Growing up, early Sunday mornings in my house smelled like coffee and the only soundtrack was the rustling of newspapers and the stirring of spoons. Before kids and fantasy football, I followed suit. Sundays were reserved for lazy lounging with a few online go-to sources bookmarked for later reading or a thick novel mounted on my chest like a comforting anvil. My wife and I could move about our apartment like a stop-motion montage, sipping, reading, sharing the best parts of the article or the most shocking plot twists in our books. Nostalgia means something different to every generation and every household. But for me, Mental Yoga Sunday is a throwback to those lazy mornings and afternoons where I found something warm to drink, something immersive and informative to read, and the ticking clock meant absolutely nothing.
Our favorite long form reads of the week 2/12/17:
- Insert audible gasp here: "What If The Internet Stopped Working for a Day?"
“I don’t know what students today would do if I asked them to stay off the internet – they’d probably report me to the university president ”— Jeff Hancock
- You can learn a lot from a Sociopath. How NOT to care about rejection.
Random strange fact: 5.2% of men have kissed a monster in their dreams, 3.4% have had foreplay with an animal, and 1.7% have had sex with an "object, plant, or rock."
- Imagine receiving 10,000 letters per day. That's the reality for the Office of Presidential Correspondence. During Obama's eight years in office, it took a staff of 50 plus 36 interns and a rotating roster of 300 volunteers to keep up with the daily messages to the President. President Obama asked to read 10 letters per day. So each day, the "10LADs" were placed in a purple folder at the back of his daily briefing and he would read them in residence at the end of the day. These letters told the story of our country: To Obama, With Love, And Hate And Desperation.
- The body of Sergeant John Hartley Robertson was never found. An American commando presumed dead half a century ago in the jungles of Laos. Read the amazing, resurrection story of the lost soldier who didn't wish to be found.
- Psychologists are discovering how geography profoundly influences our reasoning, behavior and sense of self in this fascinating article, "How East and West think in profoundly different ways."
- “When we imagine having kids, we think of somewhere else,” Mr. Lee said. “It’s starting to feel like a no-kids type of city.” San Francisco asks, "Where Have All the Children Gone?".
Random strange fact: May we all be blessed with a case of Lachschlaganfall at some point in our lives. It is the condition where a person laughs so much they fall unconscious.
- First newspapers, then the music industry...and now Hollywood. It's adapt or die, but this article says Hollywood as we know it is already dead.
- Space and movement give birth to illusion in this "Straight Pole/Curved Hole" video:
“I have come to believe that it is impossible for anyone who is regularly on social media to have a balanced and accurate understanding of what is happening in the world. To follow a minute-by-minute cycle of news is to be constantly threatened by illusion.”— Alan Jacobs
- Read about another type of illusion here: Recency Illusion.
- What is CRISPR? Why should you care it? And why are you about to hear about it a lot more in 2017?
"Today, Iceland tops the European table for the cleanest-living teens. The percentage of 15- and 16-year-olds who had been drunk in the previous month plummeted from 42 per cent in 1998 to 5 per cent in 2016. The percentage who have ever used cannabis is down from 17 per cent to 7 per cent. Those smoking cigarettes every day fell from 23 per cent to just 3 per cent."
- Iceland has figured out how to stop teen substance abuse, but can they convince the rest of the world to follow suit?
Random strange fact: The tiny hairs in your nose are the last things to stop beating when you die.
I'm SORRY BUT THIS IS...The Last Drop
- The one word that can screw up every apology.
-XXX-
Mental Yoga Sunday :: Favorite Long Form Reads of the Week ~ Fin.
