It’s time once again for the Friday Five.

“There are two types of people in this world: those with hundreds of unread messages, and those who can’t relax until their inboxes are cleared out.” Which one are you? Joe Pinsker at The Atlantic reveals the psychology of the feed.

TJ Grist’s firsthand account of the Nepal earthquake. “The first thing I noticed was the noise. It was excruciatingly loud—as if four jet airplanes were flying low over the mountains. Then the ground began to tremble.”

Zen Pencils is one of my favorite sites. Artist Gavin Aung Than adapts inspirational quotes into illustrations. This week, he sheds light on the plight of Atena Farghadani, who faces twelve years in prison for drawing a cartoon criticizing the Iranian government and posting it to her Facebook page. She’s there right now, while I am free to type this.

A professor at Texas A&M fails his entire class. “I was dealing with cheating, dealing with individuals swearing at me both in and out of class, it got to the point that the school had to put security guards at that class and another class,” he said.

“Reserving judgments is a matter of infinite hope.” One of my favorite lines from The Great Gatsby. (There’s also this favorite: “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”)   50 of the most beautiful lines in The Great GatsbyIs yours listed?

Smithsonian Magazine released the finalists and winners of their 2014 photo contest. The categories were travel, people, natural world, American experience, altered images, and mobile (phone pictures). Stunning! These images make me wish I knew what an f-stop was.

As we recently passed the 70th anniversary of the end of WWII in Europe, writer Jonathan Alpeyrie traveled to 12 countries to “meet, photograph, and interview men who served in the war, on both sides, and survived.” His goal is simply to record their stories. He says, “This project offers no pretense to judge, criticize, or celebrate the actions taken by any of these men, but merely to recollect their stories before they are gone.”

Have a great weekend, everyone! 

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