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Full stack employees have an insatiable appetite for new ideas, best practices, and ways to be more productive and happy. They’re curious about the world, what makes it work, and how to make their mark on it. It’s this aspect above others that defines and separates the full stack employee from previous generations. Full stack employees can’t put blinders on once they land a job; instead they must stay up on developments in their industry and others, because they know that innovation is found at the boundaries between disciplines, not by narrowly focusing in one sphere.

Is the Full Stack Employee the future of workers, the glorification of privileged generalists or maybe just another expression of anxiety in the New Economy (tm)?
comment posted at 9:23 AM on Apr-18-15

Entrepreneur sets $70,000 year minimum wage for all his employees Dan Price, the owner of a credit card processing company, came across an article showing that making much less than $75,000/yr. greatly diminished the emotional well-being of earners, and decided to do something about it. He's embarked on a three year plan to increase the salaries of all employees making under $70,000, which for some of them will be double their current wages.
comment posted at 5:57 AM on Apr-17-15

If you've ever felt that the remake/reboot/reimagining of your favorite story/character/fictional universe sucks, just imagine how Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke felt when Jack Kirby and Marvel did "2001: A Space Odyssey: The Comic" in 1976-77.
Well, maybe Clarke more than Kubrick.
comment posted at 6:18 PM on Apr-17-15

What are the most disturbing novels? [The Guardian] [Books] Guardian Books discusses disturbing reads:

"Bret Easton Ellis has haunted some of our readers for days, and on the books desk we’re still getting over certain depictions of dangerous obsessions and hellish orgies. Which fiction has most unnerved you?"

comment posted at 6:09 PM on Apr-17-15

France divides the fashion world by banning skinny models France has sent shock waves through the global fashion industry by passing a surprise law making it a criminal offence to employ dangerously skinny women on the catwalk.
comment posted at 8:27 AM on Apr-4-15
comment posted at 6:07 AM on Apr-6-15

Play PAC-MAN in Google Maps
comment posted at 6:34 PM on Mar-31-15

How far would you have to travel to reach the Earth's core? And what would you see along the way? Discover what lies beneath...
comment posted at 6:56 AM on Mar-19-15

You know all those blackheads on your Biore nose strip? Turns out they mostly aren't blackheads; they're sebaceous filaments and they were supposed to be in your nose. They help channel the flow of oil in the pore, and cannot be permanently removed (the pore will refill within 30 days).
comment posted at 5:35 PM on Mar-17-15

John Powers (of Star Wars: A New Heap) writes The Future of Art: Rosalind Krauss is a Jedi - "If Krauss is Leia, Le Corbusier is a pretty great candidate for General Tarkin."
Star Wars Semiotics - "At HiLobrow we’re wary of structuralist heuristic devices. But we do enjoy tinkering with them — and we’ve noticed that the logical expansion of binary oppositions does help stimulate the imagination. However… does Powers’ square function properly?"
A Crisis in Criticism: Star Wars is not Literature, it is an Object. - "Glenn's post is good natured and whip smart - but he's dead wrong. While he is no doubt the superior semiotician ... and I can't hope to outsmart the guy, mine is the better diagram."
Star Wars Highbrow: Thesis Antithesis Synthesis - "In addition to describing the square above Glenn's original post also discussed his choices for the cardinal points at some length in terms of a "highbrow-lowbrow-middlebrow-nobrow-hilobrow schema." It is a scheme he has charted elsewhere, admitting that "aesthetic and lifestyle choices aren't entirely independent of social class.""
comment posted at 6:24 PM on Mar-17-15

I am Ben Lesser, the last survivor of the Dachau death march.
comment posted at 4:43 PM on Mar-16-15

Clothes to Deploy for Uncomfortable Situations

Imagine this, you’re a start-up attending your first business card exchange. You’re in your zone, with speaking points ready to go and pockets stuffed with original laser cut business cards, but then the reality sets in. Everyone is already clustered in little groups conversing among themselves, and there you are left alone. It’s an awkward moment and suddenly you realize you aren’t as well prepared as you thought. Well, just deploy your mega cap sleeves to show them you’re boss, or activate your funnel neck collar to escape the embarrassment. It’s your clothing and you can command it. That’s the idea behind the Clothing for Moderns by Lea Albaugh.

comment posted at 10:31 AM on Mar-13-15

It has taken nearly five years, but Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality [alternative link, previously] has reached its pre-penultimate chapter. The final chapter, 122, is due to post on March 14th, 2015 (Pi Day), at 9AM Pacific Time. Wrap parties are planned for many places across the world.
comment posted at 10:15 AM on Mar-13-15

Kramer first became fascinated by sharpening when he was in his early twenties, hopping from restaurant to restaurant as a prep cook. In each kitchen, he found chefs who knew almost nothing about knives. (At many restaurants, in fact, the chefs got their knives sharpened by an old-timer who would drop by once a month to tune up knives in his van. For the next week, a lot of band-aids got used.) "These are our main tools," Kramer recalls thinking. "Why don't we know how to take care of them?"
comment posted at 4:15 PM on Mar-12-15

Vince Vaughn and Co-stars Pose for Idiotic Stock Photos You Can Have for Free.
comment posted at 6:55 AM on Mar-7-15

The Urban Sketching Manifesto: 1. We draw on location, indoors or out, capturing what we see from direct observation. 2. Our drawings tell the story of our surroundings, the places we live and where we travel. 3. Our drawings are a record of time and place. 4. We are truthful to the scenes we witness. 5. We use any kind of media and cherish our individual styles. 6. We support each other and draw together. 7. We share our drawings online. 8. We show the world, one drawing at a time.
comment posted at 7:12 AM on Mar-1-15

Samantha Cristoforetti is an European Space Agency astronaut, Italian Air Force pilot and engineer and polyglot, fluent in Italian, English, German, French and Russian. She is also the first Italian woman in space and cheerfully tweeting and taking photos from the International Space Station.
comment posted at 8:04 AM on Feb-22-15

On the night of 13/14 February 1945, RAF Bomber Command carried out a raid on the city of Dresden, the capital of Saxony, Germany. For all intents and purposes, this was a standard mission undertaken in much the same way as any other sortie... Warning - some graphic images inside
comment posted at 5:50 PM on Feb-15-15

The science of misheard lyrics (SL New Yorker)
comment posted at 6:02 PM on Feb-4-15

Vermibus is a Berlin-based artist who

"regularly collects advertising posters from the streets, using them in his studio as the base material for his work. There, a process of transformation begins. Using solvent, he brushes away the faces and flesh of the models appearing in the posters as well as brand logos. Once the transformation is complete, he then reintroduces the adverts back into their original context, hijacking the publicity, and its purpose."

His process can be seen here.
comment posted at 5:37 PM on Feb-4-15

Open Culture has published Akira Kurosawa’s 100 Favorite Movies
His daughter Kazuko Kurosawa described the list’s selection process:

My father always said that the films he loved were too many to count, and to make a top ten rank. That explains why you cannot find in this list many of the titles of the films he regarded as wonderful. The principle of the choice is: one film for one director, entry of the unforgettable films about which I and my father had a lovely talk, and of some ideas on cinema that he had cherished but did not express in public. This is the way I made a list of 100 films of Kurosawa’s choice.

comment posted at 8:24 PM on Jan-14-15

Health aside, some of my friends were just weirded out. Why turn plant proteins into burgers and dogs? Why not just eat them as peas and soybeans and seeds? To which I say: taco, chimichanga, empanada, crepe, pierogi, wonton, gyoza, stuffed roti, pupusa, pastie, pig in a blanket, croque monsieur, pastrami on rye. Culture is a lump of flesh wrapped in dough. If you want to save the world, you’d better make it convenient.

The Beyond Meat people, already known for their plant-based chicken (previously), are taking on plant-based beef. Is it really The Top-Secret Food That Will Change the Way You Eat? Probably not, but it's still interesting.
comment posted at 4:50 PM on Jan-2-15

Rid yourself of those winter blues with Ursula 1000's Winter (Mega)Mixes, which are not focused on winter music, but rather an upbeat mix of deep, funky, sleazy, acid tinged delights, as Alex Gimeno, the Brooklyn-based retro-futuristic producer/DJ/multi-instrumentalist labeled his latest mix. Read on for more sampladelic easy listening breakbeat tracks in a style similar to continental popsters from Pizzicato Five to Dimitri from Paris, plus some fuzzy garage rock-influenced tunes!
comment posted at 1:23 PM on Jan-1-15

The New York Times looks back at the Stanford Class of 1994 and what they are all up to today.
comment posted at 7:41 AM on Dec-25-14

There are holiday displays, and then there's Tom BetGeorge's holiday display. Mr. BetGeorge, of Newark, California, has created a 100,000 light extravaganza celebrating Christmas and his favorite music from Star Wars. It has to be seen to be believed.
comment posted at 5:54 AM on Dec-24-14

"Astronauts on the International Space Station have used their 3-D printer to make a wrench from instructions sent up in an email. It is the first time hardware has been "emailed" to space. Nasa was responding to a request by ISS commander Barry Wilmore for a ratcheting socket wrench."
comment posted at 7:25 AM on Dec-21-14

Earth's Magnetic Field May Be About to Flip [summary] - "Earth's last magnetic reversal took place 786,000 years ago and happened very quickly, in less than 100 years -- roughly a human lifetime. The rapid flip, much faster than the thousands of years most geologists thought, comes as new measurements show the planet's magnetic field is weakening 10 times faster than normal and could drop to zero in a few thousand years." (via)
comment posted at 8:59 AM on Dec-20-14

In an area of London that already boasts a cat cafe and a 3d printer cafe, two bearded twin brothers have opened the Cereal Killer Cafe that serves only breakfast cereal.
comment posted at 7:57 AM on Dec-15-14

“I was in London on business in the fall of 2013 when an Australian colleague brought me to a coffee place at Canary Wharf,” says Jason Fox, the global head of product, technology, and program management at Reuters News Agency. “She ordered something called a ‘flat white,’ and I had no idea what it was, but she raved about it, and I got one too. I was hooked.” ("Meet the Flat White, the Coffee Drink Taking the U.S. by Storm", Bon Appétit)
comment posted at 6:38 AM on Dec-10-14

How Watermelons Became a Racist Trope
comment posted at 7:28 AM on Dec-10-14

From a series of secret, more secret and even more secret locations, really very secret inventor/eccentric fencing-mask-clad 'eb' presents to the world The Boonsburg Egg. A geometric device that he claims is at the heart of the Universe(yt), the Pyramids, Stonehenge and the Earth's plasma fields(yt), he's built one big enough to move a car. But how do you fund such work while getting the knowledge out? Cue William Shatner, Nancy Reagan, Werner Von Braun, and Charlton Heston...
comment posted at 8:09 AM on Dec-10-14

The Supermarine Spitfire is probably the most iconic of all fighter planes. Watch the re-creation of a crashed Spit left on a French beach after the battle of Dunkirk in 1940 in Guy Martin Builds a Spitfire. [1 hr 12 min YouTube]
comment posted at 5:09 AM on Dec-8-14

The first teaser trailer for the Episode VII—Star Wars: The Force Awakens is live.
comment posted at 1:41 PM on Nov-30-14

Rave flyers from all over the world , mid-1980's thru the early 2000's. Over 20,000 pieces of original Underground, Rave, Club, and Disco memorabilia (rave flyers, rave posters, laminates, tickets, etc.). My first massive rave, Toon Town's UFOs Are Real. Find a party you've been to and post in comments!
comment posted at 4:03 PM on Nov-22-14

Grantland: "This is the Animated Movie Sadness Index. It’s very simple, though perhaps easy to get confused by. This is not a ranking of sad moments from animated movies. For example: Charlotte dying in Charlotte’s Web was a sad moment. But Charlotte wasn’t a sad character, nor was Wilbur, so they aren’t here. Because this Sadness Index charts characters with sad backstories — tragic figures with dark histories, who endure the most awful of circumstances."
comment posted at 8:18 PM on Nov-15-14

Fourier synthesis and analysis on a mechanical, analog computer. Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4.
comment posted at 6:42 AM on Nov-14-14

"If you want to hear music, you know what you do - you turn on the radio, put on a CD, or even go to a concert. But as the age of the info superhighway inches forward, you can even get music from your own home computer." That's the intro to a short CNN segment on IUMA, the Internet Underground Music Archive, which opened in 1992 as an effort for unsigned bands to share their music on the world-wide web, for free. Unfortunately, it fell the way of many early 1990s online entities: it was bought out, then the new owners couldn't keep up with changing times, and the site went dark. Except before IUMA disappeared, John Gilmore grabbed much of the material and backed it up on tapes, and turned to (MeFi's Own) Jason Scott and Archive.org to bring back IUMA. They did, and you can now browse through over 45,000 bands and artists, and more than 680,000 tracks of music.
comment posted at 2:44 PM on Nov-11-14

"Fuck Yes!" or No - "Think about this for a moment: Why would you ever choose to be with someone who is not excited to be with you?"
(Fuck Yes, No Less - "How many of us have been taught to let persuasion and doubt override our instincts? How many of us have been taught to live in the grey?")
comment posted at 2:23 PM on Nov-11-14

With thousands of reader suggestions, Kotaku has published a directory of "Classic PC games you must play". The most voted for free games [links go to places you can download games]: Star Control II, Tyrian, Zork, Battle Zone, Myth II, and Daggerfall. Some of the most votes for games that are available for $10 or less:Master of Orion ($5),Quest for Glory ($10), Planescape ($10), Total Annihilation ($6), Heroes of Might and Magic III ($9), Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis ($5), Little Big Adventures 2 ($5), Descent ($10), and Betrayal at Krondor ($6). More idiosyncratic than PC Games list of the top games, but the people have spoken...
comment posted at 2:24 PM on Oct-23-14

Cursors is a fascinating maze game where you have to cooperate with others with very limited ways of communicating.
comment posted at 5:43 PM on Oct-19-14

"As the academic year begins again, new PhD students across the country (and further) are slowly settling into their fresh surroundings. I stayed at the same university when I made the switch to postgraduate research but I still remember feeling quite lost at the start, not knowing what to do or where to be. I’m now entering the final year of my studies and have (I hope) picked up some useful knowledge along the way.

"So I’ll cut right to the point: below is a list of handy tips, tricks, general advice and things I wish I knew when I started my PhD. The list was put together from chats with other PhD friends of mine, but is by no means exhaustive (nor is it in any particular order, though it did get quite long…). Hopefully it will help somebody. Please share your comments at the bottom if you have things to add – the more the merrier." Things I wish I knew when I started my PhD… from Between a rock and a hard place.
comment posted at 2:20 PM on Oct-18-14

Here's a collection of NASA sounds from historic spaceflights and current missions.
comment posted at 8:51 AM on Oct-18-14

Virgin Airlines has released a nearly six-hour video showing what's it like to fly from New York to San Francisco with BLAH airlines, which is fictional, gray, boring, and non-Virgin; all in excruciating detail. (Warnings: SLYT, mannequins, Lynchian, Virgin Pepsi Blue)
comment posted at 5:21 AM on Oct-17-14

The Rosetta Mission to comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko took this picture of itself with the comet 16km away in the background. European Space Agency description of the image. Phil Platt's Bad Astronomy story.
comment posted at 5:35 AM on Oct-16-14

Madison is a new Vintage Ad archive from the New York Times. "But the Times is inviting readers to do more than just view the ads. It's also asking readers to help shape the archive by sifting through the ads, identifying them and even transcribing their text."
comment posted at 4:49 AM on Oct-16-14

This Beer Maid Will Work Oktoberfest Until She Dies
comment posted at 4:07 PM on Oct-13-14

Bitch: A History This past semester at MIT I took a really wonderful class called “Feminist Political Thought” which had a very open ended essay assignment. I wrote a history of the word “Bitch,” and several of my classmates requested to read the whole paper so I thought I’d post it here.
comment posted at 2:22 PM on Oct-8-14

In an essay for the Wharton School of Business' blog, confessed 'social media evangelist' and marketer Curtis Houghland argues that the advent of twitter and other social media heralds the destruction of the nation state over the coming century. Literally.

Formal nationhood as the basis for a social contract with its citizens dates only to the 17th century. It is a relatively new phenomenon. As Pankaj Mishra points out in Bloomberg View, 'Few people in 1900 expected centuries-old empires — Qing, Hapsburg, Ottoman — to collapse by 1918.' The belief in the centralized nation as the default political organization is grossly misplaced. And we are seeing the de-evolution of nationhood before our eyes in our daily newsfeeds....As there are now more than 30 brands of Mountain Dew, there will be more nations in Europe.

comment posted at 3:02 PM on Oct-9-14

Tour the mega-slum Dharavi, one of the most materially deprived places on earth, transformed by TED-like pundits into a "most inspiring economic model" that gels quite well with their vision of a world without public aid and guarantees to needy.
comment posted at 2:13 PM on Oct-8-14

World Space Week 2014: Unusual Facts About The Solar System

1. Earth is Special

Earth's atmosphere is completely unique and the only one in our solar system able to support life. There is no other planet which has breathable oxygen in its air and oceans on its surface.

comment posted at 5:18 PM on Oct-7-14