▪ All sale styles at Ralph Lauren are an extra 30% off with code 2017. The Lauren Ralph Lauren Medium Winston Raquel Messenger that I recently ordered is on sale in two colors (also here). Other picks: Cable-Knit Wool & Leather Gloves, Wool-Cashmere Poncho, Cable Knit Crewneck Sweater, Plush Robe, Chunky Cable-knit Hat, and Wool-Cashmere Sweater.
▪ Amazon ran a crazy eBooks sale earlier this week, and I picked up a few titles to slowly digest over the next few months. The book that I am most excited to read is Michael Lewis’s The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds, which fans of Thinking, Fast and Slow will likely enjoy. The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, and The Financial Times have all reviewed the book.
▪ WIRED editors curated a list of their best features from 2016; I re-read “In a Perpetual Present,” perhaps my favorite from the list, about a woman who suffers from “severely deficient autobiographical memory,” which reduces her memories to facts, not images or feelings. Her story calls into question the essence of memories. Danny Kahneman (from above; featured subject of The Undoing Project and author of Thinking, Fast and Slow), for one, is famously skeptical of his own episodic memories. Is it possible that we would all be better served not “to linger in a memory, to long for the past, to dwell in it.”
▪ I’ve been enthusiastically shopping Nordstrom‘s Half-Yearly Sale. Some picks: Halogen® Wool & Cashmere Sweater, UGG® Braelyn Fleece Robe, Kate Spade Emerson Place Bag, Nordstrom at Home Grand Cable Throw, UGG® Maribeth Cable Knit Cocoon Sweater, and Burberry Chevrington 2-in-1 Parka with Genuine Fox Fur Trim.
▪ IQ scores are again under siege. Numerous studies have sought (and often succeeded) to disprove the correlation between IQ score and “success”/”happiness”/”ability,” recently a new paper was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, which found that high raw IQ scores have a negligible impact on income.
▪ For me, Saudi Arabia is shrouded in mystery and intrigue (because of its liquid gold reserve, the relative political stability that the proceeds from the sale of oil bought, and its future now that solar power is projected to fall to 1¢/kWh by 2025). Thus, I really enjoyed this New York Times report on how low oil prices (and the resulting economic depression) affected (or have not affected) the royal family’s spending.
▪ Here’s a report on how “fat” is contagious. Previously we read about how our social circle made us fat, but now the enemy is not a stream of dinner invitations, but a virus. (The original study on Adenovirus 36 is old, here’s a more recent paper from 2015.)
▪ Harrods is running another store-wide 10% off sale. The savings are notable after you account for a weaker pound and the VAT refund. This sale is perfect for all things Burberry.
▪ Clearance styles are an extra 60% off at American Eagle (online only; sale ends 01/02/17). Prices are as marked.
▪ Because there are a few messages that bear repeating: while “Make Peace with Your Unlived Life” doesn’t really contribute a fundamentally new understanding to mid-life crises, Tina’s story is nevertheless a reminder that self-examination is a process, not an event.
▪ “13 Questions to Ask Before Getting Married” seems to be The New York Times’s follow-up to the immensely successful “The 36 Questions That Lead to Love.” I badly want to see something like “The 4 Questions That Signal an Imminent Divorce” or “5000 Questions That Prepare You for Babies” in 2017.
▪ Marie Kondo became synonymous with simpler (and consequently more joyful?) living in 2016, but 2017 might have a different focus. Hygge (pronounced HOO-gah), a Danish export, advocates living cozily, with happiness its natural byproduct. I am too lazy to go through my belongings one by one to determine if they individually bring me joy, so I welcome Hygge as the KonMarie replacement. I could be sold the experience of retreating to a remote cabin in the woods, bundling my naked body in hand-knit blankets, avoiding the news (and real world) entirely, bingeing on Law & Order: SVU, and drinking hot chocolate until I die of hyperglycemia.
▪ Recent purchases: Banana Republic Painterly Floral Scarf, LALA + BASH Sailboat Blackout Window Panels, J. Crew Cropped Lady Jacket with Gold Buttons, and Ann Taylor Calla Lily Shirred Blouse.
Have a great weekend, all!
