Six Links Worthy Of Your Attention #294

Is there one link, story, picture or thought that you saw online this week that you think somebody you know must see?

My friends: Alistair Croll (BitCurrent, Year One Labs, GigaOM, Human 2.0, Solve For Interesting, the author of Complete Web Monitoring, Managing Bandwidth: Deploying QOS in Enterprise Networks and Lean Analytics), Hugh McGuire (PressBooks, LibriVox, iambik and co-author of Book: A Futurist’s Manifesto) and I decided that every week the three of us are going to share one link for one another (for a total of six links) that each individual feels the other person “must see”.

Check out these six links that we’re recommending to one another: 

• When a Video-Game World Ends – The Atlantic. “When you die, you can be memorialized on Facebook. One day, there will be more dead people than living people on the Internet. But what happens when a platform ends, and everyone winks out of existence? If you played World of Warcraft, you probably spent a lot of time (not sure? Type /played — I know people who’ve racked up an entire year in Azeroth). All that work vanishes. It’s a lesson in mortality, and sometimes the worlds go out with a bang.” (Alistair for Hugh).
• Why Can’t We Build a Splash-Proof Toilet? – Priceonomics. “The Mars landers were supposed to last only 90 days; years later, they’re still doing just fine. With all of that technology, you would think that we’d solve the problem with splashy toilets. But – as with most things – behavioural economics gets in the way. And yes, it talks about the physics of splashing.” (Alistair for Mitch).
• Syria: Drone footage shows full scale of destruction in Homs. “I have never seen anything like this. I’ve seen footage of bombed-out cities before, horrific images of war zones, but my God, the city of Homs, in Syria is just… gone. I guess the only equivalent I’ve seen is pictures of Hiroshima after the US dropped its nuclear bomb on the city, but in that case everything was razed. Here we just see an empty shell of a city, which is haunting in different ways. If you wonder why there is a refugee crisis, here is an answer you won’t forget.” (Hugh for Alistair).
• F. Scott Fitzgerald Reads John Keats’s “Ode to a Nightingale” – Brain Pickings. “From haunting/terrible, to haunting/sublime. F. Scott Fitzgerald reads ’Ode to a Nightingale.’ I could listen to this all day.” (Hugh for Mitch).
• The Problem With Journalism Is You Need an Audience – Gawker. “Personally, I don’t want newspapers to go away. Have you seen the movie, Spotlight. We need journalists. Real journalists. People who have lived and worked in the trenches… for decades. It gets me all kinds of mad, when I see people on Facebook complaining that some local restaurant is going under. These kinds of posts get a ton of likes and shares… lots of comments too. Here’s the solution: don’t want newspapers to go away? Don’t want that local diner to close? Support it. Buy the newspaper. Eat at that restaurant. Frequently. People forget that this is a capitalistic society. If you don’t buy it, it goes away. Journalism is alive and well. It’s just waiting for you to show up.” (Mitch for Alistair). 
• The Future of the Humanities: Reading – Pacific Standard. “We know this. Most people forget it. Every so often, the idea that reading is disappearing re-appears on our radar. Now, in a world of YouTube, Facebook videos and Snapchat, there’s this idea that people are reading less… or spending less time reading. With that, how many BuzzFeed and Fast Company articles do we need about how to be successful? Here’s the secret to success: Read. Read a lot. Never stop reading. And, as you read, take notes… and do something about it. Your future? It’s all about reading.” (Mitch for Hugh).

Feel free to share these links and add your picks on Twitter, Facebook, in the comments below or wherever you play.