Each Friday we compile a list of interesting links and articles our editors find from across the web. Here’s what’s catching our eye this week.

New York Times blogger Ross Douthat reflects on the tragic death of actor Robin Williams:

It is extremely difficult to straddle comedy and drama, to say nothing of the worlds of stand-up and cinema, and Williams belongs to an elite group of comedians who mastered the craft of dramatic acting not just as a kind of second language, but as something approaching a native tongue. He was not quite on the same level as Tom Hanks or Bill Murray in this regard, but he was better than (to name a few) Billy Crystal or Jim Carrey or Adam Sandler or Ben Stiller or even Steve Martin, all of whom seem capable of leaving stand-up/slapstick behind only under very precise circumstances, with the perfect script or director or conceit.

Shakespeare…a life coach? How journalist Perri Klass learned a great deal about life from Shakespearean plays:

I saw “King Lear” in late July, an outdoor production in New York’s Central Park, and I thought about my mother—though it’s a play in which no one is a mother or even has a mother. For me, right now, “King Lear” is not—not yet—primarily a play about growing old and losing your powers, mental and physical, and your worldly authority. For me, in this stage of my life, it’s a play about taking care—or failing to take proper care—of an aging parent, about watching that aging parent lose the pieces of himself, and about the ways that grown-up and even middle-aged siblings replay their rivalries and relationships as they watch their parents grow old.

A Internet race from one site to another. Sounds easy, right? Not exactly. Josh Dzieza at The Verge tells his story:

I knew the web surfing contest was going to be hard as soon as Dragan Espenschied, a digital conservator and artist, explained the premise. Race across the internet from point A to B using only a one-button mouse: no keyboard, no search, no URL bar, no back button. It sounded almost impossible, even for someone who spends all day online, and that was before I found out my competitors had been training.

Baseball fans, want to find the ballparks with the best brews? The Washington Post has made the list of your dreams:

Several years ago, craft beer started taking off at Cincinnati’s Great American Ballpark. From 2011-2012, sales went up by 20 percent. From 2012-2013, they were up 47 percent. So when it came time to create a new hangout in a highly trafficked spot on the third-base concourse, the ballpark went all-in on craft-style beers. The new Reds Brewery District – an 84-foot-long bar with more than 50 taps – included more than 20 craft offerings when it opened this spring. There were local beers from Cincinnati brewers like Christian Moerlein, MadTree, Blank Slate, Fifty West, Rhinegeist, Mt. Carmel, and Rivertown. There were national options from well-regarded breweries like Founders, Bell’s, West Sixth and Great Lakes.

The popular photo blog Humans of New York is “a bulwark of hope in what sometimes feels like an onslaught of despair,” says Emily Dreyfuss at Wired.com. Now the blog’s author is now in a warzone to take pictures:

My favorite thing on the internet might be your favorite thing, too. As of right now 8.8 million people “like” it on Facebook. Humans of New York, the photo blog and Facebook page run by Brandon Stanton, is a bulwark of hope in what sometimes feels like an onslaught of despair. And as of yesterday, it’s operating from a warzone. In case you’re not familiar, Brandon takes a photo of a stranger on the street (usually in New York City, but notably sometimes as far away as Iran) and posts a snippet of conversation with the subject. Somehow this snapshot manages to capture a whole life, and with it parts of our lives, too, our hopes and dreams and sorrows.

Curious how Apple trains its employees? The New York Times explains:

Apple may well be the only tech company on the planet that would dare compare itself to Picasso. In a class at the company’s internal training program, the so-called Apple University, the instructor likened the 11 lithographs that make up Picasso’s “The Bull” to the way Apple builds its smartphones and other devices. The idea: Apple designers strive for simplicity just as Picasso eliminated details to create a great work of art.

Twitter reacts to trolls who bullied Zelda Williams after her father Robin’s death:

Days after Robin Williams’ death, his daughter received gruesome messages from anonymous users, including photoshopped pictures showing bruises around her father’s neck and tweets accusing her of his suicide. Two users, @PimpStory and @MrGoosebuster (both have been suspended since the incident), tweeted manipulated images of Williams in a morgue, accompanied by messaged like “look at what he … did to himself because of you.” One tweet, calling 25-year-old Zelda Williams a “heartless b****” was retweeted 25 times.

A not so uncommon method turns out to be scientifically legit: keep your feet outside of your covers to regulate body temperate. Here’s the story from NYMag.com:

Introducing a slightly odd but potentially very useful sleep hack: Keep one foot, or both feet, outside of your blanket. It could help you both sleep better and fall asleep faster, a sleep researcher explained to Science of Us. I started thinking about this recently when I was idly chatting with a buddy about how (relatively) nice and cool it had been recently in New York, and how much nicer it is to sleep when it’s cooler outside. He replied with what is apparently his formula for a perfect night’s sleep: “One foot out from under the blanket and a nice breeze coming from the window.”

Recent events in Ferguson, Missouri, echo scenes from a Ray Bradbury novel. The Verge reports:

A police officer shoots an unarmed minority teenager dead in the streets. Mostly peaceful protests ensue, triggering an increasingly and disproportionately heavily armed police presence. As the days go by, the police impose a ban on certain types of media at certain hours. They refuse to release the name of the officer who killed the kid. They tell the peaceful protesters to go home or face arrest. They roll up in giant armored vehicles, train high-powered rifles on the protesters and fire tear gas at them They harass journalists, body slam them, and then arrest and inexplicably release them. They openly call the scene a “war zone.” They say what they are doing is in the name of public safety and security, but to most of the public on the ground and witnessing the events online, things have never seemed more out of control.

A documentary on the 2001 Little League World Series star Danny Almonte who took the spotlight when a Sports Illustrated piece uncovered that he was too old to play:

Honorable mention: