This Week - Oct 11, 2013

In the past few years, I’ve sensed that he also travels for different reasons. He can step out of his life for a week or two — or, rarely, a little longer. When he travels, he isn’t a man who has a job that often keeps him working until midnight, or who has to worry about aging parents. He’s just a man with a backpack slung over one shoulder who has to catch a plane or a bus or a boat.

— Sleepless in Helsinki (Mark Sullivan)

For the individual consumer, this presents a strange duality; you want to support good companies by buying things, but by buying things, you consume resources that stress the planet, and spend money you don’t need to spend...From cruising the blogs, it seems that the appetite for tiny wallets, waxed backpacks, and slim-fitting t-shirts continues to expand.

— The Heritage Paradox (Daniel Lilie)

Maybe the biggest sin of the GTA games is the cheerful, spiteful way they rub our faces in what video games make us willing to do, in what video games are. Playing GTA used to feel like sneaking out behind school for a quick, illicit smoke. The smoke still tastes good, Niko; the nicotine still nicely javelins into your system. But when you look up, you have to wonder what you’re actually doing here. Everyone is so young, way younger than you, with the notable exception of the guy handing out the cigarettes, and he’s smiling like he just made a billion dollars.

— Poison Tree (Grantland)