Each week, BIV staff will share with you some of the interesting stories we have found from around the web.
Kirk LaPointe, editor-in-chief:
Our minds play tricks on us, and one of them is the placebo effect. But new research is pointing toward an actual biochemical basis for this effect. - The New York Times Magazine
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/07/magazine/placebo-effect-medicine.html
We are being overly creative in trying to create creativity. We’re not just letting it happen, argues a new book on the matter. All the effort in instilling it is killing it. - Quartz
https://qz.com/1450975/the-cult-of-creativity-is-making-us-less-creative/
An inside look at the rise of the eye-candy magazine, Architectural Digest, and its impact over the decades. - The New York Review of Books
https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/11/04/a-gilded-age-at-architectural-digest/
Timothy Renshaw, managing editor:
Meanwhile in Paraguay, a skill-testing investment question for aspiring politicians: sink the country’s considerable energy wealth into fighting poverty or mining bitcoin? - The Guardian
Emma Crawford Hampel, online editor:
“Patience as a personality trait is modifiable.” Feeling impatient? There are ways to work on this. - The New York Times
Mark Falkenberg, deputy managing editor:
For me, perhaps the sweetest news this week was the re-election – despite strenuous efforts by Donald Trump to prevent it – of Democratic U.S. Senator Jon Tester in Montana, the state I called home for years as a young guy. I am recommending this account of Tester’s victory partly for its swell beginning:
"Before he arrived at the balloon-decorated Holiday Inn in Great Falls, Montana, for his Election Night watch party, Jon Tester was 80 miles away on his farm in Big Sandy, taking the engine out of his ’86 Chevy pickup.
When the race was finally called on Wednesday morning, the engine still had a blown head gasket—but the 62-year-old farmer and two-term Democratic senator had managed to get his political career to turn over one more time." - The Atlantic
Glen Korstrom, reporter:
Interesting piece on a Toronto home that was supposed to be the ultimate symbol of achievement for its owners. Instead, it’s a grand remnant of an alleged real estate scam with a trail of victims, $17 million unaccounted for and a lawyer in hiding
