culture — #
This is awesome: Hors Cycles
6 February 2012
culture & technology — #
Google unveils ‘Solve for X’ website, hints at TED-like think tank
3 February 2012
parenthood & culture — #
Barack Obama talks about his father’s impact on him in this touching and very real video from the Dinner with Barack series.
27 January 2012
business & culture — #
Culture Eats Strategy For Lunch
Get on a Southwest flight to anywhere, buy shoes from Zappos.com, pants from Nordstrom, groceries from Whole Foods, anything from Costco, a Starbucks espresso, or a Double-Double from In N’ Out, and you’ll get a taste of these brands’ vibrant cultures.
Culture is a balanced blend of human psychology, attitudes, actions, and beliefs that combined create either pleasure or pain, serious momentum or miserable stagnation. A strong culture flourishes with a clear set of values and norms that actively guide the way a company operates. Employees are actively and passionately engaged in the business, operating from a sense of confidence and empowerment rather than navigating their days through miserably extensive procedures and mind-numbing bureaucracy. Performance-oriented cultures possess statistically better financial growth, with high employee involvement, strong internal communication, and an acceptance of a healthy level of risk-taking in order to achieve new levels of innovation.
culture & television — #
From the Oh Darn, Turns Out That Never Happened Dept: Johnny Carson, Zsa Zsa Gabor, & the Pussy Cat
24 January 2012
parenthood & culture — #
Jeff Atwood: On Parenthood
That one percent makes all the difference.
23 January 2012
culture & technology — #
In Which I Fix My Girlfriend’s Grandparents’ WiFi and Am Hailed as a Conquering Hero.
Lo, in the twilight days of the second year of the second decade of the third millennium did a great darkness descend over the wireless internet connectivity of the people of 276 Ferndale Street in the North-Central lands of Iowa. For many years, the gentlefolk of these lands basked in a wireless network overflowing with speed and ample internet, flowing like a river into their Compaq Presario. Many happy days did the people spend checking Hotmail and reading USAToday.com.
culture — #
The Miniatur Wunderland in Hamburg is one of the most amazing miniature exhibits of life in the world.
21 January 2012
politics & culture — #
Larry Lessig Interviews Jack Abramoff
There’s a long discussion about the power of staffers on the Hill, rather than the actual elected officials (who “never read the actual bills”). They note that staffers are the real power. Abramoff talks about how he never wanted to hire the actual Congressional Reps, but always focused on hiring staffers. And then he makes a key admission that won’t surprise many people. He says that, early on, he focused on hiring people when he had job openings. But, later, he would talk to staffers — especially chiefs of staff — and just let them know he had a job opening for them whenever they wanted it. And he would ask them: “When do you want to start?” If they said “two years,” he knew that the guy was already working for him, but on the inside. As he says “I really hired him that day,” even though he went on for two more years working as a chief-of-staff to someone in Congress.
19 January 2012
food & culture — #
The Whisky Water Trick /via kottke
NSFW due to the topical but hardly necessary use of old-fashioned pin-up playing cards featuring nudes.