For the new year, I’m trying something a little different with the format of HodgePodge. I’ll still bring you five (or so) interesting stories each week, but now I’ll include an interesting excerpt as well. Digital Dominion A huge portion of the “cloud” runs on Amazon Web Services, which means much of your daily internet activity runs through Northern Virgina. The Atlantic took a tour of AWS’s data center: “Once in a while—not quite often enough to be a crisis, but just often enough to…
Read MoreLuke, use the data Bloomberg Business applies some data journalism to The Force, tracking screen time the mysterious power was used for good vs. evil, which powers were used by which characters and more. Where’s Dr. Beckett? WSJ.D reports on Google’s latest experiments with quantum computing. TL;DR version: We at least know it’s not completely useless. That’s so money Reclusive Bitcoin inventor Satoshi Nakamoto is probably this Australian guy. Except, probably not. (Trigger warning: highly technical content.) Ashton will fix it The Verge traces the…
Read MoreGum springs eternal Seattle’s famed gum wall is in the process of being de-gummed. Read about it on NPR. Happy little challenge PBS NewsHour invited viewers to take the #BobRossChallenge and paint along to old Joy of Painting episodes on YouTube. The results are far-superior to 12-year-old Tony’s own attempts many years ago. Stressed for success “[W]hile family structure seems to have permanently changed, public policy, workplace structure and mores have not seemed to adjust to a norm in which both parents work.” NYT’s TheUpshot…
Read MoreSeriously Nobody cares how hard you work. Read another day In a Longread about Bond movie title tracks, Adrian Daub & Charles Kronengold look at what makes them wonderfully awful and awfully wonderful at the same time. (Or as the authors put it, “most Bond songs are gangly, glorious homunculi.”) Greek mythology As we lead up to the Richmond Marathon in a couple weeks, here’s the New Yorker on how the marathon, which had previously varied in length, came to become fixed at 26.2 miles….
Read MoreWe are now living in a time that takes place after the future date presented in Back to the Future Part II 1989. My six-year-old self can’t even. Where is Your Retirement Going? What is 2-4% of your 401K over 40 years? A whole heckuva lot. [Insert impossibly wittier headline than that of this story] (No really, I tried!) Long read on how maps have been used in persuasion (read: propaganda). Pick your poison This pains me to write, but tea drinkers may be right…
Read MorePuzzle me this You know what you think and what your friends think, but can you predict what the majority thinks? Don’t call her calculated Taylor Swift is having more fun being Taylor Swift than tabloids are tisk-tisking Taylor Swift. Taylor Swift. Removed Here’s some pictures of people with their smartphones photoshopped out. They have me rethinking some things. Double plus upvoted Reddit launched a new editorial site that highlights interesting content from the site. It’s called Upvoted, and this is my favorite story so…
Read MoreEverybody out of the pool Grantland goes long on the influential, if unheralded, ’90s cartoon spoof talk show Space Ghost from Coast to Coast, which caught the attention of “a generation of young weirdos.” Funky, funky The oral history of Blue Note Records’ first platinum-selling album. Science fact Isaac Asimov on creativity, a previously unpublished essay from 1959. Are we there yet? It’s probably a good thing that today’s youth are less interested in driving than their parents (and aunts and uncles), because maybe they…
Read MoreBlock party How much are ads on major news sites costing consumers (in time and bandwidth)? The New York Times did the math. Is there anybody out there? How many of those bandwidth clogging ads actually work? According to a study cited by Bloomberg Business, 11 to 25 percent of online ads are viewed by software, not people. Medium large Citing posts from the local supervisors all the way up the White House, Business Insider’s Biz Carson calls Medium “this generation’s PR Newswire”. Extra medium…
Read MoreThe bike race might be almost over, but this is the BIG weekend. Get excited. RVA! RVA! RVA! Not to shortchange the amazing local coverage of Richmond 2015, but the Washingtonian has put together a fantastic guide of riders to watch, places to eat and sightsee for those venturing in from out of town. An American in Richmond If you haven’t chosen a favorite rider to cheer for, allow us to introduce you to Taylor Phinney. Take your mark Have you found yourself saying about…
Read MoreTomorrow kicks off the UCI Road World Championships. Before we all get wrapped up in cycling fever, here’s a roundup of non-bicycle stories to cap off your week. #istandwithahmed Ahmed Mohamed isn’t the only young teenager who’s engineering while Muslim. (Thank God.) Here are some fantastic programs helping fuel underrepresented students’ passion for science and technology. What’s that sound? Soul music, retro-soul music and neo-soul music: A critique. Holdin’ it down The Federal Reserve has decided to keep interest rates near zero. So exactly what…
Read MoreMeeting makers This is not so much news as it is content: a British distillery is doing a web series with Anthony Bourdain where he talks to different craftspeople. The episode with knifesmith Bob Kramer making kitchen knives from meteorites is rightly getting a lot of views. Play by play Haven’t had time to watch the hours-long Apple presentation from earlier this week? BuzzFeed has the video highlights. Dream on If you think you don’t dream at night, you’re probably wrong. Cave-dweller Scientists have discovered…
Read MoreJammin’ It might be hard to find a copy of Space Jam to watch, but you can still visit the movie’s original website, a time capsule of sort for the early web. Rolling Stone has the story behind the site from the people involved. Finding a way Profit is hard to come by for small farms, so some of them are bringing the tables to the farm and serving pizza. Finding a way, part two From one of my favorite writers, Steven Johnson: The Creative…
Read More