The movie War Dogs is coming out next week and I finally sat down to read the Rolling Stone piece by Guy Lawson from 2011 about the story the movie is based on. A gripping read.

Packouz was baffled, stoned and way out of his league. “It was surreal,” he recalls. “Here I was dealing with matters of international security, and I was half-baked. I didn’t know anything about the situation in that part of the world. But I was a central player in the Afghan war — and if our delivery didn’t make it to Kabul, the entire strategy of building up the Afghanistan army was going to fail. It was totally killing my buzz. There were all these shadowy forces, and I didn’t know what their motives were. But I had to get my shit together and put my best arms-dealer face on.”

Devin Faraci, writing about the difference between “best” versus “favorite”:

So the next time you see a list of someone’s favorite movies, instead of jumping right to why they’re wrong or asking the perennial irritating asshole question “What, no love for ______?”, try instead to have a conversation about why those films got picked. That’s a great discussion to be had, whether it’s directly with the person making the list or whether it’s you trying to understand an artist’s tastes and how they influence his or her work. And it’s always great for you, as a grown up thinking person, to be able to explain why you like stuff – why things are your favorites – beyond “My dad showed it to me when I was 7.”

Amen.

Christine Birkner, writing for AdWeek, about how if you’re a business and you tweet about the Olympics you may get in trouble (emphasis mine):

While individuals, news media and official sponsors are generally free to post about the games and athletes during the Olympics, other businesses and brands are essentially locked out from anything close to a direct discussion.

Summarizing its many brand restrictions, which you can see detailed below, the USOC warns businesses: “Do not create social media posts that are Olympic themed, that feature Olympic trademarks, that contain Games imagery or congratulate Olympic performance unless you are an official sponsor as specified in the Social Media Section.”

Oh come on.

My first introduction to “final clubs” was in The Social Network; however, Sarah Maslin Nir has a great article in The New York Times about their place at Harvard in 2016:

Today, that description is perpetuated by unwritten codes on who may pass through their doors and who may join. The elaborate courtship of the desirable can begin with an engraved invitation slipped under a dorm room door to “punch” — a selection process that continues with a series of outings and culminates in a black-tie dinner feting the few who make it through.

To many students, the clubs remain potent symbols of privilege, anachronistic and out of place on an increasingly diverse campus.