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Sunday, July 1

1st Jul - Weekender: Off-Topic

From hacking to a free Google power user course, it’s all here, and it’s not finance.


The Century Of The Self Part I: The Happiness Machines – The Big Picture
Bernays invented the public relations profession in the 1920s and was the first person to take Freud’s ideas and use them to manipulate the masses. He showed American corporations how they could make people want things they didn’t need by systematically linking mass-produced goods to their unconscious desires.

Google Wants to Make You a Power User – Tech News
Google is offering you a chance to step up your search game. The company said it will provide a series of six courses in July to turn the average Google user into a power user. The free 50-minute classes can be taken during a two-week window beginning July 10.

Powershift – brain pickings
Alvin Toffler on the Age of Post-Fact Knowledge and the Super-Symbolic Economy (1990)

A Snitch’s Dilemma – NYT Magazine
Life as a police informant.

Have you ever chatted with a Hacker within a virus? – AVG Blog

The Cuban Missile Crisis at 50: Lessons for U.S. Foreign Policy Today – Foreign Affairs
Fifty years ago, the Cuban missile crisis brought the world to the brink of nuclear disaster. Every president since John F. Kennedy has tried to learn from what happened back then. Today, it can help U.S. policymakers understand what to do -- and what not to do -- about Iran, North Korea, China, and presidential decision-making in general.

An App Keeps Spies Away from Your iPhone – technology review
A cryptography pioneer offers a simple way to fight electronic surveillance.

A Con Man Who Lives Between Truth and Fiction – DealBook / NYT

Complex Thinking Behind the Bow and Arrow – ScienceDaily
University of Tübingen and South African researchers have revealed sophisticated design and technology developed by early humans.

Getting Star Trek on the air was impossible – Letters of Note

History of London – Graphic of the Day – Thomson Reuters

Why I Write: George Orwell’s Four Motives for Creation – brain pickings
“Sheer egoism… Writers share this characteristic with scientists, artists, politicians, lawyers, soldiers, successful businessmen — in short, with the whole top crust of humanity.”

Scientists developing device to 'hack' into brain of Stephen Hawking – The Telegraph
Stephen Hawking is testing out a groundbreaking device to allow him to communicate through brain waves in a project that scientists have likened to 'hacking into his brain.'

Unpopular Mandate: Why do politicians reverse their positions? – The New Yorker

The Talented M. Despallières – Business Week
How the author became tangled up with an international con man who may or may not have murdered several people.

How to Win at Three Card Monte – The Altucher Confidential

Aspen Ideas Festival
Daily Roundup 28-Jun – Thomson Reuters
Daily Roundup 29-Jun – Thomson Reuters
Heard Around Aspen 29-Jun – Thomson Reuters
Heard Around Aspen … 30-Jun – Thomson Reuters

Can Waiting Help You Make Better Decisions? – Farnam Street

The Medication Generation – WSJ
Many young people today have now spent most of their lives on antidepressants. Have the drugs made them 'emotionally illiterate'?
Tuck into our latest round-up of the best psych and neuro links

The Special Issue Spotter – The British Psychological Society
We trawl the world's journals so you don't have to