This McSweeney’s piece, whether or not it knows it, is about the Buddhist idea that dukkha (“suffering”) in an inherent characteristic of samsara (the flow of life). In English, it’s about how our constant seeking after passions, objects, and experiences causes us a great deal of confusion, frustration, and pain. And finally, to paraphrase Daniel Gilbert, it’s about how the things we think will make us happy rarely do.

(via Kottke)

I’m not sure how useful this old piece from Charlie Brooker is, but because it’s almost exactly how I feel about them, I found it quite enjoyable. I’ve certainly thought things like this before:

I’m convinced no one actually likes clubs. It’s a conspiracy. We’ve been told they’re cool and fun; that only “saddoes” dislike them. And no one in our pathetic little pre-apocalyptic timebubble wants to be labelled “sad” - it’s like being officially declared worthless by the state. So we muster a grin and go out on the town in our millions.

(via a reddit comment I couldn’t find)

Reginald D Hunter lays out the case.

(via r/videos, where someone points to a discussion of what the D stands for)

A two-minute diversion that just may teach you something you don’t know about the state that’s currently all over American news.

(via r/videos)

Someone created a thoroughly documented Wikipedia article about a 19th century war between the American state of Michigan and Canada. A war that never happened.

(via r/TIL)

Well, not ME, but a reddit user called Brokim. Among lists of hive-mind generated life tips — this unholy amalgam of real advice and inside jokes — ranks up there pretty high. Don’t get me wrong, it no Colin Marshall’s Meta-MetaFiltered Wisdom (on Link Banana) but it is worth a few minutes.

Though it earns more points for the cleverness of its conciet than for how compelling the final product is, this recommendation for what the Ministry of Magic should do now that Voldemort is gone is one of the most approachable policy papers you’ll probably ever see.

Oh and it may be useful if you’re interested in recent events in of Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, etc.

(via The Browser)

Great reddit thread around the questions of “What is something you realized embarrassingly late in life?” Some are funny, some are troubling, but I’m guessing more than a few will point out gaps in your knowledge.

This post has two small but good traits that together made this worth posting. One is Jonathan Coulton’s best song (in my opinion), “You Ruined Everything.” The other is why he’s not written more like it:

Personal songs feel perilous to me. It’s scary to reveal what I think and feel about something, even in conversation with a single person, let alone with the whole internet. There’s the risk that I’ll reveal something about myself that I think is universal, and instead everyone will finally know what a monster I am.

(via Merlin Mann’s kung fu grippe)

This reddit thread is jam-packed with a lot of  little things I’ve always meant to learn and even more I now want to.

(via Lone Gunman Micro)

I wouldn’t be linking this unless I literally LOL’ed five times while watching it. And I did.

Also, wanted to make sure you’d heard of planking.

(via Vulture)

“Mesmerizing” raves Jason Kottke.

Sound advice. And addictive. Literally watched it 20 times.

(via Waxy Links)

These anomalies caused by the algorithms Google uses to turn maps into pictures are surprisingly interesting and fun.

(via kottke)

On its five year anniversary, Ze Frank is reposting all the episodes of The Show which ran for a year starting March 2006 with a few paragraphs of commentary. This probably doesn’t interest you unless you watched it back then, but given my fond memories I had to tell you.

Massively funny and surprising AMA on reddit. (If you aren’t aware, Ken Jennings is the winningest contestant from the American quiz show Jeopardy!, he recently lost three games to an IBM-made computer system called Watson.)

A charming little piece.

(via The Browser)

A charming essay by Ken Jennings:

Indeed, playing against Watson turned out to be a lot like any other Jeopardy! game, though out of the corner of my eye I could see that the middle player had a plasma screen for a face. Watson has lots in common with a top-ranked human Jeopardy! player: It’s very smart, very fast, speaks in an uneven monotone, and has never known the touch of a woman.