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Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night—nor the Black Hand or the Society of the Banana—could stop a postal work from bringing the Mafia to justice.
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I find it hard to read without a pen in hand and am fascinated by marginalia of all kinds. What a treat to see Oliver Sacks’ conversations with his books. See also, the New York Times article on the subject.
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There are quite a few of these 25 Scariest Fast Food Dishes of All Time that I would totally eat.
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Great segment on Twitch, the “unedited, real, reality TV.” More—and more interesting than—“just those crazy kids”. || Pairs with Ice Poseidon’s Lucrative, Stressful Life as a Live Streamer
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I can (barely, arguably) command one language…hyperpolyglots, who speak eleven or more are practically alien, though hopefully some of the lessons can penetrate even my thick skull. (Sorry for another potentially paywalled New Yorker link…try a private/incognito window in your browser).
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Regardless of different opinions about what the solutions might be, this Vox piece on mass shootings in America is extremely well presented…and terrifying.
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Conserve the Sound is an “online museum for vanishing and endangered sounds. The sound of a dial telephone, a walkman, a analog typewriter, a pay phone, a 56k modem, a nuclear power plant or even a cell phone keypad are partially already gone or are about to disappear from our daily life. ¶ Accompanying the archive people are interviewed and give an insight in to the world of disappearing sounds.” || Pairs with Phantom Islands, a “sonic atlas” that “charts the sounds of a number of historical phantom islands.”
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The phrase “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” is obviously nonsense…so where did it come from and why is it still used?
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Today in 1914, folk singer and composer Tom Glazer is born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Glazer would write songs later performed by Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger, Frank Sinatra and many others, but he is best remembered for his popularizing (authorship of the lyrics is unclear) of the children’s song “► On Top of Spaghetti,” sung to the tune of the Appalachian folk song “On Top of Old Smoky.”