Welcome to 18th edition of The Three Things, the weekly update of three links, podcasts, videos, or books you can’t miss from Michael Schechter, Howie Goldfarb, and me!
For those of you new to this series, The Three Things arrives in your inbox on Sunday mornings (unless you don’t suscribe, but that can easily be fixed if you hurry over and enter your email address or add to your RSS feed) so you have some extra time to spend perusing the obscure content we’ve curated for you (and one another) before your week begins and deadlines, meetings, and work takes over.
This week we have thoughts on experimenting with your life, Graph Search, and whether or not there is such a thing as too much honesty.
Happy Sunday reading!
Michael on Experiments. I’m late to A. J. Jacobs’ collection of stories of his time as a human Guinea pig, but having just spent the past few hours flying cross country listening to the audiobook, I’m glad I wised up and got around to it. Not only is the book highly amusing, but it’s fascinating to see how these grand and temporary experiments make subtle, yet lasting change in the author’s life. I’ve never been prone to experiments, opting for an iterative approach to creating change in my life, but I’d be lying if these stories aren’t tempting me to think bigger.
Why Graph Search Could Be Facebook’s Largest Privacy Invasion Ever
Howie on Facebook Graph Search. While this article raises alarms about Facebook and their new search offering for privacy, it’s actually breakthrough technology. The problem is we don’t currently share enough of our lives on Facebook. I could have 20 friends see the same movie, but only one person will mention it. If that person has his or her profile set to “public,” the whole world will now know their thoughts on the movie. It’s both scary and fascinating. Note: I do not have this feature yet.
Jennifer Lawrence in Vanity Fair
Gini on Honesty. I loved reading the Hunger Games series. I’ve seen the first movie three times (and can’t wait for Catching Fire in November!). I thought Jennifer Lawrence was fantastic as Katniss Everdeen. We saw Silver Lining Playbook a couple of weeks ago and she was phenomenal in that. Because I’m such a fan of her acting, I couldn’t wait to spend some time reading the Vanity Fair cover story. Imagine my disappointment when I learned she’s uneducated, unfocused, and lazy. Of course, the article didn’t say those exact things- Woody Harrelson said to her, “I didn’t know there was another actor on earth who made me look like a hard worker” and she has zero desire to get a degree – but I came away wishing she’d been a little less honest in the interview.
Now it’s your turn. Is there a podcast, video, book, or article you think we need to see?