the cacophony of sarcophagi (and other tales)
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“Here’s a breakdown of Apple’s sales by product category. It is an iPhone company now, with 53% of sales coming from the smartphone.” (via Business Insider)
(via xkcd)
Household balance sheets among the Facebook generation were the hardest hit: between 2007 and 2009, half of those under the age of 35 lost over 25% of their wealth. A quarter of those under 35 lost over 86% of their wealth.
- from the Council on Foreign Relations’ “Housing Defriends the Facebook Generation”
SOPA is a legislative attempt by big companies with vested interests to protect their downside. And unfortunately, these companies have conscripted Congress to help them. What’s worse is that even though limiting start-up innovation might help big content in the short run, it’s not going to do them in favors in the long run. Nor is going to do America any favors.
- from Harvard Business Review’s “The Real SOPA Battle: Innovators vs. Goliath”
“A supporter of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi during a celebration in March” (from the New York Times’ “Year in Pictures”
Banksy sculpture Cardinal Sin targets Catholic Church sex abuse scandal (To read the story, click image or here) (via marcovhv)
(Source: christiannightmares)
(via MSNBC)
“An eruption from Mount Nyamulagira in eastern Congo sends lava high into the air on November 11, 2011.” (via The Atlantic’s In Focus on “The Year in Volcanic Activity”)
I was at a meeting just two days ago at which several well-meaning staff members of a charity were presenting to their board, and the meat of their discussion revolved around the acronyms SCEA and some other one that began with “R” that I can’t recall. In the span of three minutes these acronyms must have been used eight times each. They were central to any understanding of the topic at hand, but they were never defined. So I had not the vaguest idea what the presenters were talking about. None. Could have been talking about how to make a beurre-blanc sauce for all I know.
- via “I Don’t Understand What Anyone Is Saying Anymore” in Harvard Business Review
“God particle” could be found or disproved in 2012, expert predicts (via National Geographic)
Pubic hair is … evolving. Once upon a time, all vulvas were coated in a protective layer of coarse, woolly tresses. Hard to believe, right? It’s kind of like the revelation that horses once had toes, or that the Ford Mustang once had tailfins. But like any evolving species, the vulva has morphed into something sleeker, starker, and altogether more modern. Today, it is smooth, baby-soft, and hairless.
- from an interesting Atlantic piece about female pubic hair
Facebook Is Making Us Miserable
Don’t agree with all of this post, but this part is interesting.
Since our Facebook profiles are self-curated, users have a strong bias toward sharing positive milestones and avoid mentioning the more humdrum, negative parts of their lives. Accomplishments like, “Hey, I just got promoted!” or “Take a look at my new sports car,” trump sharing the intricacies of our daily commute or a life-shattering divorce. This creates an online culture of competition and comparison. One interviewee even remarked, “I’m pretty competitive by nature, so when my close friends post good news, I always try and one-up them.”
Comparing ourselves to others is a key driver of unhappiness.Tom DeLong, author of Flying Without a Net, even describes a “Comparing Trap.” He writes, “No matter how successful we are and how many goals we achieve, this trap causes us to recalibrate our accomplishments and reset the bar for how we define success.”And as we judge the entirety of our own lives against the top 1% of our friends’ lives, we’re setting impossible standards for ourselves, making us more miserable than ever.
7 Foods You Should Never Eat
Chemicals, including perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), in the lining of the bag, are part of a class of compounds that may be linked to infertility in humans, according to a recent study from UCLA. In animal testing, the chemicals cause liver, testicular, and pancreatic cancer. Studies show that microwaving causes the chemicals to vaporize—and migrate into your popcorn. “They stay in your body for years and accumulate there,” says Naidenko, which is why researchers worry that levels in humans could approach the amounts causing cancers in laboratory animals. DuPont and other manufacturers have promised to phase out PFOA by 2015 under a voluntary EPA plan, but millions of bags of popcorn will be sold between now and then.
About the cacophony of sarcophagi (and other tales)
