1. Comments / 6 days ago 

    First world loans to developing countries. I think they made it simple enough.

  2. Comments / 3 weeks ago 
    "Whenever I see a brilliant kid decide to join Goldman Sachs, McKinsey, or Google, I think to myself: a startup just died, and as a result our world is a little less wealthy, innovative, and interesting."
    - Chris Dixon
  3. Comments / 1 month ago 
    "It is better to live your own destiny imperfectly than to live an imitation of somebody else’s life with perfection."
    - The Bhagavad Gita
  4. Comments / 2 months ago 
     
  5. Comments / 2 months ago 

    Humbling video showing a size comparison of a few planets and stars with known size. When I get reminded of how small we and the earth are my heart starts to beat faster and I feel weight on my shoulders, I can’t be the only one.

  6. Comments / 2 months ago 
    This is a great infographic about the facts of bottled water. I love my 1 liter reusable water bottle and carry it around all day filling it up with tap water 3-4 times a day which keeps me hydrated and healthy.  It seems the recession has caused consumers to cut back on bottled water and the industry has declined for the first time in 6 years according to a Washington Post article. When I visited Fiji in March of last year, the locals told me that the demand for Fiji brand water was down and a lot of jobs had been cut back at the factory.  They said they like having the bottled water manufacturer there as it brought a lot of jobs and money to Fiji.  My sister had the opportunity to take a tour of the factory and said it was operating way below capacity.  This is bad for the Fijian people but good for the environment as the bottle water bubble seems to be retracting, although it is mostly based on financial and not environmental reasons. While a large portion of the world desperately seek clean drinking water, the United States and other countries spend billions on bottled water when perfectly clean drinking water is readily available. Not only are we needlessly spending money on water with lower standards than those of tap water, we are also filling our landfills with billions of pounds of oil based plastic that take 1000’s of years to degrade.

    This is a great infographic about the facts of bottled water. I love my 1 liter reusable water bottle and carry it around all day filling it up with tap water 3-4 times a day which keeps me hydrated and healthy.  It seems the recession has caused consumers to cut back on bottled water and the industry has declined for the first time in 6 years according to a Washington Post article.

    When I visited Fiji in March of last year, the locals told me that the demand for Fiji brand water was down and a lot of jobs had been cut back at the factory.  They said they like having the bottled water manufacturer there as it brought a lot of jobs and money to Fiji.  My sister had the opportunity to take a tour of the factory and said it was operating way below capacity.  This is bad for the Fijian people but good for the environment as the bottle water bubble seems to be retracting, although it is mostly based on financial and not environmental reasons.

    While a large portion of the world desperately seek clean drinking water, the United States and other countries spend billions on bottled water when perfectly clean drinking water is readily available. Not only are we needlessly spending money on water with lower standards than those of tap water, we are also filling our landfills with billions of pounds of oil based plastic that take 1000’s of years to degrade.
     
  7. Comments / 3 months ago 
    "I like shirts with hoods on them because I like the option of looking like a jackass."
    - John Mayer
  8. Comments / 3 months ago 
    I saw this diagram about the international standard for paper sizes (ISO 216) and it suddenly clicked.  I thought the sizes in mm always looked quite arbitrary but it is all based on the square meter.  Once again, I find the US is off on its own with a standard that isn’t compatible with the rest of the world and based around some arbitrary unit. From Wikipedia: “The international paper size standard, ISO 216, is based on the German DIN 476 standard for paper sizes. ISO paper sizes are all based on a single aspect ratio of square root of 2, or approximately 1:1.4142. The base format is a sheet of paper measuring 1 m² in area (A0 paper size). Successive paper sizes in the series A1, A2, A3, and so forth, are defined by halving the preceding paper size. The most frequently used paper size is A4 (210 × 297 mm).”

    I saw this diagram about the international standard for paper sizes (ISO 216) and it suddenly clicked.  I thought the sizes in mm always looked quite arbitrary but it is all based on the square meter.  Once again, I find the US is off on its own with a standard that isn’t compatible with the rest of the world and based around some arbitrary unit.

    From Wikipedia:

    “The international paper size standard, ISO 216, is based on the German DIN 476 standard for paper sizes. ISO paper sizes are all based on a single aspect ratio of square root of 2, or approximately 1:1.4142. The base format is a sheet of paper measuring 1 m² in area (A0 paper size). Successive paper sizes in the series A1, A2, A3, and so forth, are defined by halving the preceding paper size. The most frequently used paper size is A4 (210 × 297 mm).”

     
avatar_128 American dude living in Germany who does photovoltaic & software engineering and whose biggest fear is normality.
 

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