Talks about how spending culture has lead to the America being where it is now, and why it is important for the old to retire and let the young take on the reigns. Why is it difficult to invest in China? Does the government mechanism strong-arm western investors just with their policies in-to “Forced” technology transfer? Read on to know. Informative read. “China’s main official argument is that, as a developing country, domestic firms are at a disadvantage vis-à-vis foreign investors, which possess advanced technologies that the local companies do not understand. But while this argument may hold water in some of the less developed countries that use it to justify restrictive FDI regimes, China’s technological capabilities have exploded over the last couple of decades.” This post contains fabulous longform articles categorised under Fiction and Others. These are handpicked articles over the course of years for CAT Aspirants. This post contains articles I had shared in 2018 and 2019. Every Article will have blurb, either written by me or an extract from the original post (mostly the latter) followed by the link to reach the article. What’s the point of Reading Writing by Humans? I remember getting the letter from Real Madrid and tearing it up before I even opened it. Focusing too much on personal behaviour or consumption choices is a strategic blunder for those who want to make the world better. As a manager, a central part of your job is to develop people. But when you delegate a task to someone — with no prior training — simply because you are unavailable to do it, their chances of succeeding are slim “Imprisoned for the publication of his third book, a young Cairene novelist found himself wondering: Was any of it worth it?” “RUBIK’S CUBE, DYSON’S SPHERE, MASLOW’S PYRAMID, etc.—the list goes on: standard shapes imbued with meaning or purpose and named after their creators. It’s one of the surest, easiest ways to attain immortality; you’re not inventing something new, just taking an existing shape and slapping your name on it. I’m determined to join the ranks of Rubik, Dyson, Maslow, et al by getting a shape to bear my name. But what shape?” “The Eruption Of Instagram Island “Nothing Breaks Like A.I. Heart “Contact “The John Wick Universe is Cancel Culture “a tale of two pandemics “Poor Little Rich Girls: The Ballad of Sara and Clare Bronfman “The Cheating Scandal That Ripped the Poker World Apart Brilliant, super long read. “How to Pick a Career (That Actually Fits You)” “Dudes Without Heirs “From Journalist to Dealer in Two Years “Ejji K. Umamahesh is 20 years “young” with an added 45 years of experience. He is proud to have lived every minute of his life on his own terms.” “The Incredible Buddha Boy “The year we were thirteen years old, I got pertussis and my best friend Dani became obsessed with cigarettes. She liked French New Wave movies and Audrey Hepburn and The Velvet Underground. She aspired to an aesthetic that valued thinness, pallor, dark clothes, dramatic eyeliner, smoking. What life handed her was poverty and an early puberty of pimples and suddenly enormous breasts. She worked with what she had.” “Post-Race Analysis: Germany 2020 — A Podium for Ricciardo and a Tattoo for Abiteboul” “Wayne and Nancy exchanged a glance. They’d heard of the Hobson case, of course, had seen the sensational reports in the local news: Mr. Hobson, the former owner, had held his wife captive, tied to a chair in the basement, where, after several days, he shot her, then turned the rifle on himself.” “Sunken treasure, death-defying adventure, sibling rivalry: How Charles and John Deane invented modern deep-sea diving and saved the British Empire.” “The following is a story from Alexander Weinstein’s short story collection Universal love set in a near-future world where technology has altered the way people love.” “When NGS introduced NAD 83, replacing an older datum that dated to 1927, it was the geographic version of the shift from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar. If you’d been paying attention, you would have woken up on Dec. 6, 1988, to find that your house wasn’t at the same latitude and longitude anymore. “ “In Defoe’s first novel, considered by some to be literature’s first novel, Crusoe grows up in York wanting to see the world, believing fulfilment lies far from England. He gets enslaved by Barbary pirates; he grows tobacco in Brazil; at the end, he treks across the Pyrenees. But he always wants more, and an ill-fated voyage for slaves runs into a storm and strands him on his famous island. At first, Crusoe bewails his loneliness, but then he sets to work, retrieving supplies from the wreck, building a shelter and all manner of furniture, growing crops, drying grapes, penning goats, even trying to his hand at beer making.” “For most of time, Earth was a safe and stable home for our world. But over the last century, your world has been advancing exponentially in technology but remaining stagnant in wisdom. You’re rapidly gaining tremendous powers but still behaving like short-sighted primates. The voice of wisdom is there, but it’s being trampled over by political parties, religions, and nations too mired in blind conflict to lift their heads up and see the bigger picture.” “But Siberia is anything but ethereal. It is perhaps the dreariest, most nullifying place on earth. Stretching from the Ural Mountains to the Pacific Ocean, from China and the deserts of Central Asia almost to the top of the world, its expanses show little variation across their 4,000 miles east to west or nearly 2,000 miles north to south. Siberia is flat, flat, flat — with the exception of low hills, called sopki, in its eastern regions, and remote mountains, such as the Suntar Khayata, so far north that few Siberians have ever seen them.” “This reluctance stems from the belief that in rape cases, the biggest problem is not false reporting, but no reporting. Only about one-fifth to one-third of rapes get reported to police, national surveys show. One reason is that women fear police won’t believe them.” “I take turns sleeping and panicking, sleeping and panicking. We get some warmish soda (they’ve run out of ice, they tell us) and a baguette with ham (no cheese, but no indication whether they’ve run out of it or never intended to place it there in the first place). Twelve hours in, we’re over Turkmenistan. Sixteen hours in, we can see the desert. The Badain Jaran. Thirty minutes later we land directly onto the A-SIG airstrip. The pilot says, “Welcome to sunny Alpha Signatooooory!”” “As the Marvel Cinematic Universe approaches its 10-year mark with the apocalyptic Avengers: Infinity War, its films have begun to move in a similarly dark direction. After kicking things off with stirring origin movies like Iron Man, Thor, and Captain America: The First Avenger, the series has gradually started to examine the shaky underpinnings of its heroic Avengers, and is now laying the groundwork for their calamitous upending.” Article that squeezes data, statistics, and football into one. Unlke usual clickbaity articles, this neither promises to predict this world cup results nor actually does it. Brilliant piece of fiction that is set on a dystopian future where corporations take over everything, including law and order. Seems like, not too far from reality in a way though! :p Excerpt from a sci-fi novel. Curious and curiouser. Very interesting piece to read. Brilliant piece of fiction that is set in the future, perhaps not so far from now. Talks about Reviving those you have lost. Great Read.
Bharath’s Reading List | This Week | November 01st Week 2025
02-11-2026
Down on your luck? How behavioural neuroscience could help
03-11-2026
Brand story: How entrepreneur MP Ramachandran made Ujala fabric whitener a laundry bestseller
04-11-2026
The real reason humans are the dominant species
05-11-2026
Nobel Prize in Economics 2026: How Hall, Woodford reshaped modern economic policy
06-11-2026
Power, Ideology and Culture: The Sediment Beneath Politics
Curated Reading list for CAT – Psychology & Philosophy | 2
Article 124
Article 123
Article 122
Article 121
Article 120
Article 119
Article 118
Article 117
Article 116
Some scents never change”Article 115
Article 114
Article 113
Article 112
https://bit.ly/3HBd6gs Article 111
https://bit.ly/3JunTL0 Article 110
https://bit.ly/3BZPu1P Article 109
https://bit.ly/2ZFhYR5 Article 108
https://bit.ly/3CkKsxT 
Article 107
https://bit.ly/3j7Td6V 
Article 106
https://bit.ly/3lVxmA5Article 105
https://bit.ly/3kCa8QgArticle 104
https://bit.ly/3kBPeQ0Article 103
“The Opposite of Toxic Positivity
“Tragic optimism” is the search for meaning during the inevitable tragedies of human existence, and is better for us than avoiding darkness and trying to “stay positive.””
http://bit.ly/3kCAsIDArticle 102
http://bit.ly/387jNHtArticle 101
https://bit.ly/3mkNFICArticle 100
The psychedelic renaissance is fully upon us. Clinicians, directors of spiritual communities and others are engaged in the implementation of a bevy of psychedelic medicines to treat everything from major depression to problematic substance use to existential angst.”
https://bit.ly/3mdAzwKArticle 99
Inside the mind of the octopus”
https://bit.ly/37PRDRaArticle 98
Money. Time. Bodily integrity.
Relationships. Opportunity. Altruism.”
http://bit.ly/3xJHX4UArticle 97
What makes an elite sports star suddenly unable to do the very thing they have been practising for years? And is there anything they can do about it?”
https://bit.ly/3xlhk68Article 96
The internet was meant to transform how India falls in love. Instead, it revolutionised how we creep each other out.”
http://bit.ly/3C0ndJKArticle 95
Invisible but present, and far from the eyes of the public”
http://bit.ly/3i8vGTaArticle 94
Why I would go on a naked cruise again in a heartbeat”
http://bit.ly/3zJM0zwArticle 93
https://bit.ly/3zviEVyArticle 92
Why are we so squeamish about male friendship?”
http://bit.ly/3r5jpStArticle 91
There’s more to words than meets the eye. Deepen your appreciation of literature through the art of slow, attentive reading”
https://bit.ly/3i4r0wbArticle 90
Article 89
A new sex ed program for boys asks them to explore the question of what makes a good man”
https://bit.ly/3yISWgHArticle 88
Humankind holds power over its creations for one silly reason: The mind doesn’t have an off switch.”
https://bit.ly/3fuJ0PgArticle 87
Barut was a heavy user of heroin substitutes and crack when we met in Paris in 2014. He’d grown up in what he called a ‘broken home’ in Bulgaria, and started with hard drugs early. Heroin then caught him during construction jobs in Spain and later in Paris.”
https://bit.ly/2S7NYJxArticle 86
‘Medically unexplained’ symptoms are as misunderstood as they are common. Here’s what I wish people knew.”
http://bit.ly/3uMpkgfArticle 85
Amid progress toward transgender acceptance, the social-media war over “super-straight” shows how not to resolve delicate questions about dating norms.”
http://bit.ly/33rO8y9Article 84
https://bit.ly/3nGWQ4GArticle 83
What if people don’t just invent medical symptoms to get attention—what if they feign oppression, too?”
https://bit.ly/3apBovGArticle 82
Where’s the evidence that grit predicts success?”
https://bit.ly/3tznBubArticle 81
“To adult” is to complete your to-do list — but everything goes on the list, and the list never ends.
The carrot dangling in front of us is the dream that the to-do list will end, or at least become far more manageable.”
http://bit.ly/3cI0GXrArticle 80
“I’m so OCD” has become a joke, a shorthand for being clean or organized.”
http://bit.ly/3rBvrkTArticle 79
When you say the word “me,” you probably feel pretty clear about what that means. It’s one of the things you’re clearest on in the whole world—something you’ve understood since you were a year old. You might be working on the question, “Who am I?” but what you’re figuring out is the who am part of the question—the I part is obvious. It’s just you. Easy.”
https://bit.ly/30yevkjArticle 78
Public speaking can feel like an ordeal, but take a lesson from the ancients: it’s a skill you can develop like any other”
http://bit.ly/3v0rc5iArticle 77
http://bit.ly/3bWpOrYArticle 76
http://bit.ly/3bJnq7EArticle 75
How our minds push our bodies to defy expectations, beliefs, and even our own biology—in short, to make miracles”
https://bit.ly/2ZnJMprArticle 74
http://bit.ly/3rK4hJhArticle 73
The “peculiar mixture of forgetting with our remembering,” wrote William James, one of the founders of modern psychology, “is the very keel on which our mental ship is built.” “If we remembered everything,” he continued, “we should on most occasions be as ill off as if we remembered nothing.””
http://bit.ly/3qprY8UArticle 72
The teenagers often ask me, “Aren’t you sad that you will never have sex?” I answer: “Yes, a part of me is sad about that, but it is not a hopeless sadness.” Sadness and loneliness are part of the point of celibacy. “
http://bit.ly/3rIDm12Article 71
A drone sighting caused the airport to close for two days in 2018, but despite a lengthy police investigation, no culprit was ever found. So what exactly did people see in the Sussex sky?”
https://bit.ly/39RsesyArticle 70
In premodern India, debates were entertainment in courtly settings, a sport for profiteers and clever men who enjoyed a quick turn of phrase or put-down. Successful debaters gained followers, fame, even wealth.”
http://bit.ly/2JY5sVnArticle 69
It’s hard to be philosophical if you’re worried about paying rent or your physical safety.”
https://bit.ly/3g9fZsaArticle 68
Elegies for the cigarette”
https://bit.ly/3eUv7JeArticle 67
https://bit.ly/3eslphjArticle 66
Quit worrying whether time is money. Start appreciating time’s true value.”
https://bit.ly/34ZaZTgArticle 65
Why the wrong idea that wearing a mask can harm your health has lived on through multiple debunkings”
https://bit.ly/3nRF6DnArticle 64
Our brains predict the outcomes of our actions, shaping reality into what we expect. That’s why we see what we believe”
https://bit.ly/36XvK2NArticle 63
https://bit.ly/33ln5VGArticle 62
https://bit.ly/36c8iyAArticle 61
“Because it is possible to create — creating one’s self, willing to be one’s self… — one has anxiety. One would have no anxiety if there were no possibility whatever.””
https://bit.ly/3mFR2rdArticle 60
https://bit.ly/2Pw3FWnArticle 59
Suddenly, many people meet the criteria for clinical depression. Doctors are scrambling to determine who needs urgent intervention, and who is simply the new normal.”
https://bit.ly/3f6mpWZArticle 58
https://bbc.in/2WJFeZUArticle 57
The minute we make any decision—I think COVID-19 is serious; no, I’m sure it is a hoax—we begin to justify the wisdom of our choice and find reasons to dismiss the alternative.”
https://bit.ly/2ZEWQrpArticle 56
The military’s toughest training challenges have a lot in common with outdoor sufferfests like the Barkley Marathons and the Leadville Trail 100: you have to be fit and motivated to make the starting line, but your mind and spirit are what carry you to the end. A Ranger graduate breaks down an ordeal that shapes some of the nation’s finest soldiers.”
https://bit.ly/3heRVmXArticle 55
How philosophy can happen in isolation”
https://bit.ly/2NExRhcArticle 54
https://bit.ly/2YbZmotArticle 53
And now for something completely different: how a dose of the surreal or absurd helps to make sense of our place in the world”
https://bit.ly/2Y5q8NZArticle 52
https://bit.ly/2U4EgpEArticle 51
https://bit.ly/2XChR3YArticle 50
Many people feel like they are just waiting to be found out. Clancy Martin investigates the modern epidemic of impostor syndrome”
https://bit.ly/2ZJYgl0Article 49
My life seemed to be getting busier, faster: I felt constantly short of time – so I stepped outside it for a day and a night and did nothing.”
https://bit.ly/3bBiSxWArticle 48
https://bit.ly/3dTJuw3Article 47
https://bbc.in/3cWyZr8Article 46
https://bit.ly/3bs0ecYArticle 45
https://bit.ly/2VCy9ZIArticle 44
Sigmund Freud said that work and love are the cornerstones of our lives and human meaning, and the kinds of transformations in work and love that I was able to achieve are exactly what Freud said good therapy of depth, insight and relationship is for.”
https://bit.ly/2RIy0mrArticle 43
https://bit.ly/2WvNdKOArticle 42
http://bit.ly/33AcPaQArticle 41
“On the last day of class, I ask my students to turn those theoretical lenses on themselves, to find cogent answers to three questions: First, how can I be sure that I’ll be happy in my career? Second, how can I be sure that my relationships with my spouse and my family become an enduring source of happiness? Third, how can I be sure I’ll stay out of jail? Though the last question sounds lighthearted, it’s not.”
http://bit.ly/38G0nI2Article 40
http://bit.ly/36KEgOQArticle 39
http://bit.ly/2PZIPQBArticle 38
http://bit.ly/3917884Article 37
https://bbc.in/2rThZAoArticle 36
http://bit.ly/2YSDRYnArticle 35
http://bit.ly/2EerJHQArticle 34
http://bit.ly/2P9Dx2YArticle 33
“Introspection means talking to yourself, and one of the best ways of talking to yourself is by talking to another person. One other person you can trust, one other person to whom you can unfold your soul. One other person you feel safe enough with to allow you to acknowledge things—to acknowledge things to yourself—that you otherwise can’t. Doubts you aren’t supposed to have, questions you aren’t supposed to ask. Feelings or opinions that would get you laughed at by the group or reprimanded by the authorities.”
http://bit.ly/2lW7nxeArticle 32
http://bit.ly/2ZlSRNaArticle 31
http://bit.ly/2N5oKqLArticle 30
http://bit.ly/2Tjtw4YArticle 29
http://bit.ly/30ZbCaCArticle 28
http://bit.ly/2SdCb8IArticle 27
http://bit.ly/2RYv6stArticle 26
http://bit.ly/2YDZScRArticle 25
http://bit.ly/2FqAe3GArticle 24
Mussolini didn’t eat mashed potatoes because they gave him a headache. Idi Amin doesn’t seem like he’d have been a fussy eater, but he had his limits, “I tried human flesh, and it is too salty for my taste.” Of course the reader can’t be sure if this flesh was raw or cooked: if the latter, then surely the saltiness was the fault of the cook.
http://bit.ly/2MzqbixArticle 23
“Imagine that out of the blue, you tell your child you’re going to go for ice cream. Five minutes later, tell them you’ve changed your mind and you’ll go some other time.”
http://bit.ly/2QEzMmOArticle 22
“It doesn’t matter where you are, it’s who you are. And that’s not gonna change whether you’re in California or Maine or New Mexico. You know, you can’t escape…you.”
http://bit.ly/2XfwetrArticle 21
Basically, narcissism is the new herpes. It’s not like you got it on purpose, you were just in the wrong place at the wrong time, and now everyone’s pointing fingers and trying to pretend they don’t have it, too. Hence the blame game.”
http://bit.ly/30K32NjArticle 20
“Death really is the manifestation of the ordinary to everyone except the griever. Barthes’s experience of looking at the Winter Garden image cannot be reproduced because his loss cannot be reproduced. If by merely looking at Henriette as a child we could feel what Barthes feels, grief would be translatable in a way that anyone who has grieved knows it is certainly not.”
http://bit.ly/2Qo0CiBArticle 19
http://bit.ly/2wmW9UxArticle 18
http://bit.ly/2Hr7klqArticle 17
https://nyti.ms/2HcH2lqArticle 16
‘It’s not just in our head. It is in our head because it’s in our brain.’
Some participants were told that everyone had picked them, while others were told that no one had. In the end, when all the students rated their feelings, the rejected group showed no change in emotions: instead of feeling upset, they seemed to have become emotionally numb.”
http://bit.ly/2PG0s6cArticle 15
https://nyti.ms/2Isjj2GArticle 14
http://bit.ly/2VwE1CgArticle 13
http://bit.ly/2uPVzObArticle 12
http://bit.ly/2U9qNPdArticle 11
http://bit.ly/2FxvfgyArticle 10
http://bit.ly/2Tdwu9PArticle 9
http://bit.ly/2TEpI0SArticle 8
https://n.pr/2C0CtsIArticle 7
http://bit.ly/2UfFJHDArticle 6
https://bit.ly/2NoK1tEArticle 5
https://nyti.ms/2UMvvhQArticle 4
http://bit.ly/38v9gE5Article 3
http://bit.ly/37ceUdSArticle 2
http://bit.ly/2PM2tvJArticle 1
http://bit.ly/2uodfmT
Curated Reading list for CAT – Humans/Culture | 2
Article 200
Article 199
Article 198
Article 197
Article 196
Article 195
Article 194
Article 193
Article 192
Article 191
Article 190
Article 189
Article 188
Article 187
Article 186
Article 185
Let there be light!Article 184
Article 183
Watching Irrfan Khan over the yearsArticle 182
Article 181
Article 180
Article 179
Article 178
Article 177
Article 176
Article 175
Article 174
Article 173
Article 172
Article 171
One woman’s journey into the heart of grain and how our flour is madeArticle 170
Shanghai residents have become the digital equivalent of ancient hunter-gatherers”.Article 169
A trip to Hempfest with pioneering cannabis breeder DJ Short”Article 168
What’s behind the indestructible appeal of the robotic snack?”Article 167
Young artists like Latto, Vince Staples, and Doechii are subtly persuading listeners to rethink the way music genres can be interpreted.”Article 166
An evolutionary biologist and biological anthropologist break down why differences in human athleticism, IQ, and health can’t be explained by the concept of race.”Article 165
Teens today are held to an absurdly high standard in comparison”Article 164
Article 163
Why does public discourse about beauty remain so shallow?”Article 162
Article 161
Article 160
Article 159
A chef lifts the veil on his journey from home cook to TV stardom and the heat of the Indian restaurant kitchen.”Article 158
Finishing my first book meant powering through grief, but tackling the second has required another kind of grit.”Article 157
Article 156
Article 155
“We hadn’t exchanged numbers, our exchange itself being too brief. This was truly a Tinder message-less, phone call-less, chance encounter. B said that if this was meant to be, if we were really meant to cross paths again, it would happen that evening. “Article 154
Article 153
Article 152
https://bit.ly/3qrUIkfArticle 151
https://bit.ly/3qnId9gArticle 150
https://bit.ly/3t6tSQj Article 149
https://bit.ly/30qZZhj Article 148
https://bit.ly/3Gz870b 
Article 147
https://bit.ly/3EjJ3rK
Article 146
https://bit.ly/2Z8ldAf Article 145
https://bit.ly/3FLrL8w 
Article 144
https://bit.ly/2YFfEJJ 
Article 143
https://bit.ly/3lhz27Z Article 142
https://bit.ly/3lMa4MRArticle 141
EARLY IN 2019, a year before the world shut its borders completely, Jorge A. knew he had to get out of Guatemala. The land was turning against him. For five years, it almost never rained. Then it did rain, and Jorge rushed his last seeds into the ground. The corn sprouted into healthy green stalks, and there was hope — until, without warning, the river flooded. Jorge waded chest-deep into his fields searching in vain for cobs he could still eat. Soon he made a last desperate bet, signing away the tin-roof hut where he lived with his wife and three children against a $1,500 advance in okra seed. But after the flood, the rain stopped again, and everything died. Jorge knew then that if he didn’t get out of Guatemala, his family might die, too.”
https://bit.ly/3BOyeNeArticle 140
Thanks to its bright colors, clashing patterns, and a whole mess of green stuff, identifying with Nickelodeon was so easy because kids could so easily identify Nickelodeon shows”
http://bit.ly/3mzXCSxArticle 139
Why is English spelling so weird and unpredictable? Don’t blame the mix of languages; look to quirks of timing and technology”
http://bit.ly/3y5SlnQArticle 138
http://bit.ly/3AvMTfOArticle 137
http://bit.ly/3Aqw0TIArticle 136
http://bit.ly/2Sjiz7BArticle 135
The Goguryeo empire has been gone for centuries — but it still has a lingering impact on East Asian politics.”
https://bit.ly/34qCzaHArticle 134
https://bit.ly/3upDumwArticle 133
The 1950s Hollywood movie The Bridge on the River Kwai, about a Japanese POW camp during World War II, nearly contained a fascinating side story about a dedicated archaeologist prisoner. Hendrik Robert van Heekeren deserves the spotlight.”
http://bit.ly/3ooXMeqArticle 132
I gave my youth to this city
Wang Haijia, male, 42 years old, from Hebei, delivery driver”
https://bit.ly/3fmBG88Article 131
http://bit.ly/3uE1RhhArticle 130
https://bit.ly/3ob8zbZArticle 129
I always knew my dad loved me. But he often seemed to love his music more”
https://bit.ly/3nWuUKfArticle 128
In the summer of 1942, Leningrad was starving. It had been under siege and bombardment by German forces for nearly a year. And yet an orchestra managed to perform a new symphony by the composer Dmitri Shostakovich, and broadcast it across the city.”
https://bbc.in/3gNCtBqArticle 127
On the illusions of class mobility”
http://bit.ly/3tG6BSVArticle 126
http://bit.ly/3dvDdsKArticle 125
https://bit.ly/2RJRud6Article 124
http://bit.ly/3mF1pvSArticle 123
Some of our most common, ingrained expressions have damaging effects on millions of people – and many of us don’t know we’re hurting others when we speak.”
https://bbc.in/3mz39qxArticle 122
The Keeladi excavations may alter the world’s ideas about the earliest Indians. But progress hasn’t been smooth for one of the country’s most sensational archaeological projects.”
https://bit.ly/3cKUihWArticle 121
Josiah Elleston-Burrell had done everything to make his dream of studying architecture a reality. But, suddenly, in the summer of 2020, he found his fate was no longer in his hands”
http://bit.ly/38KaqxZArticle 120
From Joe Meek to Taylor Swift: a short history of lo-fi”
http://bit.ly/2OqQNEpArticle 119
Why do so many patients have to wait until they’re suffering terribly before they can get relief?”
http://bit.ly/3v4IePVArticle 118
http://bit.ly/3qkCsWKArticle 117
http://bit.ly/3aQtbkSArticle 116
Four years’ worth of stories about VIP visits and grooming protocols, palm-greasing, rotten vegetables, and that time they lost Steve Mnuchin’s coat.”
http://bit.ly/3aMXSaxArticle 115
Did ayahuasca tea — brewed from rainforest plants and revered by many Brazilians as holy — contribute to the brutal death of a celebrated Brazilian artist?”
http://on.ft.com/3pyZVmPArticle 114
http://bit.ly/3poR3zQArticle 113
http://bit.ly/39MexdXArticle 112
Beware splashy corporate gestures when they leave existing power structures intact.”
http://bit.ly/39oGurRArticle 111
On Taco Bell and belonging”
http://bit.ly/2LE38UlArticle 110
New Yorker staff writer Jeffrey Toobin was allegedly caught masturbating during a company Zoom call. He’s not the first”
http://bit.ly/3stW39tArticle 109
On August 23, 2004, they discovered a cinema 60 feet beneath Paris.”
http://bit.ly/2LgSItBArticle 108
Gambling on change in Georgia’s most surreal city.”
http://bit.ly/2KMRnuiArticle 107
These members of the genus Homo have long occupied two different branches on the family tree. But now that researchers think these groups interbred, scholars are giving serious consideration to whether we are the same species after all.”
http://bit.ly/3mVtvBpArticle 106
My matrimonial journey started on the same day I hit 27. That’s the autumn-age of life, not just because it’s beautiful, but also, that’s when your hair starts falling just like the leaves. On the first day of my autumn, my parents tried to surprise me by setting up a matrimonial profile as a birthday gift.”
https://bit.ly/3a7BkkLArticle 105
https://bit.ly/36jZ2XHArticle 104
The pandemic isn’t a problem when you’re computer-generated.”
https://bloom.bg/3kMoECnArticle 103
Data from city restaurant inspections, rental prices, and census figures, show how restaurants and gentrification are interconnected”
https://bit.ly/3e4bwG4Article 102
What would restaurant criticism look like if it represented diners like me?”
https://bit.ly/2H4CVLWArticle 101
Emma Slattery Williams considers whether the fêted pharaoh – master builder, war hero and peace broker – was actually a brilliant propagandist who knew how to curate his image”
https://bit.ly/3nIkg9DArticle 100
Nick Cohen salutes J.K. Rowling, whose latest work reflects her refusal to take the easy route”
https://bit.ly/3l023SzArticle 99
Moving into life lessons”
https://bit.ly/2FlsO4LArticle 98
Captain Scott took jars to the Antarctic with him, and Edmund Hillary took one up Everest. Marmalade is part of the British national myth. Livvy Potts wants to know why.”
https://bit.ly/2EITxHDArticle 97
It’s not exactly a fun time to start a magazine, nor is it a convenient one. A magazine is by definition an optimistic, social project, and the past few months have found young people fairly hopeless and dramatically isolated—alienated all over again by an undemocratic political system and a hollowed out, dysfunctional government.”
https://bit.ly/3aZvujSArticle 96
https://bit.ly/34hHXxXArticle 95
As women in the United States create networks to give or receive breast milk, anthropologists are illuminating the complex social and cultural forces that shape mothers’ choices.”
https://bit.ly/3242Da4Article 94
For the warriors and wanderers who became the Aztec people, truth was not singular and history was braided from many voices”
https://bit.ly/2Yf6csVArticle 93
So when Pharrell Williams asked his followers to donate to aid frontline responders, they virtually grabbed him by the pants and shook him upside-down, telling him to empty his own deep pockets.”
https://nyti.ms/2PUee5RArticle 92
https://bit.ly/2BV9fi7Article 91
https://bit.ly/3hYd2urArticle 90
How Maria Konnikova found enlightenment at the poker table.”
https://bit.ly/3fcTukfArticle 89
A tech company touts “inclusion,” while facing accusations of caste bias in the workplace”
https://bit.ly/2EderypArticle 88
https://bit.ly/3hkawOOArticle 87
From the Berlin Wall to Confederate monuments, destroying a historic marker means destroying a learning opportunity.”
https://bit.ly/3iGQEH5Article 86
Roger Moorhouse shows it’s possible to treat modern history properly and in context”
https://bit.ly/2CVFmhNArticle 85
The history of caffeine and capitalism can get surprisingly heated.”
https://bit.ly/3idOi29Article 84
https://bit.ly/2NbWnWHArticle 83
An anthropologist responds to the suggestion that older people sacrifice themselves for the sake of the economy in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.”
https://bit.ly/2Bbr5fVArticle 82
“Quarantine has changed us — and it’s not all bad
Here are 8 new habits people want to keep post-lockdown.”
https://bit.ly/2MLA8XsArticle 81
How massive parallelism lifts the brain’s performance above that of AI.”
https://bit.ly/2MvRJCMArticle 80
https://bit.ly/2ysFtzvArticle 79
Angela Saini’s Superior charts the rise of race science that’s being enabled by technology and genetics research. Discover the worrying new trend in this extract”
https://bit.ly/2zbdd4BArticle 78
https://bit.ly/3dHFyOGArticle 77
https://bit.ly/2yBp5wJArticle 76
Where, when, and how did humans first domesticate horses?”
https://bit.ly/2WB3ufSArticle 75
https://bit.ly/2KVQA6HArticle 74
https://bit.ly/2ybhvswArticle 73
https://bit.ly/2KG52j8Article 72
https://bit.ly/356v7RQArticle 71
https://bit.ly/2yb1TVbArticle 70
https://bit.ly/2JQcwiTArticle 69
https://bit.ly/39AYoEMArticle 68
https://bit.ly/2QVThZ6Article 67
https://bit.ly/2vZ1CUSArticle 66
https://on.ft.com/2JiiqZMArticle 65
https://bit.ly/2WFzq4gArticle 64
http://bit.ly/2QlO5h0Article 63
http://bit.ly/2IRd5scArticle 62
http://bit.ly/2INofyoArticle 61
http://bit.ly/2vQcunUArticle 60
http://bit.ly/2VvFBYaArticle 59
http://bit.ly/2uYmb3bArticle 58
http://bit.ly/2SC5ti0Article 57
http://bit.ly/36EaJqfArticle 56
http://bit.ly/2t2rcXnArticle 55
http://bit.ly/39L4R17Article 54
http://bit.ly/37ay2IKArticle 53
http://bit.ly/2P8to6UArticle 52
http://bit.ly/35iNl10Article 51
http://bit.ly/2Qzzr6IArticle 50
Article 49 “The first lesson was this: Always start at the bottom, then cast your eyes upward in search of the unfolding story. This became, for a time, my preferred way of investigating the world around me. A boat was measured first by its barnacles, and a person by their shoes. In Petersburg, where I grew up, commercial fisherman like my uncles and my grandpa all wore the same brown xtratuf boots. In the jail where my father lived, everyone except the guards wore cheap slip-ons with thin soles. My grandmother, whose feet were badly crippled by rheumatoid arthritis, could only wear sandals;”
http://bit.ly/2JVe77rArticle 48
http://bit.ly/2NHNc0iArticle 47
http://bit.ly/31Y3GWSArticle 46
http://bit.ly/2MMvbgDArticle 45
https://wapo.st/2pk0ibcArticle 44
http://bit.ly/33aTgnPArticle 43
http://bit.ly/333yKW8Article 42
http://bit.ly/2lJWOgOArticle 41
http://bit.ly/2lHSA9xArticle 40
http://bit.ly/2keXCd2Article 39
http://bit.ly/2kyoFA5Article 38
http://bit.ly/2lCZWKVArticle 37
Even in cases where the falling is inconvenient—because it happens too early, or too late, or between lovers whose lives are too messy to bode well for their futures—even in those cases, the falling itself is respected as a legitimate experience, entirely within the realm of the human and the normal.”
http://bit.ly/2UnyFJPArticle 36
“I was to understand that it was the way of domestic workers to fall short of money, and the obligation of householders to get them out of scrapes. I came to appreciate that the various trials of the employee’s life were very much my business, that ours was inherently an association of unequals, and that decency demanded that I keep that uppermost in my mind and behave accordingly.”
http://bit.ly/2zmYr7BArticle 35
http://bit.ly/31nzchiArticle 34
In truth, though, Delphine’s success is not all that surprising — the only thing the internet loves more than a hot, half-naked gamer girl, is a hot, half-naked gamer girl who’s expert at trolling.”
http://bit.ly/2ywQFrjArticle 33
http://bit.ly/2GOUVafArticle 32
http://bit.ly/2GAavWVArticle 31
http://bit.ly/2YoKVdwArticle 30
http://bit.ly/2Y9aovyArticle 29
https://bbc.in/30CSCyoArticle 28
In this episode we explore new research that suggests for the majority of the mind change we experience, after we update our priors, we delete what we used to believe and then simply forget that we ever thought otherwise.”
http://bit.ly/2LXl6ilArticle 27
http://bit.ly/2XXuxo4Article 26
http://bit.ly/2KK19vuArticle 25
http://bit.ly/2LklEhKArticle 24
http://bit.ly/2IQKtPDArticle 23
http://bit.ly/2WM0osdArticle 22
http://bit.ly/2MFSsnHArticle 21
“”Tom Vanderbilt opined about the ever-shrinking “nostalgia gap,” and comically posited scenarios that might come true if this shrinking continued at its current dizzying speed: “The previous month’s Top 40 will appear in boxed-CD sets, as television commercials intone: ‘Do you remember what it was like in April, to be young and carefree, listening to the music that made you feel that way?’ Hey man, is that April Rock? Well, turn it up!”””
http://bit.ly/2Mp4WjoArticle 20
“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view … until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.””
http://bit.ly/2YVuqGKArticle 19
http://bit.ly/2JwZx7xArticle 18
https://on.ft.com/2W9ceLGArticle 17
http://bit.ly/2vUOht1Article 16
http://bit.ly/2VPvTjRArticle 15
“If the word is living, then God is not dead, the Bible is unfinished, and a new day is coming. Stevens predicted that day would be in 1979, when his followers, through convulsive prayer and spiritual intensity, would lift him into heaven and he in turn would leave the gates wide open, granting the faithful “resurrection life”: immortality.”
http://bit.ly/2Vl7jryArticle 14
http://bit.ly/2ZXb8C8 Article 13
http://bit.ly/2GY18j9Article 12
http://bit.ly/2VkUc9dArticle 11
http://bit.ly/2vhkWbSArticle 10
http://bit.ly/2VatiRlArticle 9
http://bit.ly/2DnEvnwArticle 8
http://bit.ly/2XoHhQGArticle 7
http://bit.ly/2DicwVXArticle 6
http://bit.ly/2Z3NVNXArticle 5
http://bit.ly/2U8KTErArticle 4
http://bit.ly/2WOkWMf Article 3
http://bit.ly/2WrSvU7Article 2
http://bit.ly/2OtfFGP Article 1
http://bit.ly/2Foasw8
Curated Reading list for CAT – Politics/Law/Crime | 2
Article 151
Article 150
Article 149
Article 148
Article 147
Article 146
Article 145
Article 144
Article 143
Article 142
Article 141
Article 140
Article 139
Yandex, the country’s biggest tech company, could look at India for growth.Article 138
In April, Kim Jong Un will mark the 10th anniversary of his complete succession to power. He doesn’t have much to celebrate.” Article 137
Warriors live by an honor code. What the Russian military is doing in Ukraine are barbaric war crimes committed by soulless savages. It is time to put an end to this.” Article 136
An Assam Border Police official and ex-serviceman, Mohammed Sanaullah was the model Indian citizen. Then his employers decided he wasn’t.”Article 135
How Prohibition came to Andhra Pradesh, and how it’s going.”Article 134
There are bigger reasons at play than an insane madman flexing pArticle 133
The official definition of corruption – the abuse of public office for private gain – does little to capture the reality” Article 132
Article 131
In the face of planetary challenges, the nation-state is both the problem and the solution, says the Stanford scholar.”Article 130
Article 129
During WWII, Ukrainian nationalists saw the Nazis as liberators from Soviet oppression. Now, Russia is using that chapter to paint Ukraine as a Nazi nation”Article 128
In 1985 West Germany’s president gave an unflinching speech. It helped a new generation to face the Nazi past honestly”Article 127
He was a doctor on a tea estate in Assam. He studied at a prestigious college. Like thousands of other medical professionals in rural India, he was also not the person he claimed to be.”Article 126
Article 125
Article 124
Article 123
Article 122
Article 121
Article 120
Article 119
https://bit.ly/3HSNPycArticle 118
Article 117
https://bit.ly/3Fhgmwl Article 116
https://bit.ly/3c4kinl Article 115
https://bit.ly/3nx7cVk 
Article 114
https://bit.ly/3vsQHgx Article 113
https://bit.ly/3FWHZvS Article 112
https://bit.ly/3BdJLW Article 111
https://bit.ly/3kVOma Article 110
https://bit.ly/2XOSz6p Article 109
https://bit.ly/3AyaYTFArticle 108
https://bit.ly/3EqP86EArticle 107
Farm Bank let players make money, while supporting real farms. Then the CEO vanished with $80 million.”
http://bit.ly/3z6Ue4eArticle 106
A coordinated program of public deception that spanned four decades has become a template for modern disinformation”
http://bit.ly/3yMaAyVArticle 105
http://bit.ly/38lcX18Article 104
Lebanese capital remains a shell of a city as efforts to find who is to blame for tragedy have made little progress”
http://bit.ly/3yI5YLaArticle 103
A fugitive from the US started fresh on Vancouver Island—then bilked new victims out of millions of dollars while law enforcement refused to act”
https://bit.ly/3AituP3Article 102
The inside story of a cartel’s deadly assault on a Mexican town near the Texas border — and the U.S. drug operation that sparked it.”
http://bit.ly/3fBuUwtArticle 101
A Substack publication used location data from Grindr to out a priest without their consent.”
https://bit.ly/3BFLAw3Article 100
Why did so many Americans receive strange packages they didn’t think they’d ordered?”
http://bit.ly/36TqFHzArticle 99
NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware, licensed to governments around the globe, can infect phones without a click”
http://wapo.st/3rp9g35Article 98
Fifty years ago 180,000 whales disappeared from the oceans without a trace, and researchers are still trying to make sense of why. Inside the most irrational environmental crime of the century.”
http://bit.ly/3hPoMSxArticle 97
https://bit.ly/3r7Pw3GArticle 96
Richard Phillips survived the longest wrongful prison sentence in American history by writing poetry and painting with watercolors. But on a cold day in the prison yard, he carried a knife and thought about revenge.”
https://cnn.it/3r2z8BMArticle 95
https://bit.ly/2Tfy6G8Article 94
She Was a Judge Who Believed in Second Chances.
Nobody knew She Suffered from Alzheimer’s.”
http://bit.ly/2T1WmLCArticle 93
Parthasarathy stepped down in July 2018 on “health grounds” and IL&FS started defaulting in its loan repayment from August. Just next month in September, IL&FS investment-grade “AAA” rating was downgraded to D “Junk” grade by the rating agencies ICRA, CARE.”
http://bit.ly/35LBPxMArticle 92
https://bit.ly/3zKWVK7Article 91
Guardians can sell the assets and control the lives of senior citizens without their consent—and reap a profit from it.Article 90
“The purpose is to rein in Ma Yun,” said an adviser to China’s State Council, the country’s top government body, using Mr. Ma’s Chinese name. “It’s like putting a bridle on a horse.””
http://bit.ly/3woQricArticle 89
http://bit.ly/3ghkLprArticle 88
https://bit.ly/3w6qEeyArticle 87
In most of China, women are being urged to have more babies to shore up a falling birthrate. But in Xinjiang, they are being forced to have fewer.”
https://nyti.ms/3fMZDXVArticle 86
What began as an investigation into money laundering quickly turned into something much greater, uncovering a vast and intricate web of political and corporate racketeering.”
http://bit.ly/3g1lx8qArticle 85
How two lottery-crazed bank clerks cooked up China’s biggest bank robbery of all time”
https://bit.ly/2RLBdVdArticle 84
In India, Modi’s pandemic denial has deadly consequences”
https://bit.ly/3vgLwPTArticle 83
https://bit.ly/2RgDQh9Article 82
America’s favorite highway usually evokes kitschy nostalgia. But for black Americans, the Mother Road’s lonely expanses were rife with danger.”
https://bit.ly/2PP7MRhArticle 81
I worked at Marineland decades before stories of mistreatment broke. It seemed bad even then”
https://bit.ly/3fSQfSQArticle 80
New Delhi’s appeasement of the Tatmadaw could trigger angry protests, and perhaps inflame anti-India insurgencies in the northeast.”
https://bit.ly/3uuz4LvArticle 79
Long-Form: The story of a troubled FedEx flight engineer who boarded a flight unannounced and attempted to carry out a terrifying plan.”
http://bit.ly/3sBw4MXArticle 78
In the spring of 1960, as we were planning the arrest of Adolf Eichmann, we learned that [Josef] Mengele was also in Buenos Aires. Our people checked out the address and it proved to be correct.”
http://bit.ly/3rAmCbbArticle 77
Immigrant laborers have been dying tragic, sometimes grisly deaths on construction sites across the country. These deaths rarely make the news, but they tell the story of an industry indifferent to the lives of its workers.”
http://bit.ly/3eMw6NFArticle 76
James Regan swindled his way through the city’s monied classes. The problem was, he seemed to believe his own lies”
http://bit.ly/3rBhAfcArticle 75
http://bit.ly/3e0WAdTArticle 74
How a country used myth and mystique to tempt global investors – and seeded a toxic Hindu nationalism in the process”
http://bit.ly/2ZGwsN2Article 73
Did ayahuasca tea — brewed from rainforest plants and revered by many Brazilians as holy — contribute to the brutal death of a celebrated Brazilian artist?”
http://on.ft.com/3pyZVmPArticle 72
Here’s what it’s like to lose the person who raised you to a far-right cult.”
http://bit.ly/3jUj29IArticle 71
The consulting firm has reached the agreement with 47 states because of its advice to drugmakers, including Purdue Pharma, the manufacturer of OxyContin.”
http://nyti.ms/3cGT1sDArticle 70
HuffPost India was the first casualty of the Narendra Modi administration’s new restrictions on digital media ownership, but it won’t be the last.
https://zcu.io/sIsOArticle 69
Russia’s role in Trump’s election has led to a boom in Putinology. But do all these theories say more about us than Putin?”
http://bit.ly/3r7EfztArticle 68
After 10 years living in France, I returned to China to sign some papers and I was locked up. For the next two years, I was systematically dehumanised, humiliated and brainwashed”
http://bit.ly/3nUL452Article 67
‘Have you tried to moderate 15 million people?’ MeWe founder Mark Weinstein told OneZero”
http://bit.ly/3sr7I8UArticle 66
http://bit.ly/2K8HWoCArticle 65
http://bit.ly/35cla6oArticle 64
The headline read: “Sonia Gandhi not to celebrate her birthday in view of farmers’s protests, Covid-19″. The vanity and self-regard in this public pronouncement was staggering, if entirely characteristic. Do the Gandhis think they are akin to royalty, so that the cancellation of one of their birthday parties becomes a mark of identification with their suffering subjects?”
http://bit.ly/2WOIhzgArticle 63
http://bit.ly/34nmJhAArticle 62
Questioning the great awakening of far right pundits”
https://bit.ly/2IfuazqArticle 61
How well-meaning donations end up fueling an unproven, virtually unregulated $2 billion stem cell industry.”
https://bit.ly/3pnpwAmArticle 60
Ambitions include promoting electric vehicles and incorporating environmental justice”
https://bit.ly/3lHmGnvArticle 59
https://bit.ly/3nuP9NLArticle 58
It all finally caught up to him. The lies, the outrageous boasts, the disorder and disastrous management, the rants and the race-baiting, the predatory instincts and compulsion to dominate—all the things that made President Donald Trump the ringmaster of the American political circus at last compelled a majority of voters to drive him out of the tent.”
https://bit.ly/32uElafArticle 57
https://bit.ly/2I0uJgvArticle 56
https://bit.ly/35JTPrUArticle 55
An investigation into decades of abuse at Shambhala International”
https://bit.ly/34D688KArticle 54
https://bit.ly/2F9fCzQArticle 53
https://bit.ly/2GGYeCNArticle 52
https://bit.ly/3hTgFkDArticle 51
On 4 August, a massive blast devastated the Beirut port area.
A huge store of ammonium nitrate in a warehouse is thought to have been the cause of the explosion.
Who knew about the dangerous cargo and who is to blame for the destruction it unleashed?”
https://bbc.in/34nqhRSArticle 50
A grieving mother fights for a new investigation into what happened to her son.”
https://bloom.bg/2Y9XnkiArticle 49
Why have some Asian countries controlled their outbreaks so well? It’s because authorities have earned their citizens’ confidence.”
https://bit.ly/2DQof1tArticle 48
https://bit.ly/2D9ATITArticle 47
https://bit.ly/3hY4G62Article 46
https://bit.ly/3gb0rDIArticle 45
https://reut.rs/3iVAcD4Article 44
https://bit.ly/2Oe232YArticle 43
The Kremlin pulled all the levers to ensure a decisive vote. It won’t be as easy to dictate economic recovery or popular approval.”
https://bloom.bg/2CX1PuIArticle 42
https://bit.ly/38eEzDZArticle 41
How they accidentally made a promise they couldn’t keep”
https://bit.ly/31sK015Article 40
The federal government and states have fueled an unregulated, chaotic market for masks ruled by oddballs, ganjapreneurs and a shadowy network of investors.”
https://bit.ly/2Amruw3Article 39
When the news hit that Occidental, the small liberal arts college in Eagle Rock, was the subject of two federal complaints over the way it handled sexual assault cases involving students, it set the campus reeling. Three years later the school has taken steps to improve, but it has yet to salve the bitter rancor between activists, administrators, and faculty”
https://bit.ly/37asoI5Article 38
https://bit.ly/2XrmLlkArticle 37
https://bit.ly/2TlYjzxArticle 36
After serving multiple jail sentences, the country’s most notorious cat burglar headed south, where police suspect he started making up for lost time”
https://bit.ly/2WNYm9kArticle 35
Hitman-for-hire darknet sites are all scams. But some people turn up dead nonetheless”
https://bit.ly/35CplYnArticle 34
https://bit.ly/2YGTJ2qArticle 33
https://bit.ly/3bBmVviArticle 32
Jason thought the photo was a scene from a sci-fi movie—until he noticed the blue school badges embroidered on the chest of the familiar white polos worn by the students. It was exactly the same as the one he was wearing.”
https://bit.ly/34UCwU4Article 31
Andrew Therrien wanted payback. He got it—and uncovered a conspiracy.”
https://bloom.bg/2RK54KFArticle 30
https://bit.ly/3clKJmRArticle 29
https://bit.ly/2Vo6XxBArticle 28
http://bit.ly/39Egp5YArticle 27
http://bit.ly/38J3FttArticle 26
https://wapo.st/3ceExxJArticle 25
http://bit.ly/2PjdhUWArticle 24
http://bit.ly/2SMQtPFArticle 23
“At first Jong didn’t have a computer, so he borrowed one from his roommates, promising to pay a rental fee once he’d made enough money to buy his own machine. He began his new career by obtaining beta versions of commercial software such as video games and security programs, then making pirate replicas his clients could sell online. Orders came in via word of mouth and broker websites from around the world; many were from China or South Korea, allowing for easier communication.”
https://bloom.bg/320ITniArticle 22
https://wapo.st/2HopEuwArticle 21
How a meteorite hunter’s obsession took him from the mountains of Colorado, to the Bundy Ranch, and eventually landed him in jail”
http://bit.ly/3bhvM5oArticle 20
http://bit.ly/2v36IyqArticle 19
http://bit.ly/2uQQ452Article 18
http://bit.ly/2QzrGMrArticle 17
http://bit.ly/35fpy2yArticle 16
http://bit.ly/2pr2JcIArticle 15
Article 14
http://bit.ly/2OhzotkArticle 13
http://bit.ly/2riftCPArticle 12
http://bit.ly/2qWWCgtArticle 11
http://bit.ly/2oX2eXuArticle 10
http://bit.ly/2BkSbhrArticle 9
http://bit.ly/2IAfF6kArticle 8
http://bit.ly/2oQj4qBArticle 7
http://bit.ly/2nqRS0OArticle 6
http://bit.ly/2kgT3ibArticle 5
http://bit.ly/2kK6GXwArticle 4
http://bit.ly/2kiZIISArticle 3
http://bit.ly/310fVmtArticle 2
https://nyti.ms/2zCAdWLArticle 1
https://nyti.ms/2Pd7GSz
Curated Reading list for CAT – Economy & Business | 1
Article 101
Article 100
Article 99
Article 98
Article 97
Web3 collectives want to disrupt filmmaking. Can they?”Article 96
When it comes to economic questions, there’s more agreement between culture war opponents than you might think”Article 95
Amidst the scams and bubbles, credible scarcity and authenticity will unlock real value in digital markets”Article 94
Article 93
Article 92
Article 91
Article 90
Article 89
Article 88
Article 87
Article 86
https://bit.ly/3D7H5ea Article 85
https://bit.ly/3o0keuC Article 84
https://bit.ly/3bA7IMy Article 83
https://bit.ly/2Y0jpZQ 
Article 82
https://bit.ly/3G3TWzF Article 81
https://bit.ly/3oYorB6 
Article 80
https://bit.ly/3lpx8Ce Article 79
https://bit.ly/3FjYbHg Article 78
https://bit.ly/3kqa85DArticle 77
https://bit.ly/2XsmXmLArticle 76
Around the world, previously invisible delivery personnel have achieved a new prominence in popular consciousness as “frontline workers” throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. As the emergency has highlighted both the importance and the dangers of delivery work, strikes over working conditions have occurred alongside public displays of appreciation.”
http://bit.ly/3BVRj00Article 75
Last year, three cryptocurrency enthusiasts bought a cruise ship. They named it the Satoshi, and dreamed of starting a floating libertarian utopia. It didn’t work out”
http://bit.ly/3nw8q4PArticle 74
http://bit.ly/3zMqniDArticle 73
“”This Is Going to Change the World”
As the new millennium dawned, a mysterious invention from a charismatic millionaire became a viral sensation—then went down in flames. Ever since, I’ve wondered: Was it all my fault?”
http://bit.ly/3kMOwiIArticle 72
Maybe because traditional companies still have a good reason to exist.”
http://bit.ly/3ygSLYwArticle 71
On first blush, it sounds boring. Worse, it’s a bit hard to explain because you haven’t used anything like it before. It’s a communications application, based on the system they created while building Glitch. It’s called Slack.”
http://bit.ly/3z2eRzhArticle 70
The ‘customer is king’ motto has resulted in the invisibilisation of an entire community of people who form the backbone of the food delivery enterprise: delivery riders.”
https://bit.ly/3s4X4F2Article 69
A fugitive from the US started fresh on Vancouver Island—then bilked new victims out of millions of dollars while law enforcement refused to act”https://bit.ly/3AituP3Article 68
http://bit.ly/3xgS3KqArticle 67
It’s a classic case of mismanagement for eight years,” said one former developer. “Instead of adding layers of value we kept running around in a loop.”
http://bit.ly/3hURAt1Article 66
Blockchains can’t rebuild roads or end sectarian violence, famine or natural disasters.”
http://bit.ly/36DrJ27Article 65
https://bloom.bg/2U5kaipArticle 64
Asteroids could pay for so much space exploration. We just need to mine those valuable resources – and duck a direct hit”
https://bit.ly/3hb5PJDArticle 63
The Economy Barely Survived Covid. It’s Not Going to Survive What’s Next.
You don’t get to be a billionaire by having a functioning soul or mind — you have to kind of be a sociopath in the first place.”
http://bit.ly/3jqMO7JArticle 62
An American family’s struggle for student loan redemption”
http://bit.ly/3qp3s9cArticle 61
Fanhouse wants to keep sending 90 percent of payments to creators”
http://bit.ly/3cwuKF5Article 60
“Our greatest glory is not in ever falling but in rising every time we fall!” – Batman.
As the pandemic rages on and the whole world tries to dig deep and exhibit resolve in surviving and overcoming this deadly virus, I have been taking solace in comics.”
https://bit.ly/3vT9sJvArticle 59
While some appreciate wealthy celebrities’ efforts to raise money for COVID-19 relief, some others are calling them out for contributing a tiny fraction of their vast bank accounts.”
https://bit.ly/3fc48txArticle 58
Sky Bet, the most popular one in Britain, compiled extensive records about a user, tracking him in ways he never imagined.”
https://nyti.ms/3vSNMfNArticle 57
Over 3 years to 2020, as India’s farm crisis deepened, 18 insurance companies running Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s crop-insurance scheme rejected nearly a million claims. As pandemic and pestilence devastated farms, we reveal how the scheme’s complex fine print frustrates farmers and disregards individual loss”
https://bit.ly/2R2o8GkArticle 56
https://bit.ly/3sIruvCArticle 55
Using ratings, competitions and bonuses to incentivise workers isn’t new – but as I found when I became a Lyft driver, the gig economy is taking it to another level.”
https://bit.ly/2Pu87ZDArticle 54
http://bit.ly/3eky4VyArticle 53
“The Case for Reading Fiction
The quality of our reading stands as “an index to the quality of our thought.” If we want better thinkers in the business world, we have to build better readers.”
https://bit.ly/3aybt5BArticle 52
On New Year’s Eve, Monopoly celebrates the 85th anniversary of its patent. Its publisher, Hasbro, can toast the occasion knowing that its prized board game is more popular than ever. In 2013, Euromonitor pegged Monopoly’s annual revenues at ~$400m.”
http://bit.ly/2Z78RVqArticle 51
Here’s how scammers turn those ubiquitous, meaningless comments into profits”
http://bit.ly/2MKcUo2Article 50
While a quarter of America is behind on rent, the shareholder class has experienced an explosion in net worth”
http://bit.ly/2YBV2y0Article 49
How social media moves markets: Analyzing GameStop (GME) using social listening data.
GameStop: how Redditors played hedge funds for billions (and what might come next)
http://bit.ly/3iWSELP
http://bit.ly/3cskoa5Article 48
The ‘free speech’ site isn’t the first to lose its web hosting. Here’s how the adult industry works around similar sanctions.”
https://bit.ly/3qHdelYArticle 47
http://bit.ly/2Y5TTi9Article 46
The original product was ungainly, over-budget and nearly canceled. Here’s how it became a hit and reshaped an industry.”
http://bloom.bg/3oihDepArticle 45
Thanks to lax privacy laws and high consumer demand, details on everything from how you shop to who you date are all for sale.”
http://bit.ly/2Lq9Z30Article 44
The privately controlled corporate market has, in the precise words of the late economics writer Jonathan Rowe, ‘a fatal character flaw – namely, an incapacity to stop growing. No matter how much it grew yesterday it must continue to do so tomorrow, and then some; or else the machinery will collapse.’”
https://bit.ly/3m3k5mWArticle 43
There are two kinds of history to learn from: One is the specific events. What did this person do right? What did that country do wrong? What ideas worked? What strategies failed? It’s most of what we pay attention to, because specific stories are easy to find. But their usefulness is limited.”
https://bit.ly/2JwuPNsArticle 42
The web as we know it relies on advertising, but that model is headed for a crash. Fortunately, we can build something better from the wreckage.”
https://bit.ly/32IozZAArticle 41
In a landmark antitrust complaint, the Justice Department is targeting a secretive partnership that is worth billions of dollars to both companies.”
https://nyti.ms/2HCfdXHArticle 40
Ask people why women remain so dramatically underrepresented, and you will hear from the vast majority a lament—an unfortunate but inevitable “truth”—that goes something like this: High-level jobs require extremely long hours, women’s devotion to family makes it impossible for them to put in those hours, and their careers suffer as a result. We call this explanation the work/family narrative.”
https://bit.ly/2TkZkHyArticle 39
https://bit.ly/3kmQ95wArticle 38
Bill Benter did the impossible: He wrote an algorithm that couldn’t lose at the track. Close to a billion dollars later, he tells his story for the first time.”
https://bloom.bg/3hqH6hCArticle 37
https://bit.ly/3a0mfiWArticle 36
Bands are known for drink, drugs and dust-ups. But beyond the debauchery lie four models for how to run a business. Ian Leslie explains”
https://bit.ly/3hWJuOkArticle 35
You thought you successfully avoided ever having to learn how crypto was going to take over your life? Well, too bad: It’s back and maybe stronger than ever.”
https://bit.ly/2NwXZL7Article 34
Being the brother of Asia’s richest man is harder than you think.”
https://bloom.bg/2YAcDGwArticle 33
Low-paid women in US poultry factories are leading the struggle for fair conditions and basic safety. As Covid-19 rips through plants across the country, they have a fight on their hands”
https://bit.ly/2Mxkz5CArticle 32
Patrick and John Collison have democratised online payments – and reshaped the digital economy in the process”
https://bit.ly/3dlYLpmArticle 31
https://bit.ly/2LMlDSKArticle 30
https://bit.ly/2W8VFPwArticle 29
https://bit.ly/2wXTftaArticle 28
https://bit.ly/2XbLI4JArticle 27
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https://nyti.ms/2x2sDXZArticle 25
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http://bit.ly/36hg1rPArticle 16
http://bit.ly/35bvUiUArticle 15
http://bit.ly/37hMTlFArticle 14
http://bit.ly/31nnym5Article 13
“For Walsh, ballooning tuition didn’t leave much time to consider such questions. The average cost of attendance at public, four-year universities has increased more than threefold since 1987, with much of that increase occurring after the year 2000. This has spawned a vast, all-consuming student finance industrial complex, replete with numerous financial products that emerged like rats from a trash heap to help families pay for their children’s education. In addition to 529s, there are direct private and federal parent PLUS loans.”
http://bit.ly/2OrrkbkArticle 12
http://bit.ly/2LWn5DpArticle 11
“The system now pits human against human,” says Manam, arguing that capitalism reduces the world to competition and cruelty. “People should always be kind and loving to others. People should help one another, whether that person is family, a neighbor, friend, or complete stranger.””
http://bit.ly/2XKlALIArticle 10
http://bit.ly/2HzF9lcArticle 9
http://bit.ly/2EONDCzArticle 8
“In the moment of stress, we tend to forget our training,” said Mark Atkinson, the chief executive of Mursion, which provides a simulation platform for training workers in skills like interpersonal interactions.”
https://nyti.ms/30L95BTArticle 7
The fact is, certain products don’t work for certain people. We’re all unique, with different skin types or hair types, and have different goals for what we want to achieve. Most beauty brands aren’t selling products tailored to individual consumers. Instead, they’re selling a brand, a luxury, a lifestyle or some product that will magically work on every skin type and solve every skin problem.”
http://bit.ly/2RnCTBzArticle 6
Right to buy is a zombie policy – an idea that’s intellectually dead and widely accepted as harmful, but one that politicians keep trying to revive. Keen for an easy vote winner that essentially amounts to bribing voters in social housing with eye-watering discounts of up to £103,000, the Conservatives have proposed extending right to buy to Britain’s 1.2m housing association homes.”
http://bit.ly/2GelN2nArticle 5
http://bit.ly/2Gh0xt0Article 4
But, ironically, this apparent strength is Trump’s fatal weakness. By applying the martial arts principle of turning an opponent’s strength against him, China should easily win the tariff contest, or at least fight Trump to a draw.”
http://bit.ly/3aBbnYUArticle 3
http://bit.ly/3aAJn7EArticle 2
““Look out for China.” “Look out for robots.” Robots? The robots have yet to appear, as Lawrence Mishel of the Economic Policy Institute has pointed out. (If they were here, productivity would be accelerating, he has said, but that isn’t happening.) Toe-to-toe, it’s the elderly and not the robots who are taking jobs from the young. Too many workers are showing up. In a sense, millions of new elderly workers are gushing into the workforce—simply by staying put.”
http://bit.ly/2RDs1ygArticle 1
http://bit.ly/2GfqY2b
Curated Reading list for CAT – Fiction & Others | 1
Article 35
Article 34
Article 33
Article 32
Article 31
https://bit.ly/3CQyLim Article 30
https://bit.ly/3nsgJ1nArticle 29
New Zealand’s White Island is otherworldly, an 800-acre fantasyland that has beckoned Hollywood filmmakers and everyday selfie-seekers alike. It is also an active volcano, a roiling catastrophe waiting to happen. This is the story of the day when the worst-case scenario became real—and of the race to save those who faced the blast.”
http://bit.ly/3hO6zDLArticle 28
An essay about artificial intelligence, emotional intelligence, and finding an ending”
https://bit.ly/3vwGpKoArticle 27
An alien-made artefact or just interstellar debris? What ʻOumuamua says about how science works when data is scarce”
https://bit.ly/3cL9dbDArticle 26
“Si vis pacem para bellum”
translated
“If you want peace, prepare for war””
https://bit.ly/3xqtE6wArticle 25
AIDS and COVID-19″
http://bit.ly/3lsT6CQArticle 24
The heiress wanted to meet the Dalai Lama. She wanted the Dalai Lama to be her friend. She had been obsessed with him for two-and-a-half years.”
http://bit.ly/3p8rHHsArticle 23
Mike Postle was on an epic winning streak at a California casino. Veronica Brill thought he had to be playing dirty. Let the chips fall where they may.”
https://bit.ly/3oICSFXArticle 22
“CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM-SEEKER
Driven by romantic, spiritual, and medicinal imperatives, the author goes in search of something everyone tells him no longer exists: an opium den. From Hong Kong to Bangkok to the Golden Triangle, he is offered every decadence known to the East—and learns the truth about a legendarily perfect drug.”
https://bit.ly/2It08ZhArticle 21
https://bit.ly/3qqGJcjArticle 20
Maria Headley translates ‘Beowulf,’ a story in which women make the world, and men make their legends by destroying it.”
https://bit.ly/2IPSMyHArticle 19
A local coke dealer weighs in on the drug’s popularity.”
https://bit.ly/354kXCUArticle 18
https://bit.ly/3e2QFTCArticle 17
A legend is growing in Nepal, where people say a meditating boy hasn’t eaten or drunk in seven months. He barely moves, just sits under a tree, still as a stone. It’s impossible, some say. Is it a miracle? A hoax? George Saunders went to find out.”
https://bit.ly/34fxNxF Article 16
https://bit.ly/2T5Alb1Article 15
https://bit.ly/31h0wjMArticle 14
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http://bit.ly/2oYW0pFArticle 6
http://bit.ly/2OosMLCArticle 5
http://bit.ly/2vbic2UArticle 4
“Mr Wilson. For spectators, however, this randomness offers a glimmer of hope. Teams from Asia, Africa and North America remain the underdogs, but ought to have had more fairytale runs like South Korea’s in 2002. The 21st Club reckons there is a one-in-four chance a first-time champion will emerge this year. For one intoxicating month, fans around the world will forget the years of hurt and believe that their history books, like those in Montevideo’s museum, could be about to add a glorious new chapter.”
https://econ.st/3auDJnoArticle 3
“When it became legally compulsory to carry ID, £300 for the certified ID card, £500 fine if caught without it, he knew he was observing an injustice that sent thousands of innocent people to the patty line, too skint to buy, too skint to pay for being too skint to buy. When it became impossible to vote without the ID, he knew he lived in a tyranny, but by then he wasn’t sure what there was left to do in protest. He’d be okay. If he kept his head down. He’d be fine.”
http://bit.ly/30MetEIArticle 2
“That other anonymous party could not see Ingray where she sat—saw her as the same sort of dark gray blur she herself faced. Sat in an identical small room, somewhere else on this station. Could not see Ingray’s expression, if she let her dismay and despair show itself on her face. But the Facilitator could see them both. E wouldn’t betray having seen even Ingray’s smallest reaction, she was sure. Still. “Unexpected difficulties are not my concern,” she said, calmly and smoothly as she could manage. “The price was agreed beforehand.” The price was everything she owned, not counting the clothes she wore, or passage home—already paid.”
http://bit.ly/2RH9MImArticle 1
http://bit.ly/37jOc2Z
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