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The Short: “Didi Kuaidi is dominating Uber in China’s private transport market” by The Economist Didi Kuaidi was forged last year by the merger of rival taxi-hailing apps controlled by Alibaba and Tencent, two Chinese internet giants. It now dominates China’s online market for personal transport. Last year it arranged 1.4 billion rides in China, more […]

The Short: “What I Learned From Four Years Working At McDonalds” by Kate Norquay (Medium) I was a terrible worker, too slow, clumsy and resentful of my circumstances. I quietly decided that I was too good for McDonalds. I constantly justified myself, ‘It’s suuuuuch a shit job! But I need money hahaha.’ I was a bookish

The Short:  “An ill wind” by The Economist In Berlin they speak of “Plan B”; in Brussels the fear is of the U-turn. Whatever the term, the prediction is the same: that Angela Merkel is on the brink of reversing the generous policy towards asylum-seekers that saw more than a million of them reach Germany last

The Short: “Pakistan’s Unnecessary Martyrs” by Mohammed Hanif (New York Times) We are told these students laid down their lives for the sake of our future. But weren’t they our future?Read The Rest > The Long: “Will driverless cars mean the end of auto insurance?” by Amy Denise (CS Monitor) Self-driving cars are not yet commercially available,

The Short: “The Truth About Happily Ever After.” by Kerrie L. Cooper (Medium) My daughter will learn, both through our actions and her own experiences, that happy is a skill, a choice and a mindset. That to be happy “ever after” is not a given, nor even a constant in a marriage. The truth is “happily

The Short: “The Many Problems With Bernie Sanders’s Health-Care Plan” by James Surowiecki (The New Yorker) Sanders can certainly make a case that such a transition would be beneficial, given the enormous amount of waste and inefficiency in our current system. But he needs to stop pretending that it would be easy. Read The Rest >

The Short: “How to Learn: The 80–20 Rule Applied to Learning.” by Emil Wallner (Medium) The final piece is motivation. An obsession. A reality distortion field. The best of psychology points to three activities: Improving your skills, doing what you want to do, and having a sense of purpose. It’s that simple — the trick is to do it

The Short: “The Unforgettable Villainy of Alan Rickman in ‘Die Hard’” by Ian Crouch (The New Yorker) At the center of this is Rickman’s Gruber, who is not only a perfect straight man to Willis’s catch-phrasing cowboy but also the movie’s guiding tonal spirit. He’s oddly contained, seemingly bored by the very mayhem he’s set in

The Short: My Last Day as a Surgeon by Paul Kalanithi In May of 2013, the Stanford University neurosurgical resident Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with Stage IV metastatic lung cancer. He was thirty-six years old. In his two remaining years—he died in March of 2015—he continued his medical training, became the father to a baby girl,

The Short: ‘Mexico’s most wanted man is captured—again’ by The Economist “‘Mission accomplished’ tweeted Mexico’s president, Enrique Peña Nieto, at around noon on January 8th. He had good reason to feel satisfied. Earlier that day, after six months on the run, Joaquín “El Chapo” (Shorty) Guzmán, the country’s most notorious drug-trafficker, had been recaptured.” Read The Rest >