McSweeney’s Internet Tendency:

Religious fervor is on my mind as I walk in the bright morning sunlight from the parking lot to my Apple Store. I pass the line of people waiting for the new iPhone, and most have been camping on that filthy walkway all week. Don’t they have jobs? Or classes? Or significant others? These hardcores wouldn’t deign to pick one up next week. They need it today. They’re in it to win it.

What’s it like to be involved in an Apple Product Launch from the POV of a store employee.

NYTimes.com:

Judge Allan H. Davis of Hancock County Probate Court, had declared Mr. Miller dead in 1994, several years after he mysteriously disappeared.

In fact, Mr. Miller, 61, had simply drifted away to work in Georgia and Florida, he told the judge on Monday in Findlay, Ohio. Now, he said, he wanted to apply for a driver’s license and needed to reactivate his Social Security number.

“I don’t know where that leaves you, but you’re still deceased as far as the law is concerned,” Judge Davis told Mr. Miller.

Funny story but you’ve got to feel a little sorry for the guy.

How may We Hate You?:

A guest calls from their room.

GUEST: Can you send someone to come get my bags?

CONCIERGE: I can’t do that, but I can connect you to the bellman.

GUEST: No, no. I need you to call them. I’ve been mean to them all week so they’re not going to help me.

This is a hilarious follow up to the “Thomas Cook dissatisfied vacationer complaints” we posted yesterday.

The New York Times:

I visited Steven A. Witherly, a food scientist who wrote an insider’s guide, “Why Humans Like Junk Food,” and we raided his lab to taste and experiment our way through the psychobiology of what makes Nacho Cheese Doritos so alluring.

Anyone else love these things but feel dirty inside after scarfing down a bag?

The New York Observer:

Colin Powell makes the case: pissing people off is both inevitable and necessary. This doesn’t mean that the goal is pissing people off. Pissing people off doesn’t mean you’re doing the right things, but doing the right things will almost inevitably piss people off.

Understand the difference.

I piss people off on a regular basis. It’s rarely my goal but I honestly don’t care if it happens. This article explains it well.

Semil:

I was lucky enough to watch enough baseball to know there was one player who was simply better than everyone else. He wasn’t perfect, but he was about as close as they come to perfection.

For Yankee fans, baseball fans and fans of class. And if you haven’t seen the video of Rivera’s last appearance at Yankee Stadium, watch it here. But have a tissue handy.

The Globe and Mail:

This investigative report reveals that shortly after the release of the first iPhone, Verizon asked BlackBerry to create a touchscreen “iPhone killer.” But the result was a flop, so Verizon turned to Motorola and Google instead.

Mr. Lazaridis opposed the launch plan for the BlackBerry 10 phones and argued strongly in favour of emphasizing keyboard devices. But Mr. Heins and his executives did not take the advice and launched the touchscreen Z10, with disastrous results.

Fascinating article about the demise of a once great brand.

Grantland:

Twenty years ago, people talked about Myst the same way they talked about The Sopranos during its first season: as one of those rare works that irrevocably changed its medium. It certainly felt like nothing in gaming would or could be the same after it.

If you remember the game, you remember that feeling of landing on Myst Island for the first time, staggeringly bereft of information in a way that felt like some kind of reverse epiphany, left with no option but to start exploring.

People who had never gamed before in their lives bought new computers so they could play Myst.

I remember playing Myst and being dumbfounded, confused, exhilarated, frustrated and fascinated all at the same time.

BBC News:

In the early hours of the 26th of September in 1983, the Soviet Union’s early-warning systems detected an incoming missile strike from the United States. The protocol for the Soviet military would have been to retaliate with a nuclear attack of its own.

But duty officer Stanislav Petrov – whose job it was to register apparent enemy missile launches – decided not to report them to his superiors, and instead dismissed them as a false alarm.

His decision may have saved the world.

Chilling story and terrifying to think what might have happened.

Scouting NY:

the properties in Monopoly were in fact named after the streets of Atlantic City. Monopoly itself has a long and complicated history, but the addition of Atlantic City-based street names can be traced to one Ruth Hoskins. Hoskins had learned a version of the game in Indianapolis, and upon moving to Atlantic City in 1929, made her own copy from scratch naming properties after streets where her friends lived.

This past weekend, I was driving through south Jersey, and decided to make a quick detour through Atlantic City to see what the Monopoly board looks like in real life.

I had forgotten that the Monopoly properties were real. Sadly, none of them match up to what I imagined them to look like.

Chuck Wendig:

You don’t want books to be pirated; you implement DRM. DRM mostly just pisses off regular users who suddenly have reduced access to the thing they thought they owned. They decide to become pirates, instead, because it’s easier and it gives them the access to the content in the way that they want it.

DRM creates — and then challenges — pirates.

It punishes regular readers.

Funny, interesting piece from the writer about publishers and publishing.

How to start up a Boeing 737:

Not nearly as easy as strapping in and turning the key!

Quartz:

…if you’ve downloaded Apple’s iOS 7 you could be using Multi-path TCP already.

Multi-path TCP allows your phone to send data by whatever way it’s connected to the internet, whether that’s Wi-Fi, 3G or ethernet. This is the first time that this new means of connecting to the internet has appeared in a commercial product.

. GigaOM:

Low broadband caps in Canada put that country close to third-world countries, and overage charges almost amount to human rights violations: Netflix chief content officer Ted Sarandos blasted broadband caps and usage-based-billing employed by Canadian ISPs during an investor event Thursday afternoon.

Well, That’s embarrassing for us.

Gizmodo:

it’s hard to imagine that iconic landmarks like the Golden Gate Bridge or the Empire State Building ever didn’t exist. In the same way we take these buildings and bridges for granted, we also rarely consider what cities were like before—or during—their construction.

These kinds of photos always fascinate me.

Wired: Look, the Internet is made of fast. You go fast or you die. But lost in the Clouds of bullshit and hype there’s this true thing: The internet is a technology that can connect us instantaneously to all sorts … Continued

io9:

We’re used to seeing modern landmarks in their completed glory, but we gain a new appreciation for those familiar monuments when we see them in progress, and remember all the labor that went into bringing them to life.

Longreads: …what if you never got into sci-fi in the first place? Where would you start? Since its inception, speculative fiction has worked as social commentary, satire, and a creative answer to the question “What if?” Here are my personal … Continued

Jalopnik: Sydney has been having a big problem with oversized trucks driving into tunnels that are too low. So Sydney needed a stop sign that is absolutely impossible to miss. Here it is and it’s amazing.P It’s a curtain of … Continued

Slate: …as a scientist, I can’t help but notice that every now and again, just sometimes, maybe, Trek ventures into some pretty dicey science territory. Let me be clear: I have no problem with faster-than-light travel, time travel, teleporters, the … Continued

Gizmodo: On December 21st of last year, Commander Hadfield and his team (Expedition 35) docked with the ISS after a two-day flight in aboard a Soyuz TMA-07M, and began their mission. Hadfield was the first to realize, on a large … Continued

io9:

The human palate is arguably the weakest of the five traditional senses. This begs an important question regarding wine tasting: is it bullshit, or is it complete and utter bullshit?

There are no two ways about it: the bullshit is strong with wine. Wine tasting. Wine rating. Wine reviews. Wine descriptions. They’re all related. And they’re all egregious offenders, from a bullshit standpoint.

Just like many of us suspected.

Sex, Cigars & Booze Lifestyle Magazine:

A new poll finds that Americans are twice as willing to go without sex for a week than a smartphone.

“Our poll shows that the tech revolution has changed our culture to the point that too many Americans seem to derive more pleasure and satisfaction from their smart phones and text lives than from their relationships and sex lives,” said Ron Sachs, President and CEO of Sachs Media Group.

If you choose a smartphone over sex, you’re doing sex wrong.

io9:

In the first three days of accepting applications, the Mars One project has received a whopping 20,000 applications, with more than 600 coming from China alone. The project plans to send a select group of colonists to the Red Planet for permanent settlement — with permanent being the key word.The Dutch aerospace project, which is aiming to put four humans on Mars by 2023, started accepting applications and audition tapes early last week.

No chance they make that very ambitious schedule but it’s good to dream. One question: Would you go on the one way trip if it was offered?

Jalopnik:

Ever wondered what happened to the mall in The Blues Brothers after Jake, Elwood, and all those cops drove right through it? They actually left it just the way it was, but that’s only the start of the Dixie Square Mall’s decline.

One of the most iconic car chases ever filmed.

Every year, we hear from Forbes and others about the people who are the “x richest people in the world”. Have you ever wondered where you might fall on that scale?

The Global Rich List asks users how much their yearly salary adds up to, and then let’s them know what percentage of the world’s richest people they’re in.

You’ll be surprised at how high on the list you are, compared to the vast majority of the world’s population.

The Verge:

It takes 13 minutes and seven seconds to complete Snake, the decades-old game that enjoyed a renascence (sic) through Nokia’s early mobile phones. What reward lies at the end of this snake’s insatiable desire for food?

Nothing.

Weirdly mesmerizing.