What We’re Reading: March 3, 2016

Everything You Make Is an Engine (lindaholmes.tumblr)
by Linda Holmes
“What I mean by that is that anything you make – a podcast, a book, a TV show, a business, really any endeavor that you undertake – is not just the thing it is, but it’s also an engine that powers, directly or indirectly, other things and other people. And that’s more true the more success you have.”

The Instagrams of Food Deserts (Atlantic)
by Julie Beck
“In every region of the United States, the foods shown in Instagrams posted from food deserts had higher cholesterol, sugar, and fat than the posts from non-food deserts.”

Nato commander: Isis ‘spreading like cancer’ among refugees (Guardian)
by Alan Yuhas
“Pressed by reporters to back up his assertion with statistics, Breedlove said: ‘I can’t give you a number on the estimate of the flow.'”

The cult of memory: when history does more harm than good (Guardian)
by David Rieff
“Collective historical memory is no respecter of the past. This is not simply a matter of inaccuracy, wilful or otherwise, of the type one encounters in the many contemporary television miniseries that attempt to re-create a past historical era – Showtime’s The Tudors, say, or HBO’s Rome. When states, political parties, and social groups appeal to collective historical memory, their motives are far from trivial.”

The ‘Truth’ About Why We Lie, Cheat And Steal (NPR)
by NPR staff
“Chances are, you’re a liar. Maybe not a big liar — but a liar nonetheless. That’s the finding of Dan Ariely, a professor of psychology and behavioral economics at Duke University.”