Posts – page 14 of 74

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](http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/12/09/247385046/the-global-population-boom-and-bust-in-4-gifs)

…and the US is getting older fast.

Jeffrey Zeldman:

Yes, recycling other people’s recycling of other people’s recycling of cat gifs is fun and easy on Tumblr. Yes, rubbing out a good bon mot on Twitter can satisfy one’s ego and rekindle a wistful remembrance of meaning. Yes, these things are still fine to do. But they are not all we can do on this web. This is our web. Let us not surrender it so easily to new corporate masters.

Being first is not the only way to win. The cost of crossing the finish line first sometimes outweighs the prize you get for winning. The second mouse to reach the trap gets the cheese and gets to search for more tomorrow. All but the slowest runner in the group escapes the bear.

Apple didn’t make the first computer, MP3 player, or Smartphone. Amazon didn’t invent the bookstore. They didn’t win by trying to finish first.

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](http://xkcd.com/1283/)

via

‘Tis the season for the Google Santa Tracker. I’ll be enjoying this site with the kids this year. They’re finally old enough to appreciate it.

I started working on a simple business card for myself the other day. It’s more of a calling card since I don’t have a business to go with it. And it’s not really a calling card either, since there’s no phone number on it. It just has an email address, URL, and Twitter handle1.

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](http://i.imgur.com/nzJxFwx.png?1)

Intelclinic launched a Kickstarter project to fund the creation of a polyphasic sleep mask.

NeuroOn is the world’s first brainwave - monitoring SLEEP MASK that allows you to switch from monophasic to polyphasic sleep. That means you can sleep less and more efficiently.

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One of the reasons I bike to work is so I don’t have to use as much gas as the rest of the country.

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Sitting in traffic is an expensive activity.

The Pixar Theory Timeline

Asana · Apps & Integrations

cyanidedaze:

Hawkeyes by Martin Simmonds

The New Yorker has an interesting look at the robotic side of Twitter and the challenges the service will face as it becomes a bigger business.

As a service, Twitter’s greatest strength is that its users have total control over whom they follow and what they see. As a business, Twitter’s greatest opportunity is in violating that control with advertisements.

A few items on my personal to-do list had lingered, untouched, for more than a month.

I just deleted them.

Those tasks did nothing but make me feel bad about what I had yet to start doing. They were guilt tasks. Maybe, now that they’re gone, I’ll be able to work on them again.

Striving after goals means failing every day until you succeeds. Living a system means succeeding every day, building on the momentum of earlier successes, and living with a more positive sense of self. Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, recently wrote:

My problem with goals is that they are limiting. Granted, if you focus on one particular goal, your odds of achieving it are better than if you have no goal. But you also miss out on opportunities that might have been far better than your goal. Systems, however, simply move you from a game with low odds to a game with better odds. With a system you are less likely to miss one opportunity because you were too focused on another. With a system, you are always scanning for any opportunity.

Pencil by FiftyThree

This clever holiday gift guide is filled with all the stuff I’d buy myself if I had the money to afford more expensive taste. There are no gift suggestions in this guide for my wife. However, the writer has a good reason for his omission, which he expressed like this:

My apologies, there are no gift ideas for women in here. If you don’t know what to buy a woman for Christmas, you’re an idiot.

@GSElevator, who authored this post, is behind what is very possibly my favorite non-personal Twitter account, mostly because of his quips like this and seasonal jokes like this.