Street Style, Scandanavian Sex Breaks & A Sonnet [#41]

Mar 05, 2017

Hello friends!

Today is the two-year anniversary of the NPR Seoul bureau, which I opened the same morning the U.S. Ambassador to Korea got stabbed in the face. (Never a dull moment.) Since then the nuttiness has continued apace, so my only professional goal at this point is to not go into labor before the verdict on whether to remove the South Korean president comes out. Should be an interesting next few weeks. Meanwhile, there's so much to read...

What I Read
The psychology of punishment is why people vote against their own interests. Data science identifies Radiohead's saddest song. The woman who broke Enron investigates the Jim Comey letter debacle. Lady White House correspondents get Vogued. Journalists can't calculate percentage change?! Has China turned on North Korea? Japan's vaunted Harajuku street style is just Uniqlo now. Want: the best-designed travel adapter. McDonald's innovated the hell out of straws. An $800,000 selfie-related misstep. Making end-of-life decisions for your dog. Kids and artists pair up to make awesome monsters. This exists: The complete oral history of Bring It On. This happened: a giant theft of Whataburger order numbers. Tyler Cowen tried the &pizza chain for the first time. Just when you thought you couldn't love Scandanavians more, the Swedes are proposing paid sex breaks. "I have no nipples," a sonnet in iambic pentameter by my cancer-survivin' pal Jenny. And to stay on the subject of mammaries, breast milk is magical.

What I Wrote/Talked About
Goodbye to my longtime assistant, Haeryun. Welp, it turns out VX nerve agent, a weapon of mass destruction, is what killed Kim Jong Nam at the Kuala Lumpur airport.

What I Watched and Heard

German philosopher Georg Hegel knew there would be days like these. Don't lose hope.
A haunting Girls episode on sexual assault and the complicated power dynamics inherent to these situations.
Hidden Brain's episode on college hookup culture made me really glad not to be in college these days. Yikes.

Recommendations

New York Times book critic Michiko Kakutani's Twitter feed is A+
Speaking of books: Ariel Levy's heartbreaking New Yorker essay about adventure and loss, "Thanksgiving in Mongolia," is a piece I read and re-read and ugly cry over EVERY. TIME. The story has been expanded into a book, out March 13.
Pal Matt Fuller's Instagram feed is just his daily sneaker choices from his impressive collection.

Hu's Letter?

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