Stories, news, articles worth reading ... • Page 2

Millennials: the trials of Generation Y | The Guardian

This has been a fascinating series. Obviously skews to the British experience more than anything, but there are parallels and quite a few statistics/experiences of the North American experience. Been struggling a lot lately in having these conversations with my parents/their friends as they can't see why I'm seemingly "so far behind" in the adult process.

 

Haha, I hear you. I can't think of a single reason why I would want one right now, but I've been hearing so many good things about it. It's such a strange device. I think mainly I'd use it like I use Siri right now, reminders, checking things, stuff like that. But I haven't ordered one because I don't really know what the function would be for me.

 

My mom has one and loves it. She keeps it in the kitchen, so it's mostly playing Pandora or the radio while she's cooking and stuff, but it's a convenient way to look something up or order an ingredient she's running low on without grabbing a phone or computer.

 

Ah that makes sense. See, I have to force myself to try to use Siri more because I really don't. Maybe once I get in the habit of doing that more, something like this would be a more ideal purchase.

 

That is nice, because I do that kinda thing all the time with Siri.

"Hey, siri, convert blah blah to blah blah."

That's clever. I also use Siri a lot for reminders. And math. Hah.

 

A penguin literally swims across an ocean every year just to see the Brazilian man who saved him

 

Be still my motherfucking heart

 

I would do shameful things to have a penguin friend.

 

Posted this in the Sports Articles thread but that tends to get buried under all the stickied threads so I figured I'd post it here as well.

Analyze This

The disparity between NBA data — even data across all male sports — and WNBA data is glaring. Data for the WNBA is relegated to basic information: points, rebounds, steals, assists, turnovers, blocks. While worthy of being noted, those are the most rudimentary numbers in our game.

Data helps drive conversations, strategy, decision making. But data on its own isn’t terribly interesting. It needs context. It needs a storyteller. Data helps tell the story of a player, a team, an entire career.

There’s a need to value data in the WNBA because there’s a need to value the stories of our league. Think about baseball, for example, or men’s basketball. Fans, players, executives and media value stats and information because it helps to tell a story that many are already invested in. And if they’re not already invested, then it gives them a reason to be. It helps GMs make decisions. It informs contract negotiations. It enables player development.

 

Zayn Malik And The Songs That Bring Us To Prayer

Maybe there is no saving the world from the violence and hatred it feels toward Muslims. We pretend as if that hate has just arrived, as if it will go away soon, once the election cycle ends. We think of it as an American problem, and not a world problem. Rather, it is the machine that has always been at a low hum, incrementally growing louder each month, day, hour. Eventually, we will be able to hear nothing else. For Muslim teenagers who are like I was, looking for a temporary salve, the existence of Zayn Malik is enough. Representation can be simply the ability to imagine a shared experience with someone who is larger than life. Knowing that Zayn Malik perhaps also once answered a call to prayer while a red sun crawled underneath the horizon, like I once did, is enough. He’s a complicated, layered pop star who follows Islam, who is, still, only defined by it when a joke or a threat can be made. There is nothing more American than this — the identity that hangs over us most closely, the one that can still get us killed.

 

Is Indie Rock Over The White Male Voice?

If indie rock once stood against the bluster of the mainstream, by the 2000s many bands faced a new challenge: They were the mainstream. These young bands have inherited that challenge. One of the reasons to be excited about indie rock was that historically it didn’t face the cookie-cutter constraints of radio or major labels. Factors like the transformative success of The O.C. as a soundtrack and cultural force, the collapse of the traditional music industry, and people forgoing the radio for iPods forced many bands toward a path of sync licenses (soundtracking TV and commercials), often necessitating odd corporate plays in order to have anything resembling a career. The bands that suited the palate of this mainstream were ones that could plausibly fit into inoffensive, accessible, cute, quirky spaces: Animal Collective, Fleet Foxes, Death Cab for Cutie, Grizzly Bear. Their collective summit of Mt. Urban Outfitters created a pathway, which in turn created a code — if your band checked these boxes of poesy and generic indie rock sound, then you, too, could have it all. The result is a generation of bands that make music that could easily fade into the background if you don’t keep the volume high enough.

 

This is easily going to be my favorite thread. Only worry is that there will be so much posting that there won't be enough dedicated convo.

 

Why I Have Not Endorsed Any Candidate - Reflections from a Mom of the Movement

Instead of plans for justice and accountability, I have been shown several plans for criminal justice reform, none that address my experience of the entire system being guilty. Those plans don’t address the many ways elected officials become exempt to accountability and the legal flaws that allow them to extend that exemption to cops who kill. These plans do not get rid of the trauma of knowing that my tax dollars help pay the salaries of the police officers that killed my son.

 

What a shit show this is going to be. I'm so there!
A restaurant in Back Bay is holding a Taylor Swift vs. Kanye West brunch! | Colton Bradford | 101.7 The Bull

 

I still have a tab open with the penguin story. I refuse to close it.

 

How Many Decimals of Pi Do We Really Need? - Edu News | NASA/JPL Edu

The most distant spacecraft from Earth is Voyager 1. It is about 12.5 billion miles away. Let's say we have a circle with a radius of exactly that size (or 25 billion miles in diameter) and we want to calculate the circumference, which is pi times the radius times 2. Using pi rounded to the 15th decimal, as I gave above, that comes out to a little more than 78 billion miles. We don't need to be concerned here with exactly what the value is (you can multiply it out if you like) but rather what the error in the value is by not using more digits of pi. In other words, by cutting pi off at the 15th decimal point, we would calculate a circumference for that circle that is very slightly off. It turns out that our calculated circumference of the 25 billion mile diameter circle would be wrong by 1.5 inches. Think about that. We have a circle more than 78 billion miles around, and our calculation of that distance would be off by perhaps less than the length of your little finger.

 

I’m a 20-something millennial and I always feel behind

The most immediate reaction from, mostly older, people is, “You’re only 22! You have plenty of time.” However, I have a feeling that a lot of my 20-something friends know exactly what I’m talking about, and totally understand what I mean when I say I feel like I don’t have plenty of time.

It’s hard to feel like I’m a useful and contributing member to society when it appears as if my peers are constantly doing more — more for their communities, more for their careers, more for themselves.

 

Thank you for sharing this, I needed it this week haha. That hit close to home.

 

As the first comment said on FB, this was oddly satisfying to watch.

 

I had the same reaction. Haha.

 

By the way, this new site is amazing. Loving it so far. Is there gonna be an app with the official release?

 

Thanks! I'm really glad you like it. Always feels good after years of work to hear something like that, I really appreciate it.

Currently no plans for a standalone app as I focused on the mobile experience in the browser and bookmarks. I may add push notifications at some point however.

 

Awesome man, that's really all that I'd want from an app anyway-to get push notifications so I can keep up with everything without having to constantly check. Other than that, lovin' it! Excited for you/AP!