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The most popular stories on Pocket this week Brought to you by: Horizontal History Tim Urban, Wait But Why Normally, we learn about history’s storylines in isolation. We might have a strong sense of the history of physics breakthroughs or the progression of western philosophical thought or the succession of French rulers—but we’re not as clear on how each of these storylines relate to each other. Save to Pocket SPONSORED The Slack Variety Pack A podcast about work, life, and everything in between. Each episode features stories on innovative ideas, modern culture, and people who have found their purpose. Listen to the Slack Variety Pack Inequality in American Cities Is on the Rise Dwyer Gunn, Pacific Standard A new report finds that falling wages for low-income earners is driving rising inequality in America's cities and metropolitan areas. Save to Pocket Most of Your Facebook Friends Couldn't Care Less About You Steve Dent, Endgadget Even if you have thousands of Facebook friends, you can probably only count on a handful in a pinch, according to a new study. The author, anthropologist Robin Dunbar, should know. He's the guy who came up with Dunbar's number, which shows that in the real world, people can only maintain about 150 stable relationships. Save to Pocket Return of the Mercenaries Sean McFate, Aeon Two centuries ago, public armies replaced private ones as the dominant tool of warfare. Now, private armies are back Save to Pocket When the Water Turned Brown Abby Goodnough, The New York Times Standing at a microphone in September holding up a baby bottle, Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, a local pediatrician, said she was deeply worried about the water. The number of Flint children with elevated levels of lead in their blood had risen alarmingly since the city changed its water supply the previous year, her analysis showed. Save to Pocket Marvin Minsky, Pioneer in Artificial Intelligence, Dies at 88 Glenn Rifkin, The New York Times Marvin Minsky, who combined a scientist’s thirst for knowledge with a philosopher’s quest for truth as a pioneering explorer of artificial intelligence, work that helped inspire the creation of the personal computer and the Internet, died on Sunday night in Boston. He was 88. Save to Pocket The Republican Party May Be Failing Nate Silver, FiveThirtyEight If the “Party Decides” theory is at a loss to explain why GOP elites have failed to stop Trump, it may be because elites never had all that much power to begin with. Indeed, the book can be frustratingly opaque when describing how party elites motivate rank-and-file voters to go along with their choices. Save to Pocket Renaissance Florence Was a Better Model for Innovation than Silicon Valley Is Eric Weiner, Harvard Business Review Urban planners the world over yearn to replicate the success of Silicon Valley: witness Thames Valley (England) and Silicon Oasis (Dubai), to name just two of these attempts. Invariably, these well-intentioned efforts fail for the simple reason that they’re trying to replicate the wrong model. Silicon Valley is too new, too now, to glean lessons from. Save to Pocket Welcome to the Divergence Nilay Patel, The Verge But there are little signs that the smartphone convergence might be over, and the pendulum might be swinging back a little. At CES this year Kodak introduced a new film Super 8 camera that became the talk of the show; the other big introduction was a revived Technics SL-1200 turntable. Save to Pocket Like these recommendations? See more in Pocket › Blog Unsubscribe  •   Privacy Policy  •   Sponsor  •   Help Center You are receiving this email because you signed up for Pocket. If you enjoy our curated recommendations, why not forward this email to a friend? Read It Later, Inc., 731 Market Street Suite 410, San Francisco, CA 94103, USA © 2015 Read It Later, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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