What's Making Me Happy: August 22

This week has been pretty much a repeat of last week, so I won't bore you all with a retelling ... instead I'll share what I skipped last week: the universal Happy Making Things from the interwebz. I hope these will make you smile as they made me smile.

First, here is a 2-year-old rocking out with his daddy. Kid's got chops.

This is the best miso soup commercial you will ever see in your life.

This fellow has learned how to make the gym less boring.

Check out Li Hongbo's flexible paper sculptures. I want to play with one of these. (More on his work here.)

I was very pleased to hear about this year's winner of the prestigious Fields Medal of mathematics, won for the first time by a woman. The little bit I've read of her story is fascinating; I hope we hear more.

Maryam Mirzakhani

And finally, I love this TED talk by one of my favorite authors, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. "[My American roommate] had felt sorry for me even before she saw me. Her default position toward me, as an African, was a kind of patronizing, well-meaning pity. My roommate had a single story of Africa: a single story of catastrophe. In this single story there was no possibility of Africans being similar to her in any way, no possibility of feelings more complex than pity, no possibility of a connection as human equals."

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Happy weekend, everyone!