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What's your state's stereotype? Plus, the best of the web this week.

Ever wish someone would read the entire Internet and give you a list of the best articles? Well, you're welcome! The best of the Web this week includes a map of American state stereotypes, an article about how the ancient Greeks would have dealt with Obamacare, a look at a startup with a surprising approach to helping young entrepreneurs get funding, and four simple steps to avoid getting hacked. Enjoy!


Arts and Culture

Why Are Americans So ... / Reena DiResta / No Upside

"A map of American state stereotypes, generated by Google autocomplete."(via Varina)




Hear, All Ye People; Hearken O Earth / Errol Morris / The New York Times

Brilliant: Errol Morris runs an experiment on Times readers to test whether our perceptions of the truth can be affected by fonts.




Call Me Maybe — Carly Rae Jepsen (Chatroulette Version) / Steve Kardynal / YouTube

Just when you thought you were getting sick of "Call Me Maybe," this comes along ...




Write Your Own Academic Sentence / Writing Program / University of Chicago

You're just four clicks away from writing like a PhD! Sample sentence: "The construction of post-capitalist hegemony is, and yet is not, the poetics of the gendered body."




Politics and World Affairs

Fussbudget / Ryan Lizza / New Yorker

Meet Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney's new running mate, in this in-depth profile from earlier this year.




Top Ten Differences Between White Terrorists And Others / Juan Cole / Informed Comment

Sadly relevant after last week's massacre at a Sikh temple. Number 6: "White terrorists are random events, like tornadoes. Other terrorists are long-running conspiracies."




What Pericles Would Say About Obamacare / Paul Woodruff / Oxford University Press Blog

Democracy, the ancient Greek way: "Imagine a council of 500 citizens chosen at random ... with no worries about reelection to find a solution to our health care problem."




Romney's Side Course Of Culture / Ta-Nehisi Coates / The New York Times

As usual, Coates manages to be both interesting and original where others are dull and predictable; be sure to click through to Ron Swanson's Pyramid of Greatness. (via Charley)




Addressing Poverty In Schools / Joe Nocera / New York Times

Can even good teachers make a difference when their students' lives are defined by poverty? One organization is trying to equip schools to deal with poverty head on, with promising results. (via Bo)




Business and Economics

New Crowdfunding Twist: Invest In A College Grad / Christina DesMarais / Inc

A new startup, Upstart, allows young entrepreneurs to raise capital by selling a share of their future earnings.




Japan Inc. Tests A New Survival Skill: English / Chico Harlan / The Washington Post

A Japanese billionaire worried about competitiveness decides his 6,000 employees need to speak English—and gives them two years to learn it, or face demotions.




No More Growth Miracles / Dani Rodrik / Project Syndicate

Argues that gains from rapid industrialization — which drove the growth of China, India, and others — will be more difficult to come by, and that future gains will have to come from improved institutions and governance.




Why Investors Should Avoid Hedge Funds / Felix Salmon / Reuters

Ouch: "If all the money that's ever been invested in hedge funds had been put in Treasury bills instead, the results would have been twice as good."




Science and Technology

How Not To Get Hacked / Farhad Manjoo / Slate

The crazy story of how a writer for Wired got hacked, and four simple steps you should take to safeguard your digital life; if you haven't done these yet, you're being reckless.




The Art Of The Passive-Aggressive Redesign / Russell Brandom / BuzzFeed

Fun roundup of unsolicited redesigns of popular websites, including Amazon, American Airlines, IMDB, and Wikipedia.




Back To The (Far-Fetched) Future / The New York Times

An enjoyable look back at predictions from 1964 on what New York would look like in 2000, with some fun graphs and a lovely tribute to the city by its then-mayor.




Terms Of Service; Didn't Read

"'I have read and agree to the Terms' is the biggest lie on the web. We aim to fix that," declares a new site that summarizes and rates different companies' terms of service.




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ACUVUE launches a new campaign to inspire Gen Z to put down their phones and follow their vision

What will you create on your social media break? Share it at #MyVisionMySight.

True

If you’ve always lived in a world with social media, it can be tough to truly understand how it affects your life. One of the best ways to grasp its impact is to take a break to see what life is like without being tethered to your phone and distracted by a constant stream of notifications.

Knowing when to disconnect is becoming increasingly important as younger people are becoming aware of the adverse effects screen time can have on their eyes. According to Eyesafe Nielsen, adults are now spending 13-plus hours a day on their digital devices, a 35% increase from 2019.1. Many of us now spend more time staring at screens on a given day than we do sleeping which can impact our eye health.

Normally, you blink around 15 times per minute, however, focusing your eyes on computer screens or other digital displays have been shown to reduce your blink rate by up to 60%.2 Reduced blinking can destabilize your eyes’ tear film, causing dry, tired eyes and blurred vision.3

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Karlie Smith shows the meal she's bringing to the restaurant for her son.

A mom who admitted she packs her 2-year-old a meal when they go out to dinner has started an interesting debate on TikTok about restaurant etiquette and how it applies to young children.

The video posted by Ohio mom, Karlie Smith (unbreakablemomma on TikTok), has received nearly 600,000 views and has over 1,850 comments.

“Call me cheap, call me whatever, but if we’re going out to a restaurant, I’m packing my kid a meal," Smith, 21, said in her post. "I do this for many reasons. On Friday nights, my family and I get together, and tonight, we’re getting food out. My son is not getting food out.”

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Pop Culture

Man rewatches shows from his childhood and his recaps of the bonkers storylines are priceless

Rob Anderson's hilarious recaps of shows like "Mighty Ducks," "Beethoven," and "7th Heaven" might make you wonder how they got made in the first place.

@hearthrobert/TikTok

These plots makes zero sense.

While there are no doubt some timeless classics from our childhood that remain every bit as amazing as we remember, many are straight-up cringey upon a later viewing. Really, it’s to be expected as societal viewpoints change…sort of a marker of how far we’ve collectively come.

And so, what do we do with these problematic pieces of old-school pop culture? Well, we can certainly update them to better reflect a more modern attitude, but that also comes with a set of potential problems. Or we could simply never watch them again. Certainly an option given all the content out there. But then we might miss an opportunity to better understand what seemed to work for the mainstream then, and why it doesn’t work now.

And then there’s the third option—allow ourselves to be entertained by their cringiness.

That’s certainly the route taken by Rob Anderson. Over on TikTok, Anderson has taken ultra-popular movies and television shows from his childhood and given them hilarious recaps capturing how absurd some of the storylines are.
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Joy

Homeless man catches family's two children and dogs dropped from burning apartment building

"He was right underneath and he was like 'Yes, throw your daughters out, I'm going to catch them, I'm going to get them.'"

Man catches entire family as they jump from burning building.

House fires are devastating for families. In a matter of minutes, you could lose all of your belongings and a place to live, or worse, you could lose loved ones. A family in Phoenix, Arizona, recently found themselves facing the reality of their own home in flames. Claudia Jimenez told CBS News that she woke up trapped in her burning apartment with her two daughters, with nothing to do but yell for help in the hopes that someone would hear her.

The mom's screams were answered by Joe Hollins, a homeless man who was camping nearby with his wife. Hollins didn't hesitate to try to find a way to help. With no way out and the fire department still nowhere on the scene, Jimenez had to trust the stranger who was standing below.

"He was right underneath and he was like 'Yes, throw your daughters out, I'm going to catch them, I'm going to get them,'" Jimenez told CBS.

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Joy

Woman decides that she is the love of her life and marries herself at her retirement home

“I said, you know what, I’ve done everything else. Why not?”

77-year-old woman decides she's the love of her life and marries herself.

We joke about marrying ourselves or a platonic friend if some arbitrary amount of time has passed without a proposal from an imaginary suitor. And sure, some people do wind up marrying a friend in more of a business arrangement, but it's not very common that someone follows through with marrying themselves.

Dorothy "Dottie" Fideli, decided that she was going to break the mold. The 77-year-old sat down and thought about all of the things she had done in life and who was with her the entire time cheering her on. It was an easy answer: herself. She was her biggest cheerleader, the person who always showed up and the love of her life, so Fideli made the plan to marry herself.

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12-year-old Texas girl saves her family from carbon monoxide poisoning

She knew something was wrong with her mom and brother, which wound up saving her whole family.

Fort Worth 12-year-old helps save family from carbon monoxide poisoning.

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A little girl in Fort Worth, Texas, experienced a terrifying encounter with the deadly gas, but her quick actions saved her entire family. Jaziyah Parker is being held up as a hero after she realized something was wrong with her family members and called for help.

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Drew Barrymore speaks during the FLOWER Beauty launch at Westfield Parramatta on April 13, 2019, in Sydney, Australia.

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Now, she’s an even more significant part of people’s lives as the host of “The Drew Barrymore Show,” which runs every weekday on CBS. So far, the show has been a big success, attracting an average of 1.21 million views per show, and ranks as the #4 talk show in syndication. It was recently renewed through the 2024 season.

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