Ten Myths About Introverts. As an introvert myself, I definitely vouch for the article. Too often I felt part of some unrecognized minority and struggled to make myself understood. Most extroverts, like History-writing victors, seem unable to consider others might have different interests, tastes and reactions. ···

Work has led me away from the Video Editing business in the last few months, so I was a bit surprised (and then again, not) the latest version of Apple Final Cut Pro (dubbed ‘X’) is rubbish. I haven’t used it or seen it in use yet, but the reported loss of backward-compatibility and external monitoring are indeed unacceptable. So great a Fail, it’s mainstream-worthy: here’s Conan O’Brien on the subject. ···

The Resume is Dead, the Bio is King. I’d certainly hope so, but this rests on the assumption people who hire are, like, readers. The reapparance of a certain CV-optimization industry (which reeks of SEO-for-people sleaze) gives me great doubts. (via Rita Falcão) ···

How to Land your Kid in Therapy, a great article about the perils of overprotective parenting. Being single and child-less, this is normally not the kind of thing I’d post about or read from start to finish, except that early on the author touches a very important subject: that parents (and I’d say, teachers and the educational establishment) place too much emphasis on protecting their children’s self-esteem from all facts of life; by the time these children get to college their professors and instructors (such as your humble narrator) have to deal with those overinflated ‘self-esteems’ where only a fraction is tied to real accomplishment, and the hypersensitivity to difficulty that comes with it. I’m definitely not for the ‘tough love’ parenting my own parents recall from theirs, but I found the passages about limiting choices and sometimes just letting kids pick themselves up specially spot-on. (via Delivereads) ···

Werner Herzog reads Go the Fuck to Sleep. Not only a crazy brilliant filmmaker, Herzog also has the best male narration voice I know. Lucky bastard. ···

What is College good for? I’ve recently had a student ask a somewhat more brutal form of the question the author mulls about — “Why do we have to learn this?” (‘this’ being, by the way, a short tutorial on sound recording in the context of a Multimedia Lab course with a very high amount of audiovisuals in its syllabus) — and found myself unable to provide an answer. I always figured someone who goes to college has a interest in learning stuff, no questions asked (much less when the ‘stuff’ is a downright obvious part of what you commited yourself to study for three years). ···

In the United States, the advertising industry says the middle class is over. ···

Nobel laureate Paul Krugman on the ‘rule by rentiers’. No better example than the recent Portuguese election, in which the media (owned by people with a vested interest in the privatizations-to-come) conspired not only to utter demonize the outgoing PM — the only way to ensure a ‘stable’ government by the right, given the overall perceived mediocrity of the right-wing leader and new PM, Pedro Passos Coelho —, but also to present the IMF’s prescriptions as palatable and inevitable (and a good 80% voted pro-IMF, fucking A!). And of course, not content until the country descends (or, as the media would put it, ‘ascends’) into a kind of feudal post-democratic ‘Berlusconianism’, pundits now call for a new ‘modern’ Constitution, stripped of such ‘nagging aspects’ as electoral and labour regulations, then freely available to the MPs and the lobbies to change as they please. And it seems people will gladly take it, as envious dreams of bling are the true opium of the masses. (via Boing Boing) ···

On a lighter note, about one year ago two players fought a three-day, eleven-hour battle in the Wimbledon lawn. The fifth set of the match ended 70-68. ···