It has been a while, nearly two months, since I have pub­lished a book­marks post. One of the most imme­di­ate impacts of my deci­sion to opt out of social media was the elim­i­na­tion of shared or rec­om­mended links to inter­est­ing con­tent. A few peo­ple, like Elan Mor­gan (aka Schultzie), reg­u­larly post link lists, but the dearth of new and quirky con­tent in front of my eye­balls is prob­a­bly one of the things that I miss most about social media. Nev­er­the­less, just like cut­ting the cord (cable TV), I’m get­ting along just fine with­out social media.

I left social media, but I didn’t leave the Inter­net (like Paul Miller from The Verge — see his lat­est post below). I still am able to catch a lot of inter­est­ing mate­r­ial through my RSS feeds, as well as scan­ning Metafil­ter. In many ways, I am glad that my media con­sump­tion has gone down quite a bit since putting social media in my rear view mir­ror. I am as inquis­i­tive and curi­ous as I ever was, but I don’t feel as over­whelmed and sat­u­rated by the desire or com­pul­sion to click click click on every link that whizzed by in my social feeds. I find myself tak­ing more time to read through arti­cles and watch videos. I pause to to think about the explicit and implicit mean­ing and/or metaphors in the words and images. Instead of plow­ing through one thing just to get to the next, I am, now, more delib­er­ate. I enjoy look­ing for the nuances and tech­niques employed to bring works to life. It’s also worth not­ing that read­ing books has cut into my online time, or as my wife calls it — piddling.

So, that is the back­story on why the book­marks series has been on a hia­tus, of sorts. With­out fur­ther ado, here is the lat­est install­ment. Enjoy!
 
ARTICLES

• Good Design is Invis­i­ble: an Inter­view with iA’s Oliver Reichen­stein — Sam Byford
• Will the Decline in Mar­riage Mean a Decline in Polit­i­cal Power for Moth­ers? — Garance Franke-Ruta
• Dis­rup­tions: Life’s Too Short for So Much E-Mail — Nick Bilton
• Some Comma Ques­tions — Ben Yagoda
• Pic­tures and Vision — Robin Sloan
• Robert Mac­far­lane: ‘Paths are Human; They are the Traces of Our Rela­tion­ships’ — Rachel Cooke
• Microsoft’s Down­fall: Inside the Exec­u­tive E-mails and Can­ni­bal­is­tic Cul­ture That Felled a Tech Giant — Van­ity Fair
• Is Apple Los­ing Its Shine After Steve Jobs? — Sam Gustin
• Exploit­ing the Neu­ro­science of Inter­net Addic­tion — Bill Daviddow
• Top 10 Books for Writ­ers You Need to Read Now — Marya Jan
• How Apple and Ama­zon Secu­rity Flaws Led to My Epic Hack­ing — Mat Honan
• How I Res­ur­rected My Dig­i­tal Life After an Epic Hack­ing — Mat Honan
• My Month With a Chrome­Box: How I Sur­vived With­out Win­dows or Mac — Mark Hachman
• What is a Nerd? — Adi Robertson
• Human­i­ties Aren’t a Sci­ence. Stop Treat­ing Them Like One. — Maria Konnikova
• Win­ners: National Geo­graphic Trav­eler 2012 Photo Con­test — The Big Pic­ture (The Boston Globe)
• Spills — Nina Yau
• An Inten­tional Life — Leo Babauta
• 12 Tough Truths that Help You Grow — Marc and Angel Hack Life
• Hush: An Open Let­ter to the Right — Court­ney Carver
• The Con­di­tion: Chronic Self-Disclosure — Beth­le­hem Shoals
• Won­der­ing How Far Mag­a­zines Must Fall — David Car
• The Price Every­body Talks About and Nobody Really Knows: How Much Does Col­lege Cost? — Jor­dan Weissmann
• Back to School: How to Mea­sure a Good Teacher — Amanda Paulson
• Lon­don 2012 Olympics: Win­ning Moments — The Big Pic­ture (The Boston Globe)
• 18 Rules of Liv­ing by the Dalai Lama — The Unbound Spirit
• Offline: How’s it Going? — Paul Miller
• The Per­fect Com­pli­ment — Tom Chiarella
• Has Higher Edu­ca­tion Become an Engine of Inequal­ity? — The Chron­i­cle of Higher Education
• Twit­ter­ish: How tech­nol­ogy remakes lan­guage — John McWhorter
• How to Get an Edi­tor: An Editor’s Tips on Get­ting Your Book Pub­lished — The Styl­ist
• Liv­ing in the Here and Now — Jeff Hollender
• Racial Bias Colours Visual Per­cep­tion — Mo Costandi
• Aver­sion to Ther­apy: Why Won’t Men Get Help? — Betsy Bates Freed & David Freed
• You Can’t Teach Cre­ative Writ­ing. Can You? — Rick Gekoski

 
VIDEOS

Born Into Coal — Cather­ine Spangler

JAZZ SPOTLIGHT

Shirley Horn — The Very Thought of You