For Lyudmila Pavlichenko, killing Nazis wasn’t complicated. “The only feeling I have is the great satisfaction a hunter feels who has killed a beast of prey,” she once said of her job.
Meritocracy has become a leading social ideal. Politicians across the ideological spectrum continually return to the theme that the rewards of life – money, power, jobs, university admission – should be distributed according to skill and effort. The most common metaphor is the ‘even playing field’ upon which players can rise to the position that fits their merit. Conceptually and morally, meritocracy is presented as the opposite of systems such as hereditary aristocracy, in which one’s social position is determined by the lottery of birth. Under meritocracy, wealth and advantage are merit’s rightful compensation, not the fortuitous windfall of external events.
These days, everybody has a headshot. If you don’t know what you’re doing with your eyes, mouth, or jaw to make sure that yours look their best, Peter Hurley is here to instruct you.
Imagine setting aside a wheel of cheese at your wedding. What would it look like if it were served at your funeral?
If you were lucky, it would look like one of the wheels in Jean-Jacques Zufferey’s basement in Grimentz, Switzerland: shriveled and brown, pockmarked from decades of mite and mouse nibbles, and hard as a rock. You’d need an axe to slice it open and strong booze to wash it down. This is the rare cheese you don’t want to cut into when it’s aged to perfection. A fossilized funeral cheese means you lived a long life.
The first thing you need to understand about the building that, until very recently, housed the Russian Consulate in San Francisco — a city where topography is destiny, where wealth and power concentrate, quite literally, at the top — is its sense of elevation. Brick-fronted, sentinel-like, and six stories high, it sits on a hill in Pacific Heights, within one of the city’s toniest zip codes. This is a neighborhood that radiates a type of wealth, power, and prestige that long predates the current wave of nouveau riche tech millionaires, or the wave before that, or the one before that. It is old and solid and comfortable with its privilege; its denizens know they have a right to rule. Indeed, from Pacific Heights, one can simultaneously gaze out on the city, the bay, the Golden Gate Bridge — and, beyond, the vast, frigid Pacific.
Cats are the only asocial animal we have successfully domesticated. We’re disappointed that we don’t bond with them as easily as dogs. But are we just missing the signs?
Much of the advice you get from so-called success gurus (like “get up before sunrise,” or “work 18-hour days“) virtually guarantees that you’ll fail at the one daily activity that is the foundation of everything: dreaming.
At the start of your career, chances are good that you’ll be hired primarily for your “hard skills”–the stuff you know that’s relevant for the job. When you’re fresh out of college or even a few years into your career, things like what software you’ve mastered, the knowledge you’ve picked up during internships and in school, and your other technical credentials really matter.
Low interest rates are here to stay. For the time being, at least. Here’s what you need to know about interest rates and how you can make the most of it.
The death of an individual can have a powerful effect on our emotions, but as numbers rise so does our indifference. Why?