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Weekend Reads - RAW 170602

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The weekend is here again! This week we look at the Brick-and-Mortar Bookstores, the optimised Amazon one as opposed to an unoptimised indie bookstore. Something to get you thinking, and reading this weekend.

This weekend I'm going to be reading Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. The physical book I picked up makes a good argument for buying a ebook instead. The writing is so small, I'm having trouble reading it at night. If I'd got the ebook I could just enlarge the font. Anyway it's been an interesting read so far, and I'll be continuing to read it with a long black or Americano this weekend.





On Thursday, Amazon opened its first brick-and-mortar bookstore in New York City, in Columbus Circle. It is situated on the third floor of the Time Warner Center, a baffling place that, on any given weekday, seems populated exclusively by tourists, sharply dressed professionals taking two-hour lunch meetings, and people with the aura of those C.G.I. figures in architectural renderings—people who are there just because they’re there. The books in the Amazon bookstore—assembled according to algorithm—feel like that, too

Amazon is opening its latest brick and mortar bookstore this week in Manhattan. It's safe to say that it's the highest-profile opening of the Amazon Books chain, of which there are a half dozen currently open, mostly in low-profile places.

Why do people like movies, shows, and a good story? There is always some blockbuster to see in the theaters. We all binge-watch a whole season on Netflix or Amazon Prime—myself included! The desire for a story in which we can lose ourselves is insatiable.


The GRAPES-3 muon telescope located at TIFR's Cosmic Ray Laboratory in Ooty recorded a burst of galactic cosmic rays of about 20 GeV, on 22 June 2015 lasting for two hours.

In just half a day, a new type of robot built an igloo-shaped building half the diameter of the U.S. Capitol dome—all by itself. In the future, such autonomous machines could assemble entire towns, create wacky Dr. Seuss–like structures, and even prepare the moon for its first human colony.

It’s the end of a long day. You’ve just arrived home from work, completely exhausted. You flip on the TV, collapse on the sofa, and catch the end of your favorite program. You savor this quiet time.

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