Turning your frown upside down is in the best interests of capitalism. Whereas chill calms you down to keep you productive, Swiftian ebulence perks you up enough to keep you consuming.

‘A platform for collaborative research.’ On Are.na, you organically combine images, links, files and texts into collections (we call them channels). Use it collaboratively, publicly or privately. Once you get the hang of it, its dead-simple to use for just about any idea. Think of it as a connected archive of human knowledge.

Recently I was approached by a newspaper reporter (who shall remain nameless) about a possible article on trolling. I agreed under the condition that I could talk about the importance of defining one’s terms. I was also asked to put the reporter in touch with a troll. I asked “Brian Macnamara,” who sometimes trolls under the name Paulie Socash (further info on Paulie here). In the end, the paper wasn’t able to run the piece (perhaps unsurprisingly, given Brian’s responses), but I asked for permission to post both sets of answers.

Yesterday at Atlantic.com, Hans Villarica posted “Study of the Day: Why Crowded Coffee Shops Fire Up Your Creativity,” a rundown of a research study that alleges moderate noise is beneficial to creativity. While I’m intrigued by the question of noise and individual cognition in public(ish) spaces, the Atlantic post exemplifies the way that research loses its contextual trappings as soon as it enters “the cultural conversation” to become the kind of free-floating “news you can use” that inevitably gets “contradicted” in subsequent studies, undermining people’s faith in the academy. …even the most cursory skim of the actual journal article provides contextual information that undermines Villarica’s pithy, straightforward advice.

A great collection of neutral articles about the facts and possible effects of candidates' proposed tax plans.

Ten characteristics of creative people. (Basically, they're a beautiful mess of contradictions.)