• Joan Didion on J.D. Salinger’s Franny and Zooey: “self-help copy … Positive Thinking for the upper middle classes … for Sarah Lawrence girls.”
• The depopulating Midwest and Northeast; Everyone’s still moving to the West and South.
• Slaves in revolt! The Birth of Nation wins biggest Sundance auction ever.
• Former staffer on Dr. Ben: “I think he’s just living in an alternative universe.”
• Neil deGrasse Tyson: Yes, dude, the world is indeed round.
• What music would you play at the Communism-themed prom?
• Get ready, black helicopter crowd, the UN might be coming for your sugary sodas.
• Peak iPhone might be here.
• The second biggest collection of U.S. case law going to a free online database thanks to Harvard.
• Is this sort of thing even shocking anymore?
• Reading the movies: A book lover’s guide to the Oscars.
• New York’s coolest bartender (he boxed Larry Holmes, married Obama’s former girlfriend), “a forlorn soul who reads books and can make a drink,” is going home to Serbia to reclaim his ancestral mansion.
• Print and read: Working for Playboy in the glory years as part of its “secret sisterhood” of women.