Vida Morkunas

Unprestigious academia - University Affairs How I unlearned academic elitism.

universityaffairs.ca/opinion/unpr...

Will Trump Do It? It Pays to Bet ‘No’ Polymarket data shows wagers against Trump taking action would have yielded returns similar to the S&P 500. And gambling that he'll actually follow through was a losing proposition.

Polymarket, TACO, and your investments. Interesting study. (Gift article)

www.bloomberg.com/opinion/feat...

Fireman in training conquers his fear of heights with support (and a bit of ribbing) from his cohorts. Well done!!

www.msn.com/en-us/news/u...

Toxic Fumes Are Leaking Into Airplanes, Sickening Crews and Passengers Doctors compare brain effects to concussions in NFL players. A Wall Street Journal investigation shows such incidents are increasingly common.

A damning article in WSJ this morning.

www.wsj.com/business/air...

Canadian campuses are mostly female. What are men doing instead? The gender gap in higher education has been widening for decades. Do universities need to do more to entice men back?

www.theglobeandmail.com/gift/25313a5...

Opinion | Thinking Is Becoming a Luxury Good

www.nytimes.com/2025/07/28/o...

Heathrow to pipe 'sounds of an airport' around airport The airport has commissioned a soundtrack recorded on site to reflect the "excitement" of waiting to board a flight.

Tautological.

www.bbc.com/news/article...

Opinion | Trolling Democracy

The cruelty is the point, in person and online.

www.nytimes.com/2025/07/10/o...

The Tooth Fairy Is Real. She’s a Dentist in Seattle.

This is adorable!!

www.nytimes.com/2025/07/14/p...

You Have No Idea How Furious the Canadians Are There’s nothing like a common enemy to make a country come together.

Yeah pretty much.

nymag.com/intelligence...

Would You Pay Nearly $9,000 for a Puzzle?

TIL puzzles can be rented. Good idea! And some hand-crafted puzzles fetch nearly $9,000.

www.nytimes.com/2025/07/12/s...

Amazon Prime Day Fuels 30.3% Rise In US Online Spending Amazon.com Inc.’s Prime Day sale helped boost online spending across all retailers in the US by 30.3% to $24.1 billion, according to Adobe Inc., topping its estimate for 28.4% growth for the period en...

Amazon Prime Days outcomes: 2/3 of the purchased items cost less than $20, with the average order at $156.

www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Opinion | Why Americans Can’t Buy the World’s Best Electric Car

No BYDs in Canada. Pity.

www.nytimes.com/2025/07/08/o...

The Enhanced Games have found new sponsorship from Donald Trump Jr. What does this mean for sport? In May, 2026, the controversial first Enhanced Games will take place in Las Vegas despite the country taking strong anti-doping stances

Disappointing that this exists. Next May in Las Vegas if you are interested.

www.theglobeandmail.com/gift/25313a5...

I mis-identified two AI-generated videos as real, and thought that 2 videos with real people were AI.

A.I. Videos Have Never Been Better. Can You Tell What’s Real? (Gift Article) In this quiz, you can guess whether these videos were made by A.I.

Real or AI, can you tell? I got 6/10 right

www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

What Makes Someone Cool? A New Study Offers Clues.

Would you rather be considered cool, or good?

www.nytimes.com/2025/06/30/w...

John Battelle's Search Blog Nearly 30 % of All Bullsh*t Online Is Health Related Every so often I have the chance to catch up with Gordon Crovitz and Steve Brill, the founders of NewsGuard. I was an advisor to their company for several years, and we keep in touch, as we …

Surprising not surprising.

battellemedia.com/archives/202...

Are you looking inside your fridge and frowning, thinking “I have all these ingredients but I’m bored with the same old”? AI to the rescue!! Neat LLM recipe generator. Select the key ingredients and it generates a recipe for you, complete with picture, instructions & PDF option.

epicure.kaikaku.ai

TikTok’s ‘Sephora kids’ are embracing expensive skin care – but these routines carry a risk, study finds The rise of viral anti-aging skin care products has raised alarms, with many containing harsh ingredients

Sephora kids - many of them are in my classes. Oh so many.

www.theglobeandmail.com/gift/25313a5...

Meet the daredevils who take on the Grand Canyon's most terrifying job This brave cleaning crew hangs from Skywalk twice a year.

This reminds me, I have to get my windows cleaned.
www.sfgate.com/national-par...

City Workers Walk Off the Job over “Mandatory Barbecue” – The Rover Management at the Sud Ouest borough threatened to dock a half-day’s pay if blue collar workers didn’t attend the employee appreciation party

Mandatory BBQs will continue until morale improves.

therover.ca/city-workers...

Former smartphone titan BlackBerry is back, with a new CEO and autonomous driving tech at the wheel BlackBerry is nothing like the company whose smartphones once ruled the world. Now it’s looking to dominate another market entirely — inside your car

Rebirth in Motion indeed

www.theglobeandmail.com/business/rob...

Can Stuffy Riders revive sleepy malls? One entrepreneur is making it happen The Vancouver-based business rents plush animals to ride around shopping centres. It’s a hit with kids, teens and adults

The silly joy of Stuffy Riders. The local mall here has an outlet, and the kids LOVE it. Adults do too.

www.theglobeandmail.com/gift/25313a5...

Absolutely surreal to have lived through the Napster days and watched as the titans of industry moved hell and high water to lock down any possible chance that someone's song might get swapped online without giving the studios a cut and now those same people are just like "well we gotta steal music"

Beautiful image Annie!!!

King Charles’s visit to Canada: A Commonwealth flex with an audience of one The royal element would not be a chess metaphor, but a literal thing, and the master move would involve not a queen, but the King

Try this link?

www.theglobeandmail.com/gift/25313a5...

Oh no! This should not be happening! Let me follow up with the Globe and Mail. I have 21 gift articles left this month and this article is from today.

Meet India’s Self-Made Biologics Brewmaster Billionaire Thwarted in her ambition to become a brewmaster, Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw channeled her frustrations into building a knockoff drug powerhouse and has become one of the world’s most successful female entrepreneurs.

Meet India’s Self-Made Biologics Brewmaster Billionaire

Ça sort aujourd’hui!! Une copie réservée à ma succursale préférée de R-B!!