This woman charges $10K to come up with your baby's name
These are the best things I found on the internet this week!
Hey newsletter family,
Hope you all had a fantastic Easter weekend. I’ve got a really strong collection of stuff in this week’s roundup of the most entertaining, informative and downright insane content from around the interwebs.
You can read about Russia’s renewed offensive in Ukraine anywhere, ditto the NBA playoffs, but who else do you know is going to turn you onto the guy who found millions of dollars worth of art in his dumpster??
Happy reading!
What’s the coolest story or thing you found on the internet this week? Reply to this email and shoot me a link. Would love to hear from you.
Really can’t believe we live in a world where people are paying up to $10,000 to hire someone to come up with baby names. The New Yorker profiles the woman who makes a killing by the parsing the semiotics of Isla vs. Calliope and Ansel vs. Balthazar.
There are so many fascinating thoughts to consider in this story from New York Mag about an online community dedicated to the pursuit of physical attractiveness — the social currency of “hotness,” post-modern feminism, “incels” vs. “femcels,” and “Looks Theory.” A lot to chew on here, very thought-provoking.
How’s this for a dream job: a company will pay you $2400 to watch true crime documentaries for 24 consecutive hours (technically you have a 48-hour window). That’s the price of completely ruining your trust in humanity, apparently.
A North Dakota man admitted to stealing 84 golf carts over a four-year span, two-at-a-time from courses under the cover of night. It’s one of the most bizarre long cons in recent memory. Reminds me a lot of that movie Kajillionaire (really good movie, will recommend on Friday).
One of my favorite subjects to return to is the insanity of art valuation. What a fabrication! The latest example? A Connecticut man found a bunch of paintings in a dumpster that he assumed were worthless, only to find out they’re worth millions. How did the life’s work of an abstract master end up in the trash? And how is one man’s trash another man’s treasure to this extent?
A recent study finds that surgeons are both faster and more accurate when listening to AC/DC in the operating room. Still not sure how comfortable I’d be hearing “Highway to Hell” blasting while I was getting open heart surgery.
Hopefully by now you’ve made the effort to go see Everything Everywhere All At Once, a movie that has been reverberating in my head for a week now. One of the revelations of the movie was Ke Huy Quan, who stars more than 30 years after his last big screen performances as a little kid in Indiana Jones and The Goonies. GQ sat down with him in a wide-ranging and fascinating conversation about Asian representation and a circuitous career in Hollywood.
The best long read of the week: Ronan Farrow on how democratic countries around the world use commercial spyware to spy on their citizens. There’s a reason why this guy’s stories in the New Yorker are closer to an album drop of a pop artist in terms of anticipation and impact. The next world war could by a cyber war, in which case this will be the weapon of mass destruction.
Thanks for reading and sharing! Talk to you on Friday!