You probably won't die this year

While half of Twitter argued the meaning of the “public intellectual,” novelist Teju Cole was actually out there being one. The man who previously brought you “Small Fates” -- beautiful, sparse, slaying bites of Nigerian life, and probably one of my all-time favorite things on Twitter -- wrote a short story this afternoon through a series of retweets. You should really head over to his timeline and read the whole thing. But if fiction’s not your jam, try these:
1. Hitler and bad erotica rule the ebook sales charts -- possibly for the exact same reason. People are ashamed of reading “50 Shades” on the metro, so they plop it on their ebooks to hide what they’re doing. Likewise “Mein Kampf,” Chris Faraone argues. The book mysteriously ranks among the politics best-sellers on both Amazon and iTunes.
2. Obama’s done it, Seinfeld’s done it, that very forthcoming gentleman with two penises has done it. I speak not of weed -- though, more on that later -- but of the suddenly ubiquitous Reddit AMA. Here’s how the genre grew from a bunch of nerds Q&A-ing amongst themselves to a mainstream platform for major interviews.
3. The dark side of panda cams (and kitten cams, what have you): Widespread livestreaming threatens your privacy more than the government ever could.

While we're on the subject of animal cams, here's a bb polar bear taking his first steps today at the Toronto Zoo.
Postscript: Social media has improved our lives in varied amazing ways, but it's definitely complicated 1) the DTR phase and 2) the mental calculus of what things are worth clicking. (That link = 100% click-worthy, for the record.) These are the cities with the cheapest beer. This is the only city with a weed-and-dinner pairing. Let's end on a bit of good news: You (probably!) won’t die this year.
Until tomorrow, @caitlindewey
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