Melbourne gave 70,000 trees email addresses so people could report on their condition. But instead people are writing love letters, existential queries and sometimes just bad puns.

Spot-on parody from McSweeney’s, as always. It really does sound like Trump, only more ridiculous than even he could possibly be.

Wait…what? Oh. I guess this is a real statement, reprinted verbatim.

Excuse me while I go jump off a cliff into a pit of despair.

This will end well for everyone!

Frankly, I’m surprised it has taken this long.

“Come to think of it, a world with 10 babies on the Senate floor doesn’t sound so bad at all.”

This is not the first time that Tesla has been overbearing, defensive, and quick to blame the (dead) victim in incidents involving their Autopilot system.  But they are being called on it, and this is not a good look for a company that claims to be developing the safest cars in the industry.

I saw the original production of Sleep No More in Boston twice, as well as the New York production. The show is immersive and charged and incredible, one of the most amazing theater experiences I have ever witnessed. I was pulled aside into private spaces by actors, given objects, told by actors to go places and to do things. In one scene, an actor handed me his clothing as he undressed. I never once, not for a second, would have considered touching the actors. There is immersive theater, and then there is assault. The line, actually, is pretty clear.

I guess it is not shocking how some audience members behave, because so many human beings are terrible. But it is absolutely shocking and abhorrent the way the show management treated these incidents, and the ways in which they allowed their actors and technical staff to be abused by patrons night after night. Even worse are their feeble but repeated denials of responsibility.

Aaron Swartz (of course, of course it was Aaron) lays everything out.

An in-depth and well-researched article about the fallout of the NSA information disclosures.

Quinn Norton’s writing is powerful as always, and this article about sexual assault by men in positions of power in the tech community does not go the direction I expected. An important read.

From the “I bet you didn’t see that one coming” department.

I visited this mall yesterday and enjoyed it a lot more than a standard mall. Tons of stores and food options that I’d never seen before. In a way it reminded me of my trip to Hong Kong. I was wondering what the background was and then this article popped up today. Timely!

This study of hiring practices by top-tier law firms comes to unsurprising conclusions. But the methodology and specifics are interesting. For example, “even though all educational and work-related histories were the same, employers overwhelmingly favored the higher-class man. He had a callback rate more than four times of other applicants and received more invitations to interview than all other applicants in our study combined. But most strikingly, he did significantly better than the higher-class woman, whose resume was identical to his, other than the first name.”

Sort of a different take on a similar theme to Wallace’s commencement address. Green talks about conscious choices, including knowing the value and limitations of dreams. One of his key takeaways is that we should not be beholden to the dreams and desires of our past selves.

So there’s that.