Dave Hopton

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Sufjan Stevens - Carrie & Lowell Live. 

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Stacks of fun – the man piling up books across NYC

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If the only means of holding money is in the form of electronic bank deposits, a central bank can do something it cannot do with cash. It can set negative interest rates to erode people’s money in times of recession, making it costly to hoard it, and thereby theoretically stimulating economic activity.

£1984: does a cashless economy make for a surveillance state?

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The World's Smartest Office Building Knows How You Like Your Coffee

Inside the connected future of architecture

The video is cool. 

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Serious Seinfeld

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The Myth of Quality Time

EVERY summer for many years now, my family has kept to our ritual. All 20 of us — my siblings, my dad, our better halves, my nieces and nephews — find a beach house big enough to fit the whole unruly clan. We journey to it from our different states and time zones. We tensely divvy up the bedrooms, trying to remember who fared poorly or well on the previous trip. And we fling ourselves at one another for seven days and seven nights.

That’s right: a solid week. It’s that part of the ritual that mystifies many of my friends, who endorse family closeness but think that there can be entirely too much of it. Wouldn’t a long weekend suffice? And wouldn’t it ward off a few spats and simplify the planning?

The answer to the second question is yes, but to the first, an emphatic no.

Challenging. 

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Most of what Britons think they know about personal finance is wrong

People’s understanding of the cost of important life events is way out. This matters, so what can be done about it?

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I was thunderstruck when I heard mention of a “bonus” over coffee. Later I overheard someone who didn’t work say she would buy a table at an event once her bonus was set. A woman with a business degree but no job mentioned waiting for her “year-end” to shop for clothing. Further probing revealed that the annual wife bonus was not an uncommon practice in this tribe. A wife bonus, I was told, might be hammered out in a pre-nup or post-nup, and distributed on the basis of not only how well her husband’s fund had done but her own performance — how well she managed the home budget, whether the kids got into a “good” school — the same way their husbands were rewarded at investment banks. In turn these bonuses were a ticket to a modicum of financial independence and participation in a social sphere where you don’t just go to lunch, you buy a $10,000 table at the benefit luncheon a friend is hosting.

Wednesday Martin, Poor Little Rich Women

via Kottke

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I love the Thornbury Road Portraits by Jamie and Sophie Lancaster. 

The behind the scenes is particularly great. 

via The Guardian

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Archiculture

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Roger Scruton on Beauty

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With their capital and this dangerous narrative, we’re not unicorn hunting; rather, we’re becoming the subprime lenders of the internet economy funding digital McMansions built on increasingly questionable foundations.

Bryce Roberts

Prescient.