Twenty years ago, Steve Jobs had an idea: he wanted to build an Apple store. Something sleek and iconic and unlike anything else in retail. But he had no idea how to do it. So he called someone who might: retail genius Ron Johnson. Ron tells Alex the story of what it was like to work with Steve and help transform Apple into a household name. And Ron talks about life after Apple—which included a huge and humbling failure.

Good listen and much more interesting than I would have guessed.

Ed Yong writing for The Atlantic:

Small groups of researchers can make virtually unilateral decisions about experiments that have potentially global consequences, and that everyone else only learns about after the fact.

Some people frown upon “bribery” for using the potty – and by all means, you don’t have to do it. Just remember, bribery is asking someone to do something illegal – and going on the potty isn’t illegal.

Parenting is weird.

Thanks to Kevin Smith and Audi for this gem of a video.

The great Stan Lee is dead. If I think about it, I’ll cry.

In a tribute comic, Brian Michael Bendis reflects on the first time he met Stan Lee and how Mr. Lee inspired him in his two-decade career at Marvel Comics.

With little electricity, no combat pay and holidays away from home, the 5,600 American troops on the southwest border are on a mission ordered by a politically determined commander in chief and a Pentagon unable to convince him of its perils.

Odd way to respect the troops.

Max Boot for The Washington Post:

It is not shocking that Trump would stoop so low. With him, there is no bottom. What is shocking, if no longer entirely surprising, is that the Republican Party would so readily follow him into the gutter.