People Don't Even Know About The Private Jet Incident

The most popular link last time was this essay about LinkedIn, with these interviews with people who take online privacy very seriously a close second.

1. The illusion of consent on the internet. No, I did not "agree" to your cookies.
2. The snack of the summer = putting delicious savoury stuff between two sheets of nori. I cannot endorse the use of an American “cheese product” as advocated here, but I've enjoyed versions with plant-based cheese or seasoned yoghurt.
3. I really liked this observation from a first person piece about being ghosted at the age of 54:

"While I was not prepared for these precocious, worldly students , I loved teaching short stories, because it’s how we live our lives: one story stacked on another, then another, some running in parallel. Everything all at once. In some stories, you might be the protagonist – in others, just a supporting role. But in all of them, we intertwine with people living in stories of their own."

4. A good read on why Brad Pitt's personal life doesn't seem to have caught up with his cultural reputation (yet?). "It's like most people don't even know about the private jet incident that required the FBI's involvement."

5. New dodie video!
6. Sometimes connections occur in one's content consumption that feel spookily serendipitous. We just watched this Rolex-sponsored documentary from 2011 about 125 years of Wimbledon. The following day, I was catching up on one of my favourite Taylor Swift adjacent podcasts, On the Bleachers, and heard the hosts discussing the relationship that Rolex has to tennis. Their chat was prompted by this very interesting article: "How Rolex Paved the Way for Luxury’s Love Affair With Tennis."
7. An interesting list of Pride and Prejudice adjacent books — continuations, reimaginings, etc. I am pretty obsessed with trying to read every single Austen follow-on that exists, and I found two here that I had never heard of before.
8. Screenshots from a conversation with ChatGPT that will make you want to throw every device you own out of the window.
9. On the difference between being "useful" at work and being "valued":

"I had become the go-to person for making things run smoothly, for fixing urgent problems, for delivering. But every time I pushed toward more strategic and ambitious directions, there was a lot of can-kicking and “let’s think about it” that went nowhere. I was incredibly useful to the organization, but not necessarily valued."

10. The romance and meaning of compass directions.
11. Sometimes, you just need to take pictures of the horizon to feel OK.
12. Via Reo Eveleth's excellent monthly roundup, I came across this lecture about Edmonia Lewis, a 19c American sculptor of Black and Native American origin who lived a fascinating life and created some wonderful work.

13. Music theory + data analysis = this piece on chord progressions.