Just a Gwai Lo - fun within prescribed limits

As we continue to get flooded with all sorts of stuff on the web, we’ve come to value the effort people put into sifting through, collecting and grouping together links that are worthwhile. Seasoned curators like Maria Popova of Brain Pickings, Jason Kottke and the Longform site and iPad app have made discovering stuff so much easier by doing the work of finding and elevating the absolute best of the web.

Today, in collaboration with the Arc90 Lab, we’re launching a tool that will make it easier for anyone to do that work. Introducing Readlists.

What’s Readlists, you ask? Here’s the back-of-the-box description:

A Readlist is a mixtape for reading.

You take a group of links — articles, recipes, course materials, whatever — and Readlists bundles them into a permanent, web link that you can turn into an e-book that you can send directly to your Kindle, iPad, or iPhone. Every Readlist is shareable on the web. You can even embed Readlists into your own blog or site, the same way you would a Youtube video.

With a Readability account, you can manage the Readlists that you create and keep a catalog for sharing with others. You can even share an edit URL so others can contribute to your list without any overhead.

The Readlists home page already features some great collections of articles from well-known writers like Anil Dash and Jeffrey Zeldman. We’ll be featuring various Readlists over time.

Above all else, Readlists is a tool for anyone. If you’re passionate about a particular topic or want an easier way to collect and share bundles of links, Readlists is designed to make your life easier. You’ll find an excellent primer on getting started with Readlists over on the Arc90 Lab.

Follow Readlists on Twitter to keep up on any news or updates. We hope you enjoy this powerful new tool for helping people collect and share links on the web.

Richard Ziade

In English we speak about science in the singular, but both French and German wisely retain the plural.

The conflict between the Naturwissenschaften and the Geisteswissenschaften goes back at least two centuries, and became intensified as ambitious, sometimes impatient researchers proposed to introduce natural scientific concepts and methods into the study of human psychology and human social behavior. Their efforts, and the attitudes of unconcealed disdain that often inspired them, prompted a reaction, from Vico to Dilthey and into our own time: the insistence that some questions are beyond the scope of natural scientific inquiry, too large, too complex, too imprecise, and too important to be addressed by blundering over-simplifications. From the nineteenth-century ventures in mechanistic psychology to contemporary attempts to introduce evolutionary concepts into the social sciences, “scientism” has been criticized for its “mutilation” (Verstümmelung, in Dilthey’s memorable term) of the phenomena to be explained.

the very worst thing to ever happen to the team — the dim-eyed toad, Frank McCourt — pocketed his billions and was tarred and feathered and run out of town on a rail. Yes, “tarred and featured” is the name of a really expensive suit maker and a “rail” is a private plane. But he’s gone… replaced by Magic Johnson. Magic Johnson. That’s like rebuilding your church after a tornado and having Jesus show up as one of the carpenters. Movies that end that way aren’t believable, much less real life. Hell, the new owners even dropped the price of parking at Dodger Stadium! It’s like Frodo destroying the One Ring and then picking up donuts for everybody on the way back to the Shire.

no matter how sexy car companies make driving look, it is expensive, boring and stressful.

Black metrosexuality (aside: If in 2008 I had known I would ever have to use that word again, I would not have become a writer) has been trending for years, and white moderates only think it's so cool because their norm is still Caucasian and straight (or at least straight-acting). This fetishization crosses party lines, making visible that which unites all white people, but liberals especially. Since the jazz-age hipsters, we have widely and shallowly associated “black” with “cool.”

John Bollwitt posted a photo:

Shot with my iPhone, processed with Aperture. High up above Yaletown.

John Bollwitt posted a photo:

Shot with my iPhone, processed with Aperture. High up above Yaletown.

John Bollwitt posted a photo:

Shot with my iPhone, processed with Aperture. High up above Yaletown.

marklisanti: All phone calls should be illegal.

iainsut: The Tropicana Field heckler http://t.co/JuebgfaA Sadly he's a Toronto export

By Jillian Glover - a communications advisor specializing in urban issues. She is a former Vancouver City Planning Commissioner and holds a Master of Urban Studies. She was born…

ShiDavidi: J.P. Arencibia on winning AL Player of the Week: “I guess I just have to thank the man in white for that."

Zendesk: Are you a Zendesk support agent? Now there's a guide for you! http://t.co/fhORS455 Learn, share, ask - all in the agent guide in our forums!

ungulation: whoami is not enough. I'd feel a lot more comfortable if someone would implement whereami and whatamidoinghere

unsuckit: Crowdsource - Steal from as many people as possible simultaneously. http://t.co/SBVo2IWG

Three big words informed most of last week’s online punditry: metrosexual, black Lincoln. That’s the phrase a Republican consulting firm, hired by American billionaire Joe Ricketts and…

readability: Debuting tomorrow from the @arc90 Lab, built on the @readability platform. http://t.co/OqAuwLix (Follow @readlists to keep up).

reneestephen: I'm 31. Is it too late to become the kind of person who is good at going to random places and talking with interesting strangers?

The Dodgers won tonight. Again. In fact, they swept the reigning world champs, to maintain the best record in the MLB, closing in on an astonishing .700. They’ve won 19 of 23 at home, and are…