Thought.is

The most forgotten of brick-and-mortar booksellers continues to try to get customers to buy it some more time as it verges on bankruptcy, and the ways in which is does so are becoming increasingly desperate. Being a subscriber to Borders’ e-mails, the only way to get a hold of its lucrative coupons, I’m privy to these attempts and all their overzealous subject lines, which seemed to culminate in a rather startling offer with this morning’s e-mail.

If the key to a good marriage is to treat it like a corporation, the few of us left in this country who still believe in the institution will probably abstain, thanks.

Henry James is an author that many people love to hate. The scars of reading James too early or too quickly––or reading the wrong Henry James altogether––can take a lifetime to heal, which is a shame, because his stories are some of the most memorable in fiction.

The summer festival season inevitably gives way to darker sounds worthy of intimate indoor concerts and snowed-in listening sessions. Here are four worthy up-and-coming acts with recent or impending releases.

In New York, as David Cross likes to say, “You are constantly faced with this very urgent decision that you have to make about every 20 minutes. You have to decide immediately, ‘Oh my god, do I look at the most beautiful woman in the world or the craziest guy in the world?'” There are more than eight million other people bookended by those two superlatives, and while some, like your boss, might contribute to your stress, many of them reduce it.

People who abstain from gluten have reported improvements in their joints, sleep, skin, digestion, general energy level and weight. But for these people and the approximately 1 in 100 U.S. citizens who has celiac disease, sticking to the diet is challenging, since many of the options are either expensive, full of fat, or taste like chalk.

Our ancestors the Homo antecessor ate each other because they were hungry, according to Discovery News. But there was also another motivation at play: getting ahead in prehistoric society by––er, eliminating the competition.

Real life takes a cue from the Onion as a Polish man discovers that a five-year-old blow to the head was actually caused by a bullet that’s been lodged there ever since.

Something amazing happens when you slow down a Justin Bieber song by 800%, as musician Nick Pittsinger found out by plugging Bieber’s song “U Smile” into a free program called Paulstretch.