Sex, drugs and shovels

Tuesdays are for Twitter beef, apparently! First Famous Physicist Neil deGrasse Tyson sparred with Possibly Deranged Human B.o.B. Then someone released a Meek Mill vs. Drake game about six months too late to be timely. Is the lesson here that Twitter drama never dies -- or that, in fact, it never lives? Imma let you guys ponder that one for a bit.

1. The man who tried (and failed) to hack his brain. Fed up with waiting for approval to test a new generation of brain-implanted, computer-connected electrodes, the neurologist Phil Kennedy experimented on a more operable brain -- his own.

2. How "-phobic" became a weapon in the online war over identity. "On Twitter ... the one-liner with the most retweets wins the debate round. And just as counting up likes and retweets lends a mathematical sheen to the Twitter contest, the '-phobia' suffix carries with it an air of scientific authority."

3. This story is the pits. L.I.T.E.R.A.L.L.Y. It's about the Web's astoundingly rabid pro-pitbull community. (Not to beat a dead horse -- which TIL, can get rabies! -- but this is a good use of the word "rabid," Oxford Dictionaries.)

Today's ultimate dog-in-the-snow GIF brought to you by @katchow
If you can beat it I'll let you write tomorrow's newsletter
... but I'm prettyyyy sure you can't.
(link)

Postscripts: Tinder for friends. Airbnb for snow forts. Sex, drugs and shovels: A blizzard report. Twitter's impact on the NBA and Facebook's best-kept secret. You can still send a telegram, but don't hope to receive it. How Twitter could save itself. How emoji are born. Finally, here's why iPhones are worse than useless ($%#&!) in a storm.

See you tomorrow!
@caitlindewey

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