Each week, we share the top five articles that caught our attention. Here are your must-reads, published here and abroad, for the week of September 26th 2016.
Social media is for lovers
Where would love be without Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat? But some social networks are more conducive to romance than others. According to users’ lovey-dovey behaviour, Twitter and Snapchat are for flirting, while Facebook and Skype are for more serious relationships. How to determine which platform is most appropriate for communicating with your honey?
→ Read it on Rue 89 (in French) Pocket
The 70-year-old intern
Most people think of their retirement as a time for world travel or for diving into the projects they dreamed about for years. Others, like 70-year-old Paul Critchlow, decide to become a summer intern at Pfizer. This Vietnam vet turned the premise of the movie, The Intern, into a successful reality. Why are companies hesitant to leverage the experience of our seniors?
→ Read it on Fast Company Pocket
Cracking the bestseller code
Each year, thousands of novels are published, but only a few become bestsellers. How did Stieg Larsson and Dan Brown get it right? And can we predict which novels will become bestsellers? Jodie Archer and Matthew L. Jockers compiled and analysed data from nearly 20,000 contemporary novels (of every genre) to create an algorithm that can forecast future bestsellers with up to 90% accuracy.
→ Read it on The Walrus Pocket
You used to call me
According to Nielsen, the telephone call died in the fall of 2007 (R.I.P.) when the average number of text messages sent every month exceeded the number of phone calls made. That’s the moment when everything changed. Telephone calls were thereafter seen as an intrusion into our private lives. But what have we lost in the process?
→ Read it on Slate Pocket
The Monocle recipe
The idea for Monocle was born while Canadian Tyler Brûlé was waiting for a flight and noticed people unable to choose between buying The Economist or GQ. He asked himself why there was no magazine that combined lifestyles and business. Today, Brûlé’s publication has a circulation of roughly eighty thousand copies. With content becoming increasingly more digital and specialized, how to explain reader interest in this print magazine?
→ Read it on The Point Pocket
In your earbuds: The Things That Make Us
Everyday objects and fetish items… How do your possessions define you? Zoe Laughlin, Director of Institute of Making, hosts a podcast series that explores how certain objects shape the identities of their owners.
This week’s favourite thing
What to do with the lost photos of absolute strangers? Make a digital photo album, apparently! Photographer Thibaut Kinder has created the Exhumed Photographs blog, which publishes forgotten photos found on old SD cards purchased at flea markets and third-hand electronics shops. How much more hipster can you get?
